The Gap is one of America’s great companies, and sales are declining, despite an innovation effort to rejuvenate the brand. I have consulted in strategy and consumer insights for Gap brand (Gap, Inc. also owns Old Navy and Banana Republic), so I have to be reasonably tempered about what I say, but I have some thoughts on Gap brand’s direction (based on publicly available information).
There was an interesting front page story in the WSJ last week about Gap and its huge initiative to renovate stores. Gap sent a whopping 20 employees around the world in search of inspiration for innovative retail concepts and although the new store design is a great improvement, chalk boards in the jeans area, friendly employees, darker floors, couches outside the dressing areas, higher quality display tables, and bold colors on the walls don’t “wow” me.
A part of Gap’s new, defining mission is to enable individuals to express their personal style. Building on this theme (William Morris and CAA, here’s an idea for you to sell to Gap) select celebrities could create their own product lines and Gap co-branded marketing campaigns, and sell their product in little boutiques within the store and online. Another idea: there could be a section on the Gap website, and computer terminals in stores, where customers can design their own t-shirts (ie pick out colors, images, text etc.) This type of democratization for creating individual style, which is facilitated by technology, is the future, and Gap should embrace it now!
Innovative store features and an “emotional” store environment will only go so far, of course. Obviously, the store’s product is number 1, and I’m not particularly in touch with the latest trends and styles, so I’m not going to talk about that. But, I can talk about its television advertising, which Gap relies heavily on to drive store traffic. The television ad spot is losing marketing power, as a result of ad skipping technology (I may be talking about innovative marketing strategies – Gap is experimenting with a viral website – watchmechange.com, for example), but Gap ads have been uninspired for years, and even hurtful to its brand image — with respect to men — and this is going to take time to change.
When I consulted for Gap, there was much discussion about how to fix the declining men’s business. Meanwhile, Sarah Jessica Parker was all over television praising the color pink, and singing about how wonderful it is to be a girl! I know many guys that agree with me in thinking that this kind of advertising does not entice us to shop at Gap! The Gap’s “singing and dancing” ads have played way too long, and I’m truly thankful that Gap is allegedly starting to move away from that.
This picture of the remodeled Stanford Shopping Center store was taken a few days ago. The outside of a store is not as important as the inside store experience, but a vibrant outside can be a magnet for traffic.
Imagine if they had billboard type video image panels above the windows in those blank white spaces on the wall. This technology may still be relatively expensive, but I’m not talking about HD plasma quality video. The displays also don’t have to be used across the entire store fleet, but just top performing stores.
