Brand Aggrandizing Marketing: It's Back.
(originally published in On Brand, Sep 03, 2024)
I invite you to take a quick pass through these ads from two of the biggest names in consumer goods and marketing for at least the past quarter century, Gap and Gatorade.
Gap: 1998 “Khaki Swing” commercial
Gap: Current 2024 “Get Loose” commercial
Gatorade: 2003 “23 vs. 39” commercial
Gatorade: Current 2024 “It Hasn’t Changed” commercial
For those of us born before the early 90s, watching the original 1998 Gap Khaki Swing commercial and Gatorade 23 vs. 39 commercial is simply fun— a mental transport to our younger selves when those commercials first aired (might I remind you, on TV only).
For those of more recent generations, it might surprise you to learn that one of these old-school ads actually has its own IMDb page. That’s how “entertainment quality” and culturally resonant it once was. Crazy, right?
All reminiscing aside, what I find interesting is that both of these mega brands are running back decades-old storylines and messaging devices now, at the same time, after both veering off in multiple directions for the past 15-20 years. Gap is returning to its highly produced “dance ads” that ooze joy and do more to sell the brand as a whole vs. any particular style (even though khakis are the feature in 1998 and baggy pants get closing credit in 2024). And, Gatorade is bringing back its “IT” message, complete with Gatorade-colored sweat, star power, and— of course— Jordan.
Why? Are these brands just coincidentally throwing it back to yesteryear because that’s what old brands do? Or are they throwing down too in a way that could send a 90s revival through all of marketing?
Many long-standing brands do the throwback thing because— let’s face it— nostalgia sells. General Mills made “retro recipes” of Trix, Cocoa Puffs, Golden Grahams, and Cookie Crisp permanent during the pandemic, citing “nostalgia” as the driving force.(1) Every decade or so, the original “Chucks” get a dust-off. And, Gap itself does frequent re-releases of its original arched logo hoodie— so they’re no stranger to playing the nostalgia card.
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Nostalgia is usually an innocent game of push and pull. Brands with history push it out there (as General Mills did with their “retro recipes”) and hope that it pulls on the heartstrings of past consumers. If they’re lucky a broader consumer base catches on and then the historic brand benefits from vibes old and new. So is this what we think Gap and Gatorade are up to with their revival campaigns? Sure… in part.
Both brands had immensely loyal followings throughout the 90s and close association with cultural icons— Madonna, SJP, Missy Elliot, and Michael Jordan (to name just a few). In fact, at the time, Gap and Gatorade were cultural icons themselves. Throughout the 90s, an empty Gatorade bottle was like a Stanley, endlessly refilled and conspicuously toted. And, I can still vividly remember caring for my blue Gap drawstring shopping bags like they were a collection of Birkins. Today, I still hold these brands in extremely high regard— but mostly for how I remember them. To my kids, Gap and Gatorade are nothing special. Their thoughts on the brands: “Good.” “Fine.” “Meh.”
To the average brand, being “good” (i.e. in the consideration set) is pretty ok. But for once idolized brands like Gap and Gatorade, it’s anything but. Both may have found ways to survive over the past couple of decades, but I suspect their egos are badly bruised. When this happens, what do you do? Well, you pull a Jon Stewart and do your best to appeal to the people who once loved you most— feed them memories of the way things were with a modern twist— and hope that they and more recent generations herald you the GOAT again. It’s the classic nostalgia play.
But let’s be real, nostalgia isn’t the only card Gap and Gatorade are playing with their most recent campaigns. They’re also shelling out some pretty major cash for creative talent, studio productions, and big-time celebrities— something their smaller competitors can’t afford to do. Not only that, they’re flexing their brand equity muscles in a pretty aggressive way too. Calling on the rest of us to be in awe of the fact that they can still attract many of the biggest names in music, dance, and sports— something that’s a literal pipedream for most newer, social media-born brands.
I’m not on the inside of either Gap or Gatorade, but I suspect they’ve been watching two brands in particular in recent years: Shein and Prime Hydration. Shein was a nothing fast-fashion online retailer for much of its early existence— steady growth, but hardly anything that would ruffle Gap’s feathers. Then, the pandemic hit, online scrolling and shopping soared, and Shein took off. In 2020, the company tripled its annual sales(2) and zipped right on past Gap in terms of revenue. At the time of Shein’s IPO announcement late last year, the company’s annual sales were projected to be over $30B, or 8x Gap sales (excluding Athleta, Banana Republic, and other sister corporate brands).(3)
In terms of Gatorade and Prime Hydration, their comparable sales are the reverse with Gatorade still roughly 7x the size of Prime as of year-end 2023.(4)But, Prime is just 2 years old and growing at a meteoric pace. It’s the first sports drink since Coca-Cola’s Powerade… and maybe Body Armour (which is now also owned by Coke)… that feels like it’s going head-to-head with Gatorade. In fact, there’s even a semi-popular website(at least by Google algorithm standards) that pits the two brands’ every move against one another. Some of the stats on this website are questionable, but the level of detail is impressive.
I mention these competitors because they are everything Gap and Gatorade are not— super user/consumer-permeated (not scripted and polished like the Gs), flying by the seat of their pants, and beloved by Gen Z and older Gen Alpha. Their growth has been almost entirely influencer and social media-driven— FAST and therefore, some would say, rickety like an IKEA shelving unit erected in an afternoon. To the outside viewer, they look on-trend and modern, but if you actually give them a shake (as the market seems to be doing now) they could crumble into a heap.(5,6) Gap and Gatorade seem pretty fed up. Their big, showy, aggressive revival campaigns have a way of saying, “Look, Shein and Prime, what you’re doing is cute and all, but let us show you how it’s really done.”
Gap and Gatorade’s version of “how it’s really done” is straight out of the 90s marketing playbook: build brand affinity (over time) and the rest will follow (eventually). This is a long game of trusting your gut over a spreadsheet of stats, a game they both played for a decade or more when performance marketing metrics didn’t exist and ROIs were laughed at. For them, it worked. Some might even say that the brand foundations that Gap and Gatorade “blindly” built in the 90s are the only things keeping them standing today. So refortifying in the exact same fashion makes a ton of sense. And, they have two things on their side:
I read an article recently by the CMO of Jones Road, Cody Plofker, for Triple Whale, the company that promises to cut through all of the noise and false attribution in social and digital marketing (they’re good— by far the most recommended data partner when I was doing this work at Nyssa). He essentially validates everything that I’ve been feeling since the iOS privacy changes sent shockwaves through the social and digital marketing landscape a few years ago. I’m paraphrasing here (and also coloring it with my own frustration), but the gist is:
The data coming out of social and digital media platforms is mostly junk, yet these platforms rely on it to both function and make money, so they sell it to us marketers as the holy grail (i.e. an honest ROI calculator), and therefore we continue to plow money into it because it’s the only thing that’s supposedly “measurable”.
In Plofker’s actual words “Performance marketing is dead, and brand marketing isn’t."(7) Yup. Performance marketing has been dead as a stand-alone tactic for driving profitable sales growth since mid-2021 when iOS 14.6 came out. Most marketers know this, but have continued to tinker with it because it spews out an obscene amount of data that they (we) want to believe gets them (us) closer to immediate and measurable ROI. I’ve been as sucked-in as the next. But not Gap and Gatorade— or at least not anymore.
I believe their big budget, brand aggrandizing, 90s throwback campaigns are a signal that they’re betting on intuition and experience again. Sure, they’re expecting an eventual and solid return on their investment, but if it doesn’t show-up in tomorrow’s data— that’s ok. It will come. Better to believe in what you know to be true vs. what you want to be true.
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