Slate's Seth Stevenson is dismayed that The Gap went to the trouble and expense of hiring Spike Jonze to shoot a way kewl spot touting their remodeled stores only to bury it in a short run in a handful of markets. (Slate's showing the spot that actually aired in low- and high-bandwidth options [Windows Media], but Stevenson also links to a far superior, alternate version [Quicktime] apparently salvaged from the cutting-room floor by Jeffrey Wells.)
The spot depicts the destruction of an ordinary Gap outlet at the hands of shoppers, staff and random passers-by, culminating in a dog wandering through the dusty, clothing-strewn, depopulated scene. It's both thrilling and shocking, particularly the alternate version with the Edvard Grieg soundtrack. In light of The Gap's recent poor performance, Stevenson thinks they're twiddling their thumbs:
This is rearranging the track lighting on the Titanic. It's the entire Gap brand that needs a scrubbing, not just the stores. The Ad Age story quotes an analyst who says, "The Gap is now a category placeholder. It's the name everyone knows, but aren't real sure what it stands for anymore."
So: You've got a brand that everyone's familiar with, which is half the battle. The next step, it seems, would be to reinvent the meaning of that brand. It sounds like what the company needs is a piece of marketing that suggests radical changes are afoot—that the Gap brand is about to tear itself down to its foundations and be reborn. Where could they possibly find something like that?
Instead of running the "Dust" spot in just a couple of markets, and tying it exclusively to the remodeling effort, Gap should have used this ad as the centerpiece of a national campaign.
That would be a breathtakingly big swing for the fences, and I'd guess that a sleeper cell in The Gap's marketing department agrees with Stevenson--the Jonze spot is too ambitious to really be about store remodeling--but cooler heads prevailed and nipped the idea in the bud.
At 38, I'm old enough to remember The Gap's two-stage transformation, first from off-brand denim outlet to cooler-than-Levi's, and then on to world domination via sort-of-preppy, sort-of-hip GeneriClothes. But a fundamental problem they face now is that the market's fragmented out from under them, and fewer people want to wear GeneriClothes these days--we're all pursuing our individual style muses. (Except me--I'm hip enough to know that The Gap isn't, but not hip enough to care--demonstrated by my use of 1920s slang like "hip"--and I still love those worker jeans.)
The Gap has become the transparent background music of fashion--the aesthetic you never see because it's everywhere (and thus effortless to imitate, undercut or adapt.) I like expansive, dramatic gestures--even when they fail, you have a lot more fun making the attempt--and I'd love to see The Gap destroy its increasingly-meaningless brand in order to save it--but I'm hard-pressed trying to think of a big retailer that's pulled off a similar trick. The New Coke conspiracy theories are the closest I can get, and that's thin ice for a corporate strategy (but I'd love to see the PowerPoint.)
tags: the gap seth stevenson spike jonze
