I think timing is a huge factor here. December is not ideal for a cooler, but Summer is. He also did a great job building momentum and getting people early in the campaign.

We find that most campaigns that eventually hit their goal raise about 30% of their funds from their own networks. They should raise this in the first 48 hours. Once you have this 30% of funds locked in, it will be easier to raise additional funds. When strangers see that others trust you with their money, it gives them the confidence to contribute. This seed funding also gives your campaign momentum that can be leveraged for marketing and press.

A few things jump out at me:

* The newer one just looks better - it's got a bit of retro car feel as compared to the first one that kind of looks tacky.

* The pictures of the items/rewards at various levels are better on the new one

* The new one is coming out in summer, when people think about using coolers - they may see this, then go out somewhere and think "hey, that would be nice to have" then go back it. That isn't happening in December, he's not catering to the ice fishing crowd.

* (edit to add) And he put in a $20 cheaper Early Bird level (twice!) that probably helped a lot with building momentum.

Great points!

Here's another interesting point I read in an article. He says the leveraged the backers from the first campaign to get early support for the second one. This makes a lot of sense. He raised $100K from 250 people in a month. If he could then get all of these people to sign up on the first few days of the new project, that can give the impression that this is a really hot project.

That, combined with the points you mentioned about the price (for the previous backers!), and the timing probably did it.

Remember that the campaign page itself is only half of the story. Kickstarter projects depend a great deal on publicity, word-of-mouth, media mentions, and virality. And these things tend to have a snowball effect, so it can be feast-or-famine.

Often a creator is scrambling to get the campaign page finished up to the last minute, and doesn't have time to even think much about publicity or marketing. But your media campaign is just as important as your product details.