Gina Pell welcomes the Perennials: all-ages movement of relevancy

Tech entrepreneur Gina Pell is over labels. Especially marketing-driven ones that take on a life of their own.

“GenEx became shorthand for ‘slacker,’“ she points out. “Today, Millennial is code for someone who feels entitled. The Internet now is like a trip back to the Dark Ages: “‘She’s a woman!’ ‘He’s a Muslim!’ ‘They’re transgender and can’t use my bathroom!’ Everyone is being accused by their label.”

So last fall she unleashed a new free-form vision that’s generating global interest: “Perennial.”

“It’s a mind-set about being relevant, staying curious, reinvention, looking outside your own boundaries,” Pell explains. “And living life fully sans generational boundaries.”

Back in 1999, in the early days of the Internet, Pell, then 32, gained fame (and eventually fortune) as the au courant founder of Splendora.com.

“You could say I was raised and incubated by the Internet,” says Pell, now 49, as she dangles a well-toned limb over a club chair in the sunny living room of her Kentfield home.

Paradoxically, the cozy newsletter grew into a popular website by espousing lifestyle trends and luxury fashion-beauty labels. It was purchased in 2011 by shopping site Joyus.com; Pell remained involved as a chief creative officer of video curation for two years.

She began fomenting the Perennial mind-set in between launching her LOLy emoji app in 2014 and rejoining forces in 2015 with Splendora co-founder Amy Parker to create the What List, a newsletter and website.

Yet this former Cal English grad hemmed and hawed over how to best introduce the idea — until her husband, tech investor Dave Pell, who publishes his own email newsletter, NextDraft, encouraged his verbally prolific wife to just start typing.

“When I finally published ‘Meet the Perennials’ last October on Medium.com, I received about 1,000 comments,” she marvels. “Some misunderstood, asking, ‘Isn’t this just another watered-down label for everyone?’ One commenter even wrote, ‘Let’s just face it, you’re old.’

“My hope is to create a global village of like-minded, all-age people who embrace open-mindedness,” she continues, in her signature rapid-fire patter. “Is that really another label?”

Her piece also went wild on Twitter — particularly among people in their 20s and 30s who don’t appreciate the Millennial label — and overseas. Enthusiastic responses have poured in from Spain, Romania and Norway, where the nation’s major newspaper, Aftenposten Innsikt, republished her entire piece in Norwegian. And Pell and fellow Perennials were recently interviewed for MSNBC’s “Your Business,” scheduled to air Feb. 26.

Pell’s friend Margaret Johnson, the chief creative officer at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, borrowed Pell’s “Perennial” idea for a spot that her award-winning firm created for client Sonic Drive-In last fall.

“The minute Gina shared her concept over lunch last year,” she recalls, “I thought, ‘Wow, what a smart way of thinking!’”

The term has struck a chord, Johnson believes, because thanks in part to the power of social media, demographic tools are obsolete.

“With more than 1 billion people on Facebook, you instantly know what people truly care and think about. And none of that is age-based,” she continues. “Marketing and advertising have shifted from spending ad dollars on a single demo group to going after a cultural zeitgeist.”

In August, Pell, an advisory board member to BlogHer, attended its annual conference and met a botanist who adored Pell’s concept of connecting people to these herbaceous plants that bloom, die and renew themselves throughout a growing season.

Or, as in Pell’s case, sometimes perennials might skip a year, or two, and bloom again.

By 2013, the San Francisco native who grew up in Marin County and attended San Rafael High School, had returned to the suburbs. Joking that she’d retired, Pell was actually raising her two young children.

But during one of those sunny suburban days, she realized she’d slipped on a label she never intended to wear: a cliche Marin County Mommy in tennis whites sipping a post-game Chardonnay at 2 in the afternoon.

“At that moment,” she says, “I knew it was time to get back to work.”

Pell signed up with online learning platform Lynda and spent two hours every day exploring new skill courses, from creating Photoshop filters to understanding how to use DSLR. “The first course was time management,” she laughs. “I had to reactivate my brain.”

That included sharing her burgeoning evergreen concept with a range of eclectic friends, including author, artist and activist Dave Eggers, who, via email, wrote that the word “Perennial” is a refreshing way to think about people who continue to inspire us over long periods of time — like his “octogenarian” friend Gary Burden, the album-cover artist who continues to create.

“Gina’s take is that ‘Perennials’ have a certain civic engagement that energizes other people, and the reinvention aspect is interesting,” Eggers continues. “This tends to keep people relevant and tough to pinhole — people like Carrie Mae Weems, Yo-Yo Ma or Alice Waters.”

“Pinholing” is exactly opposite of the WhatList. Today, as content chief, Pell creates from a different place: There is no target demographic. The weekly email is filled with topics meaningful to the lives of Pell and Parker, along with products they believe in.

“We’re doing this organically, yet organized,” Pell says. “In our first year we’re profitable and reach about 80,000 readers. Email is still the killer app.”

Looking down at her flat slip-on mules that she wears while writing in her home office, she laughs.

“At Splendora, it was all about lifestyle. What’s fascinating now is, among Millennial women I know, they’re more in touch with social justice, health, spirituality and the environment,” she notes. “Their lifestyles are much healthier than when I was their age!

“My days as a ‘Sex and the City” career girl drinking Cosmos were fun. But 4-inch Louboutins don’t work anymore for my knees.”

Catherine Bigelow is The San Francisco Chronicle’s society correspondent. Email: missbigelow@sfgate.com Instagram: @missbigelow

Bay Area Perennials

Meet a few locals whose lives and careers embody the Perennial concept.

Susan Griffin-Black, 61: As co-founder of EO Products in Marin, she grew her essential organic oil soaps into a $28 million personal-care line — the first such U.S. company to be non-GMO certified.

Wendy MacNaughton, 41: Artist and graphic journalistMacNaughton’s illustrations appear in publications from the New York Times to the Rumpus. She recently co-launched Women Who Draw (http://www.womenwhodraw.com), a “transclusive” database showcasing under-represented female artists of all orientations.

Bryant Terry, 41: Author and self-described “Afro-Vegan chef” Terry serves as chef-in-residence at Museum of the African Diaspora. He is a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award winner and works to educate schoolchildren on healthy food choices and social justice agriculture.

Jessica Therkelsen, 32: Human rights lawyer and director of the pro-bono justice program at OneJustice in S.F. Therkelsen is a wife, mother and activist who recently spoke at the Oakland Woman’s March and organized 400 volunteers to represent immigrants detained at SFO by the president’s recent travel ban.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 97: Poet, painter, publisher and founder of City Lights booksellers, Ferlinghetti is evergreen since publishing Allen Ginsberg’s Beat-era bible, “Howl.” At work on a novel, his City Lights windows feature taped posters encouraging citizens to resist bullies, open their hearts and ... books.

— C.B.