Abercrombie & Fitch is on a comeback tour — a victory lap, if you will.
The brand started on its path to redemption in 2017 with the appointment of CEO Fran Horowitz. Fast-forward four years, and its styles are selling out constantly. For example, Abercrombie can’t keep its popular vegan leather or its denim in stock. Driving key elements of this winning strategy is svp of marketing Carey Krug.
Once known for being exclusionary, the Abercrombie & Fitch of today touts a message that is essentially the polar opposite of what it was in the early aughts. Now, Krug said, the brand stands for “giving people a sense of belonging and confidence to be who they are and to feel really good in what they’re wearing.” While the brand has only 13,000 followers on TikTok, the hashtag #abercrombie has 154.9 million views on TikTok, and a wide range of people — mega-influencers included — have shared testimonials in favor of its new direction. The brand has received ample buzz via other platforms, too — YouTube (see: haul videos), Instagram and the press throughout 2021.
The company’s Denim Your Way campaign is the perfect example of this ethos in action, Krug said. The company created the campaign with its community by talking to them about the pain points they experience when shopping for denim. The creation of the campaign took place over the better part of 2021, starting with a casting call in January and coming to life across Abercrombie’s social channels in August. “It was customer-led. It was collaborative with design, merchandising and marketing. It’s a campaign about feeling good, more so than looking good, because when you feel good, that is when you feel the most confident.”
Krug spearheaded the campaign’s conceptual development. As she tells it, “The customer told us what kind of denim they want, and the campaign itself is showing how we listened and solved for what they were telling us. And then [we took] it one step further by putting the customers in the campaign and [allowing them] to tell their own stories about themselves and the denim.”
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The campaign was a success. The brand reported seeing positive results across sales, social sentiment and engagement. It also worked to boost impressions on social platforms, press, organic tags, likes, comments and shares. But it was emotional, too. The feedback Krug and her team received while on set included statements like, “I never thought an Abercrombie & Fitch photoshoot would be where I’d feel the most validated in my identity.”
