Post By East Coast Editor Courtney Iseman

Airess & Church is a  new line of jeans making waves with its innovative marketing campaign. A denim line that actually engages the consumer, A & C markets with Twitter and sells online only – a true brand of the people. I had the pleasure of speaking with A & C’s Brand Manager, Courtney Wilson.

How did Airess & Church get its start? How did the Airess & Church jean come to be what it is today?

CW: We ran a design competition in 2006 call the “Perfect Pair”. In this competition we scoured the globe looking for a designer who could create the perfect pair of jeans. Out of 4,000 contestants and months of reviewing entries there was a tie between Italian designer Airess Genero and South African designer Namisi Church.

Our office was literally split in half, and for weeks neither would concede. After intense deliberation and over contemplation we decided to call it a draw. Thus, Airess & Church was born.

The line is kicking off with the Native Soil Collection. What are your inspirations for this collection?

“Native Soil” speaks directly to the “feel” of the denim in the line. With so many denim brands just “throwing” jeans to the public, we wanted to take the time to create a significant statement with our product. The denim associated with each style is reminiscent of a specific part of the United States. For example, the indigo-saturated “Lenox Square” edition is named because of its long, dark look and smooth feel. [Lenox Square is a posh shopping area in the upscale Buckhead district of Georgia, well known for being one of the wealthiest communities in the US].

We wanted to launch with something our customers could relate to. There’s nothing more familiar than your own backyard, and it is our hope that not only are people happy with their jeans but also with the communal statement made by the garment.

You’ve launched the line through Twitter, where you exclusively sell online. What are your inspirations for how you chose to market and sell the collection – was there another line doing something innovative with social marketing that you wanted to take to the next level?

The best marketing any company can get is “word of mouth”, and social media in so many ways is exactly that. We thought, “Why pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to stand in line behind every other brand in the world when we can spread our message just as easily on Twitter?” So far, so good.

We’ve never heard of another brand releasing their product directly through a sole social media outlet, so I think it’s safe to say we are the first.

What message do you want to send by only selling online and through Twitter? Why is ”Never in Stores, Always in Style” so important?

We just want our customers to know that we’re tangible. Although we sell high end denim, we’re not stuck in some far-off high rise, in shirts, suits and expensive heels. Airess & Church welcomes tweets and DMs about our products 24/7. Our single, solitary goal is to ensure that our customers from Argentina to Arkansas are very satisfied all the time, not just during “banking hours”.

If we could touch each and every customer we would. Airess & Church will not work behind a middle man like Bloomingdales, Nordstrom’s or Parisian. Our jeans come from us to you without transfer, inflated costs or defect.

Do you think this tactic has been successful based on the goals you set out with?

Twitter provides our company with a constant contact to our consumer base. No other medium offers a business a real time link to their consumers. We’ve been able to test items, share thoughts and ideas with customers 24 hours a day, from St. Louis to Singapore, and this interaction has been invaluable to our development. We love it.

As far as strategy, it was a little of both.  When first suggested I think we all were eager to try it – but nervous about the results. Now we all fight for “Twitter time”! Everyone from our Creative Director to our interns will drop a tweet every now and then. We’re having a ball with it.

Visibly we grow every day. Besides the 5,000 unique visitors that we receive monthly to www.airessandchurch.com, we have 3,100 Twitter followers after just 10 months on Twitter, and have been growing steadily.

How has this campaign lead to further publicity? Has it lead to traditional placement – and have you found that placement to be happening internationally, as well?

The great thing about Twitter is that our followers are not only denim fans: they come from a wide variety of races, careers and socio-economic backgrounds. We have been invited to share our brand in magazines, blogs, commercials and in several traditional media outlets – all generated from our Twitter fan base! This fact alone, gives us confidence that Twitter will help provide our brand with the “legs” it needs to compete in the marketplace.

How do you combine social media marketing with traditional PR?

Because a lot of the attraction to Airess & Church has to do with our Twitter connection, the line between traditional PR and social media is becoming very blurry. We have standard PR – but more often than not, most of the interaction we’ve experienced, whether it be from person to person, or business to business, has at some point crossed into the social media platform.

Any big changes or new endeavors coming up in the social media marketing plan?

We have gotten everything we expected and more from our initial plan, and frankly are truly shocked that everything has gone to plan so far.

We have something very special coming up for the Twitter community so please stay tuned!

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