Brand revival: How to make a successful comeback

True Religion was founded more than two decades ago and made its name as a cult denim brand. It emerged from its second bankruptcy in 2020 and has staged a spectacular comeback. To tell us how, please welcome up it's CMO Kristin D'Arcy. Kristin, firstly, a huge welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. And thanks to the fans who clapped. I appreciate it. That was quite a welcome. So you joined True Religion last summer as its first chief marketing officer. Tell us a little bit about what your remit was. Sure. The remit was and remains three key things. One is new customer acquisition. Number two would be customer lifetime value and retention of those customers. And then number three would be brand love or brand engagement. And prior to True Religion, you worked for PacSun, American Eagle Outfitters, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren. And what were some of the key branding lessons you took from your career into that new role? Sure. So I have the very good fortune to work at those incredible brands, some of which are just my favorite as a girl growing up in the Midwest, really loving fashion, liking shopping a lot back then. And then, like I said, I was able to work for these incredible brands, most of which were in New York. So when I think about the lessons learned and I guess I'm going to reflect on two of these brands today versus when I was was there working with them. The first would be Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren is an incredible brand. It's been around for decades. I think they have withstood the test of time. And from a brand lesson perspective, they are consistent no matter where you experience that brand. You could walk into the mansion on Madison Avenue, you could go to Ralph's in the left bank in Paris. You go to Ralph's in Chicago, you could go to the cafe in New York, you could shop on Ralph lauren.com. The experience is so consistent with the brand. I think it's incredible. And they have come to be known for something. Of course, the lifestyle brand is one of them. But their cues by way of styling, lighting, the models they select, there's even commonality and consistency in the cues of the product itself. So as a marketer, if you took an if you took the logo off of a Ralph Lauren ad, as as marketers, I bet every single one of us could say that's a Ralph Lauren ad. But I believe the same is true with consumers as well. So their brand consistency again, across every single consumer touchpoint I think is literally second to none. I think the other branding lesson as I'm looking at American Eagle now from the outside, is they're doing two things. One, they're really leaning into collabs. So I do still pay a lot of attention to all of those those brands that I used to work for. And I saw American Eagle in particular this morning is launching a collab with Timberland, which I think is brilliant for a lot of reasons. Last year they did a collab with e.l.f Cosmetics company, so Cross-category B2B collab. I thought that was also really interesting. And then they launched a campaign about a month or two ago with athletes, and I saw that they did a product collab recently with one of those athletes, which is Coco Gauff. So there seems to be maybe they'll be more unveiled later, but seems to be one product, it's a denim jacket. Coco Gauff worked, according to their Instagram, worked in conjunction with their designers to develop this product. So I think that's really interesting. The reason being, could be surprise and delight for current customers or as I mentioned, my remit. One of the first ones, new customer acquisition collabs play a role in that too. The other thing I think that American Eagle that has been doing very well is they're leaning into culture. So they did a deal with one of the NBA video games. You could see some of their product on different players in the game. And then they also recently have been involved in TV show integration with their product. So the male focus and the female focus. And there, too, I think they're trying to figure out ways to connect with culture. And that's one such example. Yeah. So those would be my kind of brand lesson observations about both of them. So picking up on some of those brand lessons around leaning into culture, brand consistency and collaborations. Tell us about the first campaign that you delivered at True Religion and how that really helped to drive that mass brand awareness and reach new customers. So I guess on the one hand, I was lucky when I joined last summer, there was not a holiday campaign yet in the works, which meant we were going to sprint and and run, not walk towards that opportunity for sure. And so we started with the concept and it was rooted in consumer insights, which said, how do we stand for something during the holiday season when not only is that expensive to play in the media space during that period in Q4, but also it's just very, very, very cluttered. So we knew we wanted to stand for something and that was being a gift giving destination. Started with the concept. It was called style as a gift. We love the double entendre there. And then we started to think about talent, and that's where the cultural connection is really important. What we know about our consumers is they love rap and hip hop. They love sports, particularly the NBA and the NFL, and they look to people within those different genres for style cues and for inspiration. So we thought that the perfect people to represent this campaign were India Love and Quavo. Quavo is an incredible rapper with lots and lots of reach by way of social media, and we had seen both of them as we were doing our research on who would be the right, the right faces for the campaign. We had seen that both of them had worn true religion in the past. And the reason that is important is that we want to make sure the marketing is always authentic so we don't just pay people to sign up and rep the brand. We