<\/p>\n
At Gap\u2019s headquarters in San Francisco, an archive dedicated to the apparel company\u2019s 57-year history features nearly 6,000 boxes of memorabilia documenting the retailer\u2019s brands, which also include Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta.<\/p>\n
There are prints from photographers like Annie Leibovitz and material related to many celebrity ad campaigns, like Missy Elliott and Madonna for Gap and Cindy Crawford for Old Navy. Those dated back to the retailer\u2019s heyday, when malls were full, celebrities wore the brand on red carpets and Gap stores were plot points in sitcoms like \u201cSeinfeld.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Richard Dickson started as Gap\u2019s chief executive nearly three years ago, he was awed by those archives and set out to change the conversation about the company.<\/p>\n
Gap had spent years closing hundreds of stores<\/a> across the United States, as sales flagged and profits were patchy. Its stock, which peaked in 2000, was languishing. The company took more than a year to fill the C.E.O. position.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Dickson, who spent nearly 20 years at Mattel, brought with him a playbook that had helped revitalize the toymaker\u2019s brands like Hot Wheels and Barbie. He got Barbie to the big screen, with star power and a marketing machine that produced blockbuster financial results.<\/p>\n The native New Yorker speaks excitedly about the ways that fashion, entertainment and music are intertwined. He went to Coachella last month and has been to the Oscars in recent years. He often mentions how Gap\u2019s first store, which opened in 1969 in San Francisco, sold records, tapes and jeans.<\/p>\n Mr. Dickson\u2019s culture-focused strategy is taking root. For his creative director, he hired Zac Posen<\/a>, who dressed Kendall Jenner in a Gap gown for the recent Met Gala. Gap has made toe-tapping ads featuring Katseye and Parker Posey. Mr. Dickson even hired another C.E.O. \u2014 a chief entertainment officer<\/a> \u2014 to oversee the company\u2019s push into content, licensing and Hollywood.<\/p>\n Gap\u2019s comparable sales have risen for eight straight quarters, and its market value has increased to $8.5 billion, from $3.6 billion when Mr. Dickson started. Last year, Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic posted sales increases, with only Athleta recording a decline. Gap\u2019s namesake brand showed the strongest growth.<\/p>\n Mr. Dickson, 58, credits the turnaround to \u201cbeing aware of pop culture, content, art, theater, music, entertainment.\u201d If a brand makes sure that those themes come through, \u201cyou become more relevant,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This interview was edited and condensed.<\/p>\n As you try to bring Gap back into the cultural conversation, how are you managing your time? Are you spending more time in Hollywood?<\/strong><\/p>\n As our business evolves, my allocated time also changes.<\/p>\n When I first got to the company, we were in \u201cfix mode.\u201d It\u2019s no secret. My time was 100 percent spent on the operations, the financial rigor, setting up strategic priorities and editing a lot of the noise in the system that can be very distracting for a turnaround.<\/p>\n Over the course of three years, we\u2019ve emerged a better company. Now we move into the next phase, which is to build momentum. My focus, while not taking my eye off the operational discipline, moves more into how to accelerate our growth.<\/p>\n I have a multitude of meetings and time spent with the entertainment community, which I\u2019m very familiar with from previous roles.<\/p>\n When you were hired from Mattel, the chatter was that you would try to recreate the Barbie magic. Is that true, or is there a different strategy for Gap?<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s actually the same playbook. It is not so much that the playbook is unique; it\u2019s the methodology and the execution that\u2019s unique.<\/p>\n The playbook is, first, identifying what\u2019s our reason for being.<\/p>\n You could put me on any brand in the world. Why do you exist? What is our purpose? What\u2019s our point of difference? Those simple questions have very complicated answers when you\u2019re in a turnaround. If you can\u2019t answer it in a sentence or two, or one or two words, you\u2019ve got a problem.<\/p>\n Old Navy is different from Gap. Gap is different from Banana. Banana is different from Athleta.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s focus on Gap. What makes it distinctive?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I look at the history of every one of our brands \u2014 it wasn\u2019t dissimilar to the Barbie conversation \u2014 what was it that broke through? What was that single thing that made it so incredibly relevant?<\/p>\n In our case, it was a store that was all-inclusive before inclusivity became a word, because we sold jeans for all races, all sizes, all sexes. We bridged the generation gap in the experience through music. Music was the connective tissue in the context of the store experience.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Let\u2019s get back into that music narrative with great product storytelling and amplify it in a way that is relevant for today\u2019s consumer. We started with Jungle with our linen campaign. We moved to Troye Sivan with a great music video around the baggy and loose trend. Then, of course, the blowout with Katseye.<\/p>\n These aren\u2019t ads. Yes, you see the fleece because it looks incredible. But nobody\u2019s saying, \u201cOh, my God, it\u2019s a great deal with a great price.\u201d They\u2019re saying: \u201cDid you see this? Did you feel this?\u201d That is when you get emotional connection to a brand.<\/p>\n We had become more about price than product. More about stuff, not storytelling.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re focusing on entertainment, how do you measure success?<\/strong><\/p>\n We have dashboards everywhere. I think we just turned one off when you walked in because our business flashes on an hourly basis on my screens.<\/p>\n We have dashboards that measure brand love, people searching more for our brand and brand attributes that we test and roll out to see how consumers are feeling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n