Critiques J.Crew's marketing strategyfrom @clayton.chambrs

Transcript

J Crew, what are we doing here? Are we trying to Gen Z Max with Emma Chamberlain? Are we trying to relive the old Abercrombie and Fitch lore? Are we trying to be the next monocle? I think a lot of this stems from their inability to commit to an identity. One minute they're hosting an influencer trip with Kareem. The next moment they're doing a tiny campaign with Emma Chamberlain. There's too many competing vibes right now, and there's no common thread. But let's take Gap as a counterexample to that. When you look at a brand like Gap, they're taking marketing swings in a host of different directions. But if you look more closely at tier brand, you'll see that each of them is tied to a common thread. Even the way they've partnered with HBCU marching bands to bringing in guys like John Wotherspoon to lead the creative and archive effort to the recent partnership with Melbourne Golf, which is arguably one of the most culturally dialed in golf brands at tier moment. Let's jump back into J. Crew. Obviously, there's more emphasis on the women's side of the brand because the women's side of the brand makes more money. But if you look a few years ago when they made the investment to bring on Brendan Babensian as their lead creative director and designer for the men's side, you saw a common thread in a direction they wanted to to head, and it feels like that's now largely been abandoned by parting ways with him to ditching the Instagram men's account and seeing the swathe of campaigns that are popping up for the brand side that just don't have any connection to each other. Feels like an ad hoc reactive way to running their rank. And I wish they would figure it out because I love J. Crew. I've been wearing their stuff since I was a kid, and I wanna see them succeed.