Hasta La Creative!

Clorox Co. may not be the biggest packaged-goods player, but with $5.8 billion in annual sales, it could easily scrape up a five-figure cash investment anytime it wants. So why did its Soy Vay brand turn to Kickstarter recently to help fund a new venture with startup Three Jerks Jerky?

“It really starts with the strategy of our Emerging Brands Group,” said Adam Simons, who heads the unit at Clorox, including Soy Vay. “One of the pillars of the strategy was trying to align our emerging brand with others in the marketplace. There’s so much going on in food and beverage today, but all the interesting stuff is happening at the under-$25 million companies all the trends, all the interesting flavors, all the interesting business models.”

Mr. Simons and his cross-functional group wanted to partner with a jerky brand on a Teriyaki flavor. Three Jerks, an emerging brand based not far away in Southern California, “was the only company at the top of our list that made sense,” Mr. Simons said. “The Kickstarter thing just kind of naturally evolved, where we said it made sense as an awareness driver, as a way to build one-to-one connections with consumers in a way that’s very important to us and, frankly, as a way to cut against the grain of typical product launches in CPG.”

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