High Fliers

Ditto if Rich Santulli, the founder and CEO of NetJets and one of Buffett's closest confidants, hadn't allowed Marquis to piggyback. It was a stretch. Santulli's first brief meeting with Marquis's brash young cofounders--one a former rapper, the other a former T-shirt entrepreneur--didn't bode well. Santulli said he wasn't interested. Little did he know that Itzler and his pal Kenny Dichter were just getting started.

They teamed up when Itzler began rapping promos for the NBA playoffs on TV, which eventually led to songs for various teams ("I'm a Mavs Fan") and various professional-sports leagues and colleges. Itzler crafted the rhymes, Dichter the business opportunities. Their company, Alphabet City, produced about 60 CDs. It was their first foray into piggybacking. "We were layering our business on the team's brands, learning how to take care of those brands and extend them," says Dichter. "We were under the radar, but we felt like DreamWorks."

They were on concert mogul Bob Sillerman's radar. Sillerman, the head of the sports promotion and talent agency SFX, acquired Alphabet City and encouraged Dichter and Itzler to think beyond sports music. They began creating events that offered wealthy individuals access to SFX's talent--at a price. A flag football game with Michael Vick at quarterback. A basketball clinic with Dominique Wilkins. A chance to sing backup (on a dead mike) for Christina Aguilera in concert. They arranged that gig for the daughter of Jim Jacobs, whom they later learned was vice chairman of NetJets. It proved to be a serendipitous connection.

At SFX, Dichter and Itzler would accompany agents, athletes, and entertainers on charter flights. During one such trip, Dichter told Itzler, "We should be in this business." He meant private aviation. As an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, Dichter had developed a prepaid card for sports tickets that boosted sales and attendance. He thought fans of private air travel would jump at a similar card. NetJets, with half the market, was the ideal partner.

After that first meeting with Santulli, Jacobs arranged a follow-up. Hoping to demonstrate their access to the younger jet set in sports and entertainment, Dichter and Itzler brought along some friends: the members of Run-DMC and former New York Giants star Carl Banks. Santulli, 61, listened, then sent them on their way. "J.J. [Jim Jacobs] said, 'Now we're getting somewhere,' " recalls Itzler. "I said, 'But twice he threw us out of his office in eight minutes!' He said, 'No one gets eight minutes.' "

The two were aggressive, Santulli noticed, in a good way. "They reminded me of how I wouldn't take no for an answer when I was starting out," he says. His reluctance had nothing to do with their aviation inexperience. They were salesmen. They could learn. No, the agonizing part of the decision was putting a brand he'd spent years building in someone else's hands. "I felt that if someone was going to screw up the brand, it would be me," he says.

In the fifth meeting, however, he agreed. He thought the jet-card idea was a smart way of recruiting customers NetJets might otherwise miss. NetJets could have developed a jet card on its own, but Santulli, the math genius who created the algorithms that created the industry in the first place, didn't want to divert his team from its core business. Selling jet cards was a different transaction aimed at a different audience. So he cleared Marquis for takeoff.

The "exclusive alliance" between Marquis and NetJets is an interesting twist on cobranding. Usually, both parties are established, so that each benefits from the other's strength, says Sridhar Balasubramanian, an associate professor of marketing at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Think toys from Pixar's Finding Nemo in McDonald's Happy Meals.) This, however, is a marriage of unequals. "The greater risk lies on the part of NetJets because of potential damage to the brand," he says. "But just because it's risky doesn't mean it's a bad idea."