really want to make sure that they have a genuine and authentic love for the brand and the product. And so we're going to play a little video. We did not stage this. This is not fake. This is a real story. While Quavo is on set with us, I'm standing there. My team is standing there. We're trying to get behind the scenes content because we want to be digital first in our marketing and have content that varies based on the platform. And he just so happened to say this about true religion. I get my tax money, let me show you something, so I'm left handed. And when we were kids, we stole a tattoo gun and guess what? You didn't – you did this? True Religion, this and this, I was probably 14 or 15 years old. Wow. Yes. Some young kids out the trenches, reppin' True Religion. And now this is a dream come true because it's on me, its in the blood, this is for real. This is how we get up over here. Fresh pickle backs for the world. He did just say pickle backs for the world, which apparently is a thing thanks to my creative director. So that that was our holiday campaign. This, again, was one of my favorite clips because his genuine and real authentic love for the brand has been around for 15 years. Yeah. I mean, this is social media gold. You know, this was a spontaneous moment captured by the videographers. He has a true religion tattoo that he didn't even know about. Amazing. I didn't. Even know. And tell us about the impact of that campaign and what were some of the results that you saw? The impact was incredible. I mean, the woman that was just on stage before was talking about transformation and how it comes with technology. But then there is real storytelling and the people that helped bring all of this to life before technology even gets involved. And so here, over the course of the holiday season, all these numbers are relative to the previous year, same period, traffic was up 60%. New customer count up double digits, sales up double digits. Traffic to our own stores up double digits. Seeing if I'm missing anything here, 20% increase of followers on Instagram, a 98% increase in engagement rate on Instagram and an increase of almost 500% of followers on TikTok. So all of those metrics are incredibly important. As we think about your first question, what is the remit of marketing here? And these results cut across those three areas? I mean, you mention TikTok there. And to reach a more youthful audience, you've really been doubling down on some of those social media channels. But at the same time, you've turned your attention back to the stores. So talk us through true religion's omnichannel strategy. You know, where are the priority areas for you? Sure. So if you go to the next slide, what you can see, this was our second campaign in spring. It's called Go there. It stars, Saweetie. And so when you think about our stores, we bring to life these incredible campaigns and these truly remarkable artists, athletes, etc., both online through the different storytelling elements like you just saw with Quavo. And then also, of course, in our stores, we opened a few new stores last year. We're going to continue to do that this year, so we'll have about 50 in the fleet. And when we think about the customer experience from an omnichannel perspective, we're starting to lean into the stores to be places to have strategic marketing activations. So we did a new store opening in Cumberland, which is outside of Atlanta last year. We have a great partnership and did a collab with Moneybagg Yo, another rapper earlier this spring. He asked us, based on the love of the brand and the relationship that we have with him. If he could do a record label or a new album, drop at that same store in Cumberland. So we create an entire marketing activation around that. We invited him up. He, of course, was front and center, and then we invited VIPs, influencers. We created special merch for that particular event. So his signature and logo was on there. And so we're turning these stores, I think, into vehicles to bring our communities together. And I know we'll talk about that a little bit later with Team Tru. And then in addition, you know, what we see as a result from this is, number one, same store traffic in sales increasing, as you can imagine, as a halo effect to these events. And then we're also seeing just great social content that's coming out, which helps drive our social engagement rate, which hovers between 6 and 8% on average. The industry averages between 1 and 3%. So this adds storytelling, layers and diversity to our content. Leaning into what's happening that we're creating in the store. And that's really leaning in as well to culture and collaborations, which you were talking about earlier as well. Definitely. And talking about brand love, I know that you introduced a loyalty program for the first time last year. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact that had on customer retention and sales? Sure. So the loyalty program launched in Q1 of last year. It has almost half a million subscribers to the program, which is great because there's actually been fairly little marketing support. And I'll talk about why. But the reason that we believe in this loyalty program so much is even as it exists today, we're still seeing people that are members of the program spend 50% more than people who aren't. So we've been seeing lots of kind of richness there. We've been leaning into the data and we are rebooting the loyalty program. So the new program will launch in October and going back to your last question about omnichannel, it will be the first time that now our new program is connected to stores. So we'll have an omnichannel view of the customer between their shopping behavior and truereligion.com and our own stores through this vehicle. So we're really excited. I mentioned surprise and delights earlier with other brands. I think there's a lot of them in our new program. And what you'll see is those rewards lean into who we are as a brand, one