That is to some extent what happened to GAP. We got spooked with some of the swings and ultimately became very safe and therefore not very interesting. And so to get people interested, you have to be interesting. Our cat's eye campaign. I mean, we were trending number one on Tik Tok within 24 hours. I mean, if we had said 3 years ago, do you think Gap Brand is going to be trending on Tik Tok, let alone trending as number one on search? No one would ever believe that. If we're not swinging, we're never going to hit.
That's Richard Dixon, CEO of GAP, Inc., the business housing, Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy, and Athleta. I sat down with Richard at the Can Lions Advertising Festival in France to understand how he's applying a playbook he used at Mattel to the challenges at Gap. The secret he says is leaning into pop culture. Richard talks about why Sydney Sweeny's viral jeans ad was surprisingly good for the industry even though it didn't come from the Gap and why he tracks brand love metrics on a dashboard every day. Plus, timely lessons around the relationship between profit and social purpose, the need to keep taking risks after failure, and more. So, let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response. I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Richard Dixon, the CEO of Gap. Richard, thanks uh thanks for being here.
Thank you, Bob. It's good to be here.
You uh before Gap, you were at Mattel uh when Barbie was a little tarnished and then brought her into into her glory. Yes. You went to Gap also a little bit on a little bit of a lull. Like do you do you like the turnaround of taking an iconic brand to someplace else? That
seems I like that pain. I like that pain. Yeah, I actually um it is true. I love uh iconic brands that had a breakthrough and then ultimately through their lifpan had peaks and pits. I think Barbie is a great example of that. There are others and certainly the gap story is one of them as well.
Like do you think about it as renovation? Do you think about it as sort of restarting, refounding? I I think about it as revitalization. Um and to the extent that you know you have to study a brand's uh history ultimately what made it great to begin with? Why was it interesting? Why were people interested to find that core again?
Yeah. To to find the essence the the sort of what was the breakthrough that inspired such success. M and then along the way with brands certainly that I've been a part of they're generational and so they go they go through trials and tribulations and a lot of let's say outside influences that change the brand but ultimately at some point those brands either lose their way or reinvent themselves to be relevant and in the case of what I have found interesting it's getting involved in brands that arguably have lost their way and need to find that revitalized narrative to be relevant again and I For me, you know, my experience in doing that has a methodology. Uh, but it's really about the execution of that methodology that makes the success or doesn't.
Well, so far the success has been strong. You've had nine quarters of positive sales, right? Market values up to 8.5 billion dollars. Um and and the driver that you've pointed to connecting all this is pop culture which is for a lot of business people seems kind of soft.
Yeah. I think you know pop culture it's is sounds simple does hard. Uhhuh. Mo moving at the speed of culture staying relevant uh particularly for brands that have history is is difficult. Uh and in the context of brands that have history, you know, these brands started when it was TV and print and outdoor. Being where your consumer is today means being everywhere. That's very difficult to do. And ultimately to stay relevant is a sport. And that when you get it right, relevance can drive revenue. And so when you only concentrate on numbers and deliverables, a brand could lose its way because ultimately you start to make decisions that are financially based, not necessarily narrative or brand based. And that's when you start to potentially fragment the dialogue with consumers because you're driving a commercial proposition, but not necessarily one that really drives that consumer authenticity. That keeps that emotion. I mean, brands are relationships.
Yeah. uh purely and it doesn't matter what category they're in. You have a relationship with a brand and when that brand fragments that in any way you lose trust and trust is the foundation of any brand relationship and once that's fractured it takes a long time to regain it and at some point we lost the storytelling and became more about the stuff. the conversation often around retail and fashion apparel brands is that it is about fashion, it's about style and you sort of have to stay up with the pace of the style like that the the clothing itself is what drives it. Obviously, you wouldn't say the clothing doesn't matter, but like how do those things go together?
There's no first because really it's an orchestra, you know? It's everything from the product to the marketing to the staff to the stores, right? Everything, the sounds, everything, the shipping, the logistics. when you have thousands of stores, it's really a complex um conversation internally to get right. And so we laid out a very set agenda with strategic priorities that focused the company, by the way, 80,000 people around the company around our strategic objectives. And the first one was fundamentally we have to just run a better business. We need financial and operational rigor. We need to understand you know how much we've got and to be more effective and efficient about it and then run as a retailer a smart open to buy smart bets chasing some things managing the business in a way that really kind of is agile but disciplined and then it is about the cultural relevance telling the story about the product about the brand connects people to that story and storytellers need to be you know great great brand narrators I mean that That is what when you find a good brand, it's a good story. And granted, the the deliverable is actually the product because you could drive traffic, you could drive interest, and if you get there, it doesn't fit, it's too expensive, I don't like it. You you you don't have the conversion. The magic happens when you have great product and great storytelling and great execution. And not everything is going to go right all the time, but once you start that practice, you can create that flywheel. And that's ultimately what we're trying to do.
you you sort of knew that maybe the the product wasn't going to be your personal sweet spot that you would bring people in. I'm not a clothing designer.
No, but I but I think probably what I uh realized early on, particularly with scaled businesses, it's a team sport. There there's sure there's vision and there's there's leaders that have the conviction to move things along, but you can't do it alone, you know, and so you need to bring in and surround yourself with the best talent that are better than you at exactly what you know you need them to do. And so I think of myself more as a conductor bringing in the musicians and creating an orchestra that plays together. You know, at the beginning of an orchestra you have, you know, when the symphony is tuning up, right? and and there's no harmony, but then the conductor starts and everybody starts to play together and it's a magical moment. I would say as a metaphor when I got to Gap Inc. there was a lot of tuning up really good musicians not necessarily playing together and so orchestrating that bringing in right musicians to play with each other and bringing it into a more harmonious state I think is the role that I play as the leader.
Well, and and you have a a feel for pop culture, too, I think. And and [clears throat] that that emphasis, which is not something that at least gap just before was leaning into, right?
Sure. Look, I think there's a taste level, you know? I mean, we're in a business that nobody needs us. We have to create want. You you create demand. And to some extent, it is a taste level business. Um, fashion is entertainment. It's storytelling. It's it's feel. It's fabric. It's fit. what we do builds confidence. You look in the mirror, you feel good, you're out in the world. If we can do that for you, for our customers, that's essentially the the sort of secret sauce that's not such a secret. So, I would argue that I have, you know, certainly a taste level that can be appreciated. Um, but also I I would think of myself probably more as an architect of branding. You know, there there's edits that need to be made. You know, you used to walk into one of our stores and arguably there are some stores you still walk into in our portfolio where, you know, the message is not coming across as clear and we edited a lot of stuff out of our assortment and all of a sudden you start to see the storytelling. What do the merchants really believe in? What do we want our consumers to really believe in that we want them to share in that experience? A denim shop, a khaki shop, a fleece shop. These are things that speak to consumers without somebody necessarily taking them through it. And I think that is to some extent the road that we're on right now.
