Monday, August 01, 2011
Gap Marketing Going Digital
The Gap brand has not seen the best times over the past few years, as they try to revitalize an aging image. Of special note, they introduced and immediately retracted a new logo last year that caused widespread public outrage. For Gap's next global campaign, they have announced a slightly more non-traditional route, focusing a far bigger percentage of their ad dollars on digital and social components. They have created more than 30 videos, which they plan to stream on sites like Hulu, Daily Candy, Refinery 29 and ShopStyle. The content will focus on interviews with merchants and designers, as well as instructional videos regarding how products come to be. The videos will also be incorporated into animated display ads and print ads in magazines like Vogue, Lucky, Men's Health, Nylon, and ESPN The Magazine. Whether this new effort will result in better brand equity and stronger younger appeal for Gap, or whether it is too late, remains to be seen.
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2 comments:
Interesting article. It looks like most of the consumable producers will focus more on social marketing this year and beyond. However through my recent experience working in a luxury brand, I found company is spending more on branding awareness verses increasing sales.
I find your post and the news about Gap's new marketing campaign to be very interesting, especially since one of the equities I had to research at my previous job was GAP.
I remember when the GAP executives were on the NYC Stock Exchange floor, celebrating GAP's 50th anniversary(i believe), standing among the pin-striped traders in their khakis. It was clear in trade articles and press releases that GAP was making a strategic decision to maintain close loyalty to their original simplicity of design in their khakis and white polos that a lot of people still sought for at GAP.
GAP's decision to not diversify their clothing designs and instead to increase the number of "eyeballs" that see their advertisements, lends to their new horizontally integrated marketing campaign described in your post.
GAP seems like they are marketing their same staple products to a diverse smattering of segments of consumers, and the different digital and print advertising platforms you listed in your post are evidence of this effort.
GAP advertised in Vogue and ESPN? Their strategy is to keep the design super controlled to their original kernel of simplicity, and try to attract fans from these other fashion and lifestyle segments to their consumer base.
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