Gap’s Comeback: Why Brand-As-Democratizer Still Works

Gap has strung together 11 consecutive quarters of same-store sales growth, according to The Wall Street Journal reporting cited by Branding Strategy Insider. That’s not a marketing fluke. It’s what happens when a brand stops drifting and reconnects with the reason it existed in the first place.

The idea Gap forgot

Writing for Branding Strategy Insider, Joan Kiddon of The Blake Project frames Gap’s original power in one phrase: brand as democratizer. Not cheap. Accessible.

The origin story makes the point. In 1968, San Francisco real estate broker Don Fisher opened The Gap on a deceptively simple premise: make it easy for anyone to find jeans that actually fit. He and his wife Doris dedicated retail space to denim in every size and style. Fisher knew Walter Haas, Jr., then president of Levi Strauss & Co., and struck a supply deal to ensure Gap would never be out of stock on a size or cut.

The first store sold men’s Levi’s and music. Women’s Levi’s followed in 1970. By 1974 Gap had its own label; by 1977 it was comparing its jeans to Levi’s. Then came the one-pocket T-shirt in a wall of colours, and the denim jacket.

Kiddon puts Gap in the same lineage as Henry Ford (car ownership), McDonald’s (eating out), Clairol (hair colour), Target (designer style) and The Franklin Mint (owning “art”). Each took a category that excluded most people and let them in.

Where it went wrong

Two failures, and both are common enough to be worth pinning on your wall.

• Data replaced creative conviction. Kiddon’s line of argument is sharp here: data tell you what people have already done; they’re far weaker at predicting what people will want next. Fashion needs both, but a trend-setting brand cannot outsource taste to a dashboard.
• Positional drift. As Gap Inc. added brands, Gap itself edged upmarket to leave price room above Old Navy — and landed in the muddled middle between Old Navy and Banana Republic, while losing stylish activewear ground to sibling Athleta.

Sales slumped in the early 2000s and CEO Mickey Drexler — the man behind the swing-dancing khakis ads, the Madonna and Spike Lee spots, the era when Sharon Stone wore a Gap tee to the 1996 Oscars — was pushed out. Successive CEOs couldn’t restart the engine.

What Richard Dickson changed

The WSJ, as quoted in the source, credits Gap Inc. chief executive Richard Dickson with restoring relevance through celebrity and hot-brand collaborations, sharper marketing, and more trend-worthy product. Notice the sequence: cultural relevance first, then product, then the numbers. Gap didn’t discount its way back.

Democratization ≠ discounting

Here is the reframe most marketers need. Kiddon argues that democratization is about accessibility, not affordability — and accessibility includes being easily understood and easily appreciated, not just easily bought.

She also skewers a lazy piece of industry vocabulary: treating “value” as a synonym for “low price”. Every customer seeks value. A Mercedes buyer and a Subaru buyer both believe they bought well. When a brand starts translating “value-seeking” into “price-cutting”, it has already conceded its pricing power.

Psychologically, Gap’s promise was a paradox — inclusive exclusivity. My own style, just like all my friends. Belonging and individuality in the same purchase. That tension is why identity brands travel further than commodity brands.

Freedom within a framework

Kiddon’s operating model for this is Freedom within a Framework: a brand framework sets the non-negotiable boundaries of the brand experience, and inside those boundaries teams are free to be creative in attracting and keeping customers. The framework isn’t a museum piece — it gets refreshed as the brand learns.

Gap’s own product logic mirrors it. Fixed boundaries (denim, tees, jackets), infinite personal expression inside them.

Three questions for your next planning session: Who does our category still exclude? What is the non-negotiable framework inside which our teams can improvise? And are we chasing what customers did last quarter, or what they’ll want next year?

Source: Branding Strategy Insider