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Gap does it again. After successful campaigns featuring artists like Katseye, Tyla, and Troye Sivan, Gap makes marketing magic again with a new campaign featuring Puerto Rican artist, Young Miko. On TikTok alone, the official video has achieved a whopping 8.5 million views and the teaser video has 6.2 million views. So what’s the secret to their success?
Most brands aren’t backed with marketing pockets deep enough to produce a full music video, work with beloved Gen Z artists, or license popular music for Millennial nostalgia (see a look back at Gap’s most iconic ads in Adweek). However, there are three core strategies that we think any brand can take as inspiration from the impact of Gap’s viral creator marketing campaign.
1. Let the creator lead.
Whether working with an influencer or bringing on a creative partner, if your aim is to leverage the existing audience and aura of the individual you’re working with, then you should trust they know what their audience wants. The Gap campaign felt like a Young Miko music video, in the creator’s native language, where everyone just happened to be wearing Gap – no product names or sale prices in sight.
2. Think social first.
When making an advertising campaign, the social media manager is too often the last person budgeted to join production on-site. By engaging the social media strategy team early to create a social media shot list, plan for ways to capture behind the scenes content, and get short-form video clips and photos for social sharing, we can maximize content at every point of production. This means more opportunities for posting across different social channels in different formats, and more legs to stand on in the algorithm.
3. Share ownership.
Ensuring compliance with brand standards is important, as long as it doesn’t get so precious that it gets in the way of a campaign going far and wide. Consider engaging traditional media earlier in the process to give an exclusive behind the scenes look at the campaign. Encourage employees to reshare content on their personal feeds once it goes live.
By trusting creators to lead with authenticity, building a campaign with social-first execution in mind, and loosening control to let the content spread organically, brands of any size can tap into the same momentum. When marketing appears to be rooted in culture rather than revenue, audiences are more likely to engage, share, and make it their own.
Interested in learning how we can help your brand? Let’s work together. Connect with us.
Vibe Catch is a weekly series highlighting the brand strategies that inspire us. From marketing campaigns with undeniable aura to best-in-class social media moments, we’re constantly catching a vibe worth sharing. Tap in to recharge your marketing mind with our catch of the week.
Staying current is one thing. Executing at scale is another.
We run local social operations for multi-location brands which includes local content publishing, template libraries, custom requests, and community management across hundreds of locations.