Worst pitch of the month: Barley & Britches chinos and poor first impressions
Every time you hear about a new business venture these days, chances are it trails back to Kickstarter.
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The crowd-sourcing fundraising platform certainly hosts a few gems waiting to to be unearthed. But there's a lot of clutter that venture capitalists and potential fans have to sift through first.
As with any online community virtually handing out carte blanche to anyone with an idea (bad or good), there are your requisite oddballs.
And then there are just the daily humdrum projects that are about as tame and unprovocative as a pair of khaki pants.
That's where "Barley & Britches: The Everyday Chino" fits in.
Forwarded to me by ZDNet's David Chernicoff, who covers the Five Nines: The Next Gen Datacenter blog, let's observe where things went wrong:
-----Original Message-----
From: [REDACTED]
Sent: Monday, November 25, 2013 7:45 AM
To: David Chernicoff
Subject: Story Idea: Do pants really make the man on a first date? (Five Nines: The Next Gen Datacenter)David --
I'm writing to suggest a fun, story idea for Five Nines: The Next Gen Datacenter based on timely survey data: "What are your pants communicating about you on a first date?"
I'm a publicist for Barley & Britches and their Everyday Chinos.
Do women actually judge you on a first date based on the pants that you wear to the bar or the restaurant? To answer this question, we conducted a survey representative of 1,300 respondents.
Some interesting findings on men and their "first date pants" include:
* If you want women to think you're rich, responsible and a perfect long term partner, wear khaki colored pants.
* If you want to seem like a wild, adventurous, offbeat, or creative date, wear colorful pants like dark red or bright blue - but you also run the risk of being seen like just a hookup.
* If you want ladies to think you like the finer things in life, wear dark but still colorful pants - such as dark purple.
* Wearing green pants will communicate that you're a world traveler - but that you also may live with your parents.
To make dating fashion easier, Sim has created The EveryDay Chino, a premium pant that fits your lifestyle and wallet at $38, comes in 5 great colors, and is delivered straight from the manufacturer.
The Chinos are live on Kickstarter now and the page is available here:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1022959772/1168026880?token=fb5b62a8
VIDEO: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1022959772/1168026880?token=fb5b62a8
I can help arrange an interview on this topic with Sim Gulati about how to make the best first impression with your pants on the first date. He is available for , email and phone or Skype interviews this week (November 25-29).
If you're interested in a guest blog post from Sim, let me know as well.
Best,
[REDACTED]
As David remarked sarcastically to me via email, this is "clearly a datacenter-oriented pitch."
To start, the PR flack who wrote this pitch made the rather desperate (and ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to try to connect the product he was pitching (pants) to David's area of coverage (datacenters).
Clearly, there is no connection to be made here.
Both the product and the survey advertised in the memo are completely irrelevant to David's beat and ZDNet overall for that matter. It's just one of many more examples we receive on a daily basis in which these senders obviously don't know, understand, or even care about the audience.
I'm not really sure how to even begin to answer the question proposed in the subject line ("What are your pants communicating about you on a first date?"), but I can attest that pitches like these make very poor first impressions.