that sits at the at the at the cross section of fashion, Sports and music. And so reward members, particularly when they hit hidden tiers. Yes. Those are coming. And we'll get access to the some of the things that makes this brand uniquely who it is. You mentioned that there wasn't marketing support for the loyalty program. What did you mean by that? So we launched it all of a sudden last year there there was a lot of people signing up and a lot of people interested. And then we wanted to make sure that we had the foundation correct and that we were really thinking through what is the long term strategy. So you might have seen it, but we there really was not a big marketing push or pushes at all around it. With this relaunch or reboot, you will see that and then you will also see ongoing support. So we had a collab launch with Chief Keef in June. If you are a loyalty member in the future, you might get early access to that. You might get exclusive products that you literally can't get anywhere else will be limited edition. A tiny, tiny drop. If you're a loyalty member and if you hit certain tiers, you will be rewarded even more for non transactional earn. So if you refer friends to the program and they they sign up and they start spending. If you're following us on Instagram, if you're creating product ratings and reviews, you will be rewarded in all those ways very differently than you are today. And then that's again when you'll see the marketing support following the reboot. Got it. And so the theme of the event today is tradition and transformation. It'd be great if you can give us an example of how true religion is really tapping into that kind of heritage and nostalgia that adding a sort of modern twist. Great question. So we did a campaign a couple of months ago. If you go to the next slide, you can see it. And this was called our Exaggerated Icons collection. We launched it for the celebration of our 22nd anniversary. And so what you'll see there from a product perspective is that our logos are really bold. They're huge. They're front and center. And we really wanted to lean into that tradition that makes us unique. You know, our product exists so that you can stand out and you can bring attention to yourself when you walk into a room. And so we decided to double down on that, as you can see from the product side of things. But then the refresh, as you have it, are two incredible artists. So Flo Milli, very, very well known, has done some great collabs with even bigger name female rap artists. And then we have NLE Choppa. We worked with him last year and saw, you know, great success actually with the sell through of the products for one of the campaigns that he wrapped. So that would be an example of both products and then creating something new you see in the backdrop. And I think it's cut off a little here, but the set featured huge horseshoe logos. We even created an animation that kind of showed the history of the The Horseshoe, the different colors that we've used over the past 22 years. So that would be an example of kind of old or current meets. New or newer. Yes. Earlier you mentioned Team True, which is something that you launched last month. Yes, beginning of August. Beginning of August. Can't even believe it. So tell us about that. What is it? How is it helping you reach your core community and build brand love? So Team True came about because we have different tiers of our influencer programs. You have people like Quavo, then you might have people like Flo Milli and NLE Choppa, for example. And then we've been leaning into micro or nano influencers as well. Great. All of that totally makes sense. But then we were having people come to us saying, How can I do more for the brand? How can I stay with you longer rather than just a one and done campaign? You know, we had a New York Giants player actually say to my CEO and I, I don't even need to get paid. I just want to be a part of what the brand is doing. And I love the product. And again, you know, for the 20 years I've been in this industry, I've literally never heard that at any brand that I've worked at. And so I thought, okay, we're on to something here and we need to kind of satisfy this need. So we created Team True. Team True is a program that exists of athletes, artists, people that are in fashion, stylists. We signed them up for six months terms. We send them product, they post about us, and then it's an affiliate model. So they'll get a rep share of anything that is sold through the links that they post. And generally speaking, that is it. It's a pretty simple program. So we launched that in early August. We have 25 people signed up and we wanted to test and learn and see how this went before we got too excited. And these people, by the way, are current NBA stars, NIL athletes. So there's a range of genders and ages you know within team true. So I would say as of a week ago when we pulled the data, what we saw is our Tik tok and the content is pushed everywhere. Let's just start with that. It is pushed everywhere from our website. We use it in paid advertising, it's in our emails, it's in our organic social channels. So it truly is kind of deployed absolutely everywhere. So within about a month of the program launching, we saw our Tik Tok engagement completion rate of videos went from 1%, which isn't good to begin with. But anyway, and now we see it at 15% on the Team True content. We're seeing the team true content Instagram engagement rate is between 10 and 12%, which even exceeds ours, which, as I told you earlier, is already very, very strong. But then from a sales perspective, the data that we really, really liked to see a month in is that if you're on a product detail page on our website, which means you're buying jeans, you're on the jeans page, you're about to put in the wash that you want and the size that you want. When we put a Team True piece of content, so one of our people in our genes that matched the jeans that you're buying. So UGC but team true