3–2–1nsight: Brand’s Crossing Relevance

The 3 Stories

Walmart to Sell New Line of Gap-Branded Homegoods — WSJ

Walmart is trying to expand its apparel and home goods selection, so it’s working with brands perceived as higher-end to appeal to those consumers, widen their customer base, and ideally expand their AOV. GAP is trying to fight its slumping revenue trend by working with licensing company IMG to expand into home décor, furniture, textiles, and other categories.

Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s Partner With Munchies to Sell Chicken Sandwich on OnlyFans — Adweek

Ever famous for its Paris Hilton burger ads, Carl’s Jr is once again shooting to be provocative, albeit in a very different cultural environment. Instead of trying to rehash their infamous B&B strategy (Boobs and Burgers, which was once summarised to me by the architect of that campaign strategy), Carl’s is aligning itself with Munchies’ (Vice’s food section) newly launched OnlyFan’s channel. Once again reaffirming, you can take the brand out of the strategy, but you can’t take the culture out of the brand.

Influencer Lindsay Silberman’s Hotel Lobby Candle just launched at Neiman Marcus — Glossy

Bland, neutral branding? Check. High-end price point? Check. Faux couture messaging? Check. All the components of influencer-led product launches have now allowed Lindsay Silberman’s candle company, Hotel Lobby to be found at Neiman Marcus because one of the buyers discovered her candles on Instagram. I can’t wait to see what will happen to the celebrity and influencer-led brand economy once the iOS 14.5 privacy patch really kicks in.

The 2 Takeaways

Legacy retailers need to maintain and increase in-store foot traffic.

Retailers’ sales rebounded last quarter across all retailers like TJ Maxx, Ross, Kohls, Target, and even Macy’s sales jumped 56% last year, outperforming expectations. There is massive pent-up demand, and all retailers are taking advantage of this, but there is the fear of what happens after the pent-up demand dies down, and consumers spend all their saved-up money. Retailers like Macy’s CEO believe the demand is there to stay, while savvier retailers like Walmart are trying to grow their AOV and basket makeup by appealing to the other needs of their returning physical shoppers.

Brands focus on partnerships that drive ‘excitement,’ particularly with Gen Z and younger millennials.

As new platforms pop up and technology continues to make it easier to start a merchandise or eCommerce empire, legacy brands and retailers are more concerned about the ‘excitement’ a brand can generate with its partnerships. OnlyFans won’t drive that many new customers into Carl’s Jr, but the platform, along with Munchies, gives the creative team at Carl’s Jr an exciting opportunity to tell the brand story. Lindsay Silberman won’t help Neiman hit its quarterly revenue goal, but as it strives to stay relevant and fight off the onslaught of knockoff online competitors, having Hotel Lobby candles in its stores, having the brand tag Neiman, etc. creates an exciting brand narrative for its consumers to stick with Neiman, vs. defecting to Farfetch.

The 1nsight

To maintain relevance, brands are partnering with each other to get into new market positions.

Convincing consumers to purchase your products, especially in a new category, is a risky bet. There’s a fallacious argument that stacking various brand’s NPS scores together causes consumers to summate those brands to drive purchase. We know this is often not the case. Instead, we’re seeing brands try to win at upper-funnel and mid-funnel, mixing brand affinities with their consumer’s needs to determine the success of these partnership opportunities. With the example of GAP and Walmart, Walmart is trying to get more wallet share of their consumers, so having a trusted brand like GAP sell home goods can help them accomplish that goal. For GAP, as it continues to wane in relevance as an apparel retailer, it’s trying to see if its brand will have any success or cache in the home. Success for either brand is very different, but they need each other to run this experiment. Expect to see more of this.