Shooting Stars: 12 Brands to Watch in 2014
Brand: Gap
Idea to Steal: Infuse your TV ad campaign in a social fashion.
Gap is in the midst of a strong six-quarter streak of increasing same-store sales, but in September the apparel brand made a comeback—to TV. After four years of absence from the small screen, Gap debuted two TV spots as part of its “Back to Blue” fall marketing campaign.
“Grounded in the idea of expressing one’s authentic self, each spot features a contemporary musician, who for the first time is recording a song made famous years ago by their parent and making it their own,” according to the company’s press release announcing the videos featuring Alexa Ray Joel (daughter of Billy Joel) and Dhani Harrison (son of George Harrison). Joel and Harrison aren’t the only ones taking old things and making them new. With its comeback to TV, Gap is doing the same.
Rather than just making a splash with normal commercials, Gap partnered with Twitter for this campaign, which included a call-to-action from @gap to retweet a special link. After 500 retweets, the audio content and musicians’ names were revealed; and after a follow-up tweet was retweeted 1,000 times, the full spots were shared. Before Joel and Harrison’s 30-second spots end with the familiar blue Gap logo, the “#BacktoBlue” hashtag (which was included in those related tweets from @gap) is shown.
On top of this Twitter-driven engagement, Gap also ran Promoted Tweets with the help of Twitter’s fledgling TV ad targeting technology. These promotional tweets were shown only to users tweeting about a show or game featuring a Gap commercial.
“Back to Blue” isn’t just a comeback to TV for Gap; it’s an example of what can be accomplished when a brand weaves together the old with the new.—JH
