Click To Order

News Archive January 2011

Click To Enlarge Inside The Mind Behind Kondoms, Kaskets And KISS Slurpees
From: TheStar.com
Posted: January 23, 2011

My sister has requested that I ask Gene Simmons if he could do something about his hair.

I do not want to ask Gene Simmons about his hair - all-black and hard-looking and seemingly friable - nor its possible reconstruction or remedies.

Nor do I care to ask about the rocker's lasciviously long tongue and its presumed calisthenic capabilities.

Discomfiting sexual conquests and the exploration of possible inflationary claims? Are we going to go there? Please, no.

Nevertheless, here we are, twinned and travelling through the vastness of the 16,500-square-foot Benedict Canyon home where the KISS bassist resides with erstwhile Playboy Playmate Shannon Tweed, their two adult children, Nick and Sophie, and their two dogs, Snippy and Lucky, all of them stars in the Simmons publicity orbit, except for Lucky, a camera-shy Dalmatian.

Question: Why are the corners of the enormous Oriental carpets covered with small, white rugs? "So the dogs can pee," says the rock star. "Those are their spots."

Ah.

In a matter of weeks the film crews will descend here for season seven of the rock-star-at-home reality show that - here's a tip - should never be referred to as Family Jewels.

"You mean Gene Simmons Family Jewels?" Gene Simmons corrects. Never missing a moment to market his name brand, Simmons, as unlikely as it sounds, is still marching 37 years later into the minds of young people via Halloween KISS makeup and through the aging hearts of diehard fans who recall the bare-chested, studded-codpiece days when Simmons would breathe fire into the stadium air.

Question: "Does it seem incongruous that one day you're on stage in your Demon persona and the next you're in a red onesie crawling into bed with Shannon doing a scene for Family Jewels?"

"Nope," Simmons replies, possibly irritated that I have failed, again, to acknowledge the full name of the eponymous A&E hit show. Despite the warnings and protestations of others, Simmons forged ahead with the television series because, simply, "in life you get to make your own rules." The result? "The brand is bigger than ever."

This is a fact. "KISS is the most successful merch band ever," says Jordan Jacobs, an entertainment lawyer who manages the Canadian band Down with Webster, which Simmons attempted to sign, and serves as legal counsel for the Toronto-based group The Envy, which Simmons did sign and is now meticulously moulding to his precise marketing specifications. "I wanted them to stop writing things like, 'I miss you. I can't live without you,'" says Simmons, who calls The Envy a "cutesy" band. "I wanted them to write a song called Fingers Crossed." Simmons says he then created and trademarked The Envy's crossed fingers logo, which is meant to be adopted by young adoring fans in the manner of the Demon's own infamous horns hand gesture (pinkie and index finger up; second and third digits down).

There's plenty of evidence of KISS's merch sovereignty in the locked lair within Simmons' home, a wall-to-wall Smithsonian of possibly 3,000 items of KISS stuff, from KISS M&Ms to KISS silicone "bandz" bracelets (very popular with young girls) to KISS credit cards. Along the back wall observe the KISS Kasket, resting peacefully, awaiting. In a display case you will note the "tongue-lubricated" KISS Kondoms.

The contrast of those last two items is a spoon-fed opening for a shop-worn one-liner. "We'll get you coming and we'll get you going," says Simmons on cue, motioning to have that bon mot - condoms to caskets - written down.

"I've read it too many times," I respond, declining.

"Of course, and I'll keep saying it."

This gets to the heart of the matter.

According to the relentless pitch, the KISS bassist is marketing gold, both at home in Beverly Hills and on the road, including Toronto where on Tuesday he will address Advertising Week in a presentation sponsored by the Star. Simmons says his base rate for such talks is $100,000, plus first-class airfare, plus hotel. If he takes the kids and "Miss Shannon Tweed" along as part of the presentation team, the fee rises sharply.

Last week, Mr. Midas did Moncton.

Winnipeg is slated for April.

Vancouver, en famille, is scheduled for July.

