Hasta La Ideas

As an uncannily relevant follow-up to Willem Van Lancker’s excellent essay on craftsmanship and its implications—namely the resurgent (albeit often misguided) DIY approach as a means to achieve authenticity—I just noticed that the Kickstarter campaign for Freaker USA is nearly funded just got Kickstarted. [Ed. Note: After stalling at about halfway-funded for the past week or so, it jumped to about $40,000 when I wrote this article in the morning; as of press time, the project is a go.]

The product itself isn’t particularly noteworthy—it’s a knit beer koozie that comes in a handful of funky styles—but I’m highly intrigued by their marketing strategy. Where Will was rather judicious in his characterization of the much-maligned hipster, Freaker founder Zach Crain goes all-in with the aesthetic: his Kickstarter video features every trope from facial hair and thrift store rummaging to a faux-infomerical segment, a quasi-throwback hip-hop reference, emphasis on media (including the social kind), young people, wacky haircuts, etc. ad nauseam.

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