Leveraging Personal Swag for the Right Brand Message

Izzy Lugo is COO at Urban Misfit Ventures, an 8-month-old, start-up holding company that Izzy confesses "pivots a lot."

One agency subsidiary, IEEG, specializes in storytelling and influencer marketing – often by creating a video to tell a brand's story. The influencer marketing portion of their work is based on stories told by influencers, but the influencers are Urban Misfit Venture's employees, each of whom has a massive individual following. Because the employees are the influencers, they can consult with clients and carefully craft the messages that need to be presented. No paying an influencer and trusting that individual to say "the right thing." IEEG knows what message it wants to send . . . and knows it is going to get it.

Urban Misfit Ventures' clients include Milwaukee's professional sports teams and national and international clothing and design brands, who are amazed that the agency and the influencers are one and the same.

The second Urban Misfit Ventures' subsidiary, MKE Misfits, is an events company that tells the client's brand story, is very involved in that story, and then provides "quirky" experiential promotions to differentiate itself and its client companies. The company has a major reputation in the Milwaukee area. Urban Misfit Ventures is planning to introduce a number of other specialty subsidiaries I 2019.

How did it all start? After a period of separate careers, Quentin, Izzy's college roommate, had met with two of the company's other founders, and then approached Izzy to pitch the idea of Urban Misfit Ventures. After an hour conversation, Izzy was on board, and two weeks later, he quit his job at the bike share. In eight months, the team has grown to 10 employees, including interns. When they started, they traded services for their space at a co-working space, truly starting from scratch.

Izzy can be reached on his company's website at: urbanmisfitventures.com, as can anything related to IEEG or MKE Misfits. His company is also on LinkedIn and Instagram. Izzy, Israel Lugo III uses @IzzyLugo for all his handles..