In between there are KISS concerts booked and another KISS record in the offing, to be produced by bandmate Paul Stanley, who has been partnered with Simmons since their pre-KISS days in Wicked Lester. The band is on the verge of a Hello Kitty "lifestyle" alliance, says Simmons. From bedsheets to clothing. And - wait. The phone's ringing. CAA is on the line, the Hollywood talent agency wanting to pitch Simmons on yet another self-branded TV show.

"What didn't exist were notions of bands becoming brands," says Simmons, focusing his attention on the early days, rejecting the frail argument that the Seventies-era Monkees lunch pail is proof to the contrary. "The bands didn't take an interest in it. They just didn't."

Twenty-eight years ago Simmons sliced two clear lines through the first "S" in his surname, transforming it into a dollar sign. "Then we brought out jewelry of our signatures, so our names became trademarked," he says. The debut KISS tchotchke was a necklace to be worn, presumably, by young lovelies.

All these years later and the licensing of KISS memorabilia appears unstoppable - the Demon Slurpee cup sold 13 million units, he says. Total sales? More than $500 million. And what about the margins on the merch? Fifteen per cent on the little stuff, he says. But he says he nets $4,700 on those signed-by-Simmons Axe guitars. Even with Simmons at 61, and no longer baring his chest in his on-stage outfits but rather trying to lose weight and pointing with amusement to one of those food-catching landing sites on the protuberance of his shirt, the band brand reigns.

But auditing the Simmons success beyond the KISS moniker proves far trickier.

Simmons is partnered in Simmons Abramson Marketing with Rich Abramson, the L.A.-based marketer who produced Pee-Wee Herman's Big Adventure and financed other Pee-Wee fare. In an interview with George Stroumboulopoulos on the CBC's The Hour two years ago, Simmons described the marketing company as "fast becoming the most famous one on planet Earth."

How do you measure that?

Abstractly, accomplishing this appears to involve creating "heat," which in turn involves fuelling the marketplace and spurring momentum.

Simmons chooses a shark metaphor.

"The world and pop culture in general is like sharks that circle around a small, itty-bitty piece of meat," he explains from behind an expansive desk piled with such Simmons entrepreneurial endeavours as Tongue magazine, which lasted for five issues. "Sharks are well fed. Nothing feeds on them. They can eat anything they want. And yet they will circle around one piece of meat. By they way, they're full. And they're not really interested in that piece of meat. What they're interested in is what the other sharks are interested in. It's like women."

He pauses.

"You didn't even look up," he says.

"No."

"So they circle around this piece of meat. As soon as the shark takes a first bite out of that piece of meat ... all the other sharks will risk their lives to try to kill that shark to get that piece of meat ... It's the sharks themselves that create the value of that meat."

This doesn't always work, of course.

How many big ideas are executed? "Two out of 10 happen," he says. "It's like playing baseball. You swing the bat ...You don't always hit a home run but you make a living."

So let's ask. Where has Gene Simmons experienced failure?

"NGTV."

"What was that? No Good TV?" I ask, jokingly.

"Yes."

"That's what it was called?"

"Yeah. I created the brand. It was massive. We raised $30 million right away."

NGTV, formerly NetGroupie, was an online-only station for spicy movie star interviews and uncensored boob shots. Branding mandate: "Putting the F-U back into fun" for the 18-34 set.

Simmons was chairman of the board. Abramson was briefly co-chief executive officer and later director.

NGTV may ring some bells for certain Torontonians.

"There was a Canadian component," says Andy De Francesco, who, in 2004, was a managing partner at Standard Securities Corp., which brokered at least one round of financing for NGTV, a sum that in De Francesco's recollection rose above $10 million. "We handled the Canadian component institutionally and through some high net worth people and Gene came and did the pitch himself with his team."

Simmons was presented not only as the marquee chairman but the conduit to the high-wattage celebrities the show needed to feature as guests. De Francesco's group visited Simmons in L.A. "You go to his office and there's everything from lunch boxes to blankets to you name it. The list goes on and on. There's no question the man knows how to sell the band and knows how to sell the brand." Simmons has frequently said his aim is simple: "To be Disney without the overhead."

