What Gap’s ‘Fashiontainment’ strategy means for customer experiences
Michael Bise has made it his personal mission to track down and post all the music playlists that were broadcast within Gap stores when he was an employee in the 1990s.
What he’s gathered shows some pretty eclectic choices, from alternative acts like Primal Scream and The Cure to Sarah McLaughlin and UB40.
It would be interesting to know whether Bise thinks Just Your Type (JYT) would be a fitting addition to Gap’s musical pantheon.
The ‘why’ behind JYT and Gap
Although I wasn’t familiar with JYT until this week, watching one of their videos almost feels like the 1990s never ended.
It’s all there: the synchronized dance moves, the heavy emoting, the harmonization of both voices and hoodies.
Based on its growing following across social media, however, Gap has decided to make JYT the focal point of what it calls a “Fashiontainment” platform that inspires new marketing content, spawns licensing deals and informs customer experiences (CX).
For example, Gap will co-create a collection with JYT (they know how to design clothes too? Try topping that, Backstreet Boys!), and the retailer will produce an episodic documentary following the group until they (presumably?) reach N’Sync-level superstardom.
The CX factor will manifest itself through “immersive fan moments and in-store activations at select Gap locations,” the company said, noting that JYT is embarking on a tour of major U.S. shopping malls.
Retailer or groupie?
Although this is hardly the first time a clothing brand has collaborated with a musical act, this partnership seems to potentially do a lot more for JYT than for Gap and its customers.
It assumes, for example, that loving Gap means you’re also a likely fan of JYT. Yet Gap has historically aimed more at the 25-34 segment of urban professionals, not screaming teenagers that tend to shop at Target or (until recently) Forever 21.
Gap has also long been associated with TV spots featuring high-energy dancing, but has tended to feature those who already dominate the charts like Troye Sivan.
Staging a JYT performance at a mall in front of a Gap store turns the retailer into little more than another provider of concert merch.
In that sense, fashiontainment feels a lot like the old notion of “infotainment.” Despite the order in which the two terms come together, it was always pretty clear that infotainment content should focus being entertaining first, informative second.
Simiarly, fashiontainment brings spectacle to shopping, but does it really make it any more fun or deepen relationships with customers? For the youngest segments it could make such experiences more memorable, which must be what Gap is counting on. That puts the onus to deliver back on JYT. As one of the group’s singles says, “No Pressure.”