UGC, you are more likely, 80% more likely to add to your cart because you see somebody from Team True wearing it specifically. And that outranks, you know, even our our other influencer programs that that have been going on. So we are really I mean we actually got goosebumps when we heard that and we said we are on to something and we want to scale this to be hundreds of people that are brand right. I think what's different about this program, too, is the personal connection that we have. So the football player will soon be put into the program. He changed teams. That's all I will tell you. But he'll soon be added to the program and we hand select every single person. So the team has a really good relationship with these people. And I know we're going to play the video in a minute and I will give you an example. Agencies are awesome, don't get me wrong. But what we found again is this genuine love for the brand also exists with this team that is tapped into culture and is building these one on one relationships. So we might have to add to that team if we're going to scale up to be hundreds of people in Team True. But like I said, we're really excited about the initial results. And so we want to just show you it's real quick, but just a little bit of the content that's been coming out over the last couple of weeks. Really quick. So that gentleman is Snoop Dogg' son. And when we talk about building relationships with Team True, he joined me on stage in New York last week for a discussion about this very program with another friend who is part of Team True, who, believe it or not, I went to high school with. Then he went to Duke and then he played in the NBA. So it was the three of us sitting up there. But I think these relationships have helped, you know, not only select the right people, but he's been this gentleman in particular, Cordell has been posting about us even before he was part of Team True. We had his wife and her sister into our offices for a great holiday, actually Valentine's Day campaign shoot. And the family wants to do more and more with us. So that is how we build really, really deep and meaningful relationships with with folks like this. So if only we'd have known, we'd have had Cordell up on stage with us. I think he's in Asia, if I'm not mistaken, but yes next time. And and just quickly, I know you've said before that marketing is maths and magic. So how do you create a culture that combines the two? Yeah, I mean, some things that might sound silly on the magic side before we get to math, but actually work for us really well. So we have a team meeting, a marketing team meeting every Tuesday morning and we started it with tea. And we talk about brand collabs that we're seeing in the marketplace. We talk about who's trending. I think I learned I learned about the very demure, very mindful trend, for example, during that that meeting. So the team is fantastic, but they are plugged in. And so that's how we start. And I think a lot of people get ideas from just starting the meeting in that way. It then quickly kind of pivots to the business results, of course. But it's a nice way for everybody to come in and share what they're seeing or what they're reading because everybody is reading different things. And I think the diversity of thought is what makes this team really unique, which is great. And then, of course, there's the map. So we have very aggressive KPIs tied to every campaign, every collab, every launch. And we're constantly trying to outdo ourselves by way of engagement and sales versus a year prior, of course. And then there's math when we select celebrities as well. So it's how many followers do you have? But also what's the engagement rate of those followers? If you have millions and nobody's ever commenting and nobody's ever sharing anything you post, you might not be as relevant as somebody with a slightly smaller following. But people who are really, really engaged and then we're always trying to value the price of a face against the volume that we have to drive from a sales perspective. And then we're hindsighting that and we're figuring out always how to be even better from an optimization standpoint. So I think every day, all day, it's magic and math. Almost equal parts. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. I'd love to turn to the audience now and to any of you have any questions, please just put up your hands and a microphone will come over to you. Don't be shy. My question really has to do with I'm going to bring up the magic word AI. So you're welcome, everyone. So obviously, you guys are on a massive transformation. So how are you thinking about blending in AI into into your marketing plans for 2025, either from a vision or an execution perspective? Right now we're using it actually for optimization. So email subject lines can be made better and better means by way of you're actually opening because you like the subject line through AI. We are using AI to optimize our audiences for both Email and SMS. And we do that because, A the targeting can be better, the results are better. But then I'll spend a day and a half, you know, working on audience segmentation for emails that are coming the following week. And it's just a lot of arduous and time consuming work. So we're kind of testing into in the way that I just described. But it's to improve performance results by way of sales, but also just to save time. Productivity gains? Exactly. Yeah. And we have a whole panel on AI later today where we will really delve into that subject. And Christine, what can we expect next in marketing from True Religion? So come hell or high water, we are shooting our holiday campaign in New York next week. So that is happening. Universe that is happening. And then more Team True. As I said, we really are given these very early results, trying to scale the program to the right people. And as many of those right people as possible. And then there might be some collabs of our own that are coming out next year.