Today NGTV is making its collapsed way through the California bankruptcy courts. The list of unsecured Canadian creditors include Frank Mersch's Front Street Investment Management, which acquired a modest $150,000 worth of NGTV debentures in 2005 (the investment was disposed of two years ago, says Front Street president Gary Selke); and Can Gap Capital Corp. for $444,700 ("Well, there's a lot more," says Can Gap's Emlyn David, who will not specify the full amount of his exposure). Simmons' own claim is $1.9 million.

"I have to be careful what I say," Simmons says of the venture. "When you let the creative element control the budget, you're doomed to failure. And we simply could not control the creative people. It's unfortunate."

It was the partnership of Simmons and Abramson that got behind the launch of Frank's Energy Drink, the "Keeps you yodeling all night long" beverage that emerged from the eclectic ideas stable of auto parts entrepreneur Frank Stronach. This, Simmons wants to make clear, was not a failure in his eyes. "Frank's energy drink didn't go forward not because it wasn't successfully marketed. . . but because Frank decided to get out of the energy drink business. It could have been a monster."

Then there was find.com, an Internet search site that went nowhere. "I was going to create a scavenger hunt," Simmons says of the aborted marketing relationship between find.com and Simmons Abramson. "They still owe us millions of dollars."

As Simmons says, even Warren Buffett suffers losses. "Everybody wants the 10 simple steps of success. They don't see that there are a thousand steps of failure along with that."

So let's talk success. Where are the winners in the Simmons Abramson Marketing stable? Here Simmons offers one name, Cool Springs Life Equity Strategy. Launched last spring, Cool Springs is marketing what Simmons describes as ultra low rate insurance policy financing to under-insured, ultra high net worth individuals. That's right. The blood-spitting bassist is pitching life insurance, in this instance predicated on a model wherein the interest rate spread covers the financing of the premiums.

"It's a behemoth," he says of Cool Springs, though the company has yet to close with any clients. The company says it has "secured" more than $7 billion in funding, though it won't name any of the partner institutions, and that the first policies will be finalized in a matter of days. Simmons and Abramson are co-founders, along with three insurance industry executives. When they all lined up for a Wall Street Journal photograph along with their in-house legal counsel last April, only Simmons' name made it into the photo caption.

Cool Springs, he predicts of the thus-far-unproved venture, will be even bigger than the KISS brand. "At the snap of a finger Cool Springs can leave that behind in a popcorn fart," he says.

"A popcorn fart?"

"A New York minute."

This has been a long conversation. Son Nick ambles in, speaking briefly about the band he's forming. Mantis is the name. Cream is one of the influences.

Nick is 6-foot-7. Miss Shannon Tweed annually marked the heights of her kids in pencil on the door jamb in the kitchen, just like any other mother. "The world is theirs," Simmons says of his children. "And it's only going to be about choices and hard work."

Simmons' own key influence was his mother, Flora, who remains spry at 85. His father walked out on them when Simmons was 7, a story he has told many times. Feri Witz was, in Simmons' description, a carpenter, an idealist and a business failure. In later years Chaim Witz, a.k.a. Gene Simmons, would buy him a home. Pay his bills. But he never saw his father again.

Why not seek him out?

"I thought he made the choice," Simmons says. "It's an interesting article. You're going from business to shrink, but that's okay."

In one corner of the locked lair is a pile of the small datebooks that Simmons lives his life by. They go back 30 years. He pulls the latest out of his cowboy boot, which is where he keeps the current version. In meticulous capital letters is a note of every appointment, from hair colouring (Shannon Tweed colours his hair) to meetings with Hollywood bigwigs. I flip through 1997.

"What if I found some really interesting secret in here?"

"I don't care."

"You don't care?"

"Nah. What secret could you find? I've been very clear about 5,000 women or so. What else is there? Oh, I forgot. Farm animals."

"Yeah."

And why keep them?

"Well, eventually I'm going to sell myself of course."

Gene Simmons speaks Tuesday at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts as part of Advertising Week. For more information: www.advertisingweek.ca