For its new campaign ‘Better in Denim’, Gap wanted to show off its jeans on a number of people. Specifically, trendy Gen Zs, at whom the featured style of low-rise denim promoted in the ads are targeted.
The brand has created buzz in the past year featuring celebrities from Australian music artist Troye Sivan and South African singer-songwriter Tyla to The White Lotus actress Parker Posey in campaigns; this time, it aimed to quintuple that impact by recruiting Katseye, the six-person girl group formed in LA that counts members from the US, Switzerland, South Korea and the Philippines.
“[Low-rise] is a younger trend, an interesting trend, we thought, let’s show it on a bunch of younger people,” says Mark Breitbard, who took over Gap as brand CEO in 2020 after overseeing Banana Republic. “We love getting talent that feels like it’s emerging. It’s a cultural point of view and energy that’s a fit for this campaign, and we’re excited for that.”
It’s an interesting time to release a denim campaign. Earlier this month, American Eagle’s Sydney Sweeney jeans ads spawned a media storm, from criticisms about the overly sexualised, male gazy-ness of Sweeney’s appearance to conspiracies around eugenicist dog whistles, and, ultimately, personal praise from Donald Trump.
Breitbard is staying out of the political fray. “We navigate [this political moment] by being true to the name of the company — it was named Generation Gap, after bridging gaps between people, communities, generations. And that’s how we’ve seen ourselves,” he says. “We’re in 50 states, we’re all over the country, and when we innovate and reinvent, we show up in different ways with different fits and different types of marketing.”
Breitbard has been on a five-year quest to make Gap relevant again. By 2019, Gap Inc — which owns Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Athleta — had seen sales plateau. Gap was once one of America’s most iconic retailers, known for its logo hoodies and campaigns like ‘Everybody in Cords’ and ‘Who Wore Khakis’. But with its heyday of the ’90s and early noughties behind it, fast fashion rivals took hold and inventory mismanagement trapped the company in a never-ending cycle of promotional purge. Breitbard’s first three years on the job were “tough restructuring”, he admits: layoffs, inventory culling (30 per cent of SKUs were killed) and vendor reassessments.
By 2023, Breitbard says, the fruits of that labour started to pay off. “The business started to feel lighter, and we again had a creative engine. People started to notice.” Then, Gap Inc CEO Richard Dickson joined from Mattel, and “threw gas on the fire”, Breitbard says. Gap closed 2024 with $15.1 billion in revenue, a 1 per cent increase on the year before after years of flat sales and declines, with each brand in the portfolio turning a profit.
Now, the goal is to keep Gap top of mind for customers who are starting to rediscover it or maybe shopping it for the first time. That, to Breitbard, requires constant newness: campaigns, collabs, events, activations. Its latest collab, with actor Shay Mitchell’s travel brand Beis, put a denim spin on travelwear and luggage. A pop-up at San Francisco music festival Outside Lands let visitors customise their own Gap hoodies. This autumn, more than 30 Gap stores will be fitted with a denim bar, which carries the full breadth of Gap’s denim offering.
“Whatever the story is — a fit, a fabric, a collab — it’s a constant drumbeat, where there’s always newness and something that’s happening. Each one on its own should be cool and interesting and relevant. And then when you add them up, the brand really starts to shine through,” says Breitbard.
The nostalgia factor
Gap has benefitted from the revenge of the mall brands, where customers have rediscovered some of the past hits from shopping’s glory days, like itself, J Crew and Abercrombie Fitch. Gap has played into that nostalgia factor, recreating the feeling of old campaigns, like Sivan’s choreographed ‘Get Loose’ spot, which garnered more than 40 million views on TikTok since debuting last year. The brand also added a collection of vintage Gap pieces to its site — a way to capture the Gen Z consumer that is eating up Y2K fashion. That, combined with a faster production cycle and a catalogue of past pieces ripe for reinvention makes up the flywheel of Gap’s new inventory strategy.
“As a great American brand, the country wants us to win and the customer wants us to show up,” Breitbard says. “You feel the brand codes in new and relevant ways.”
Part of being a great American brand today means dealing with the realities of America’s new trade policy, which has hit all major trade partners with double-digit tariffs. On Gap Inc’s most recent earnings call for the first quarter of 2025 in May, Dickson told investors that the company expected a net impact of $100-150 million in the fiscal year thanks to the elevated duties. Breitbard says it’s been a “challenging period”, and acknowledged that the company is dealing with a price-sensitive customer. But, Breitbard added, the foundation the brand has built in the past five years has brought it closer to consumer whims and trends, meaning it can move faster and be increasingly agile.
That’s particularly important in the denim category, where trends have flattened and pretty much any and all fit — slim, baggy, low-rise, high-rise, barrel, flare, bootcut — have a willing buyer.
“I think this campaign is going to be a big stake in the ground for Gap. We have a lot of energy, and we’re continuing what we’ve started here in a way that’s relevant, focusing on the consumer and with an eye on culture,” Breitbard says.
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