This week National Positions CEO Bernard May welcomes Chief Digital Officer at VF Corporation, Leo Griffin. VF is one of the world’s largest footwear and apparel companies, with over 20 brands under its umbrella, including Vans, The North Face, Timberland, Dickies, and JanSport – just to name a few.
This deep dive into the world of fashion marketing in the digital ecosystem took us on a tour of every conceivable angle of the fashion industry, including the impact of COVID-19, brand storytelling, the influence of Amazon, and much more. Whether you are in the fashion industry or not – every business can harness these powerful insights and apply them to their own brands.
Here are just a few highlights and insights from Leo Griffin on National Positions – Digital Breakthroughs Podcast!
*Note – You can also click the videos above each highlight to listen to the full excerpt – better yet, listen to the full podcast on your favorite podcast platform or click HERE to listen on YouTube.
Digital Breakthroughs – Episode #3 With Guest Leo Griffin
On the Impact of COVID-19
“We started to see the impact of this early in January, as we began to shut down our stores in China and Shanghai and Hong Kong – Asia hubs. And so we saw people working from home out of those locations pretty early on. That I think has been useful to companies like us in at least being able to create the playbook a little bit for how to handle this crisis.”
On Doing the Right Thing
“Our associates are beginning to come back to work in offices. So we’re seeing kind of the beginning, middle, and hopefully tail of this crisis at different points around the world…”
“We haven’t furloughed anybody. And so in our thousands of stores around the world we’re continuing to pay people a wage and allow them to continue to live, continue their livelihood, even though they’re not showing up to work.”
On Consumer Needs & Economic Recession
“There’s obviously a big uptake in purchasing of essentials, food and basics, and obviously a lot of cleaning and sanitation products, and so on. So they’re seeing big upticks in those sales, but they’re seeing apparel sales drop.”
On Looking Beyond COVID-19
“I am quite certain that we will see winners and losers coming out of this. I think that we will see stronger companies that have perhaps been more conservatively managed and have deeper pockets are going to come out of this in a stronger, relative, competitive position than others.”
On the Changing Competitive Landscape
“I do expect that we’ll see, unfortunately, some bankruptcies in the retail sector as a result of this. I would say with all of these shifts going on, and obviously the changing roles of channels and so on, is something that I spend quite a bit of time thinking about.”
On Consumers & Environmental Impact
“I think you’re beginning to see consumers really having some understanding of the environmental impact, particularly of fast fashion, right? An industry that’s sort of set up to produce things that you wear maybe two or three times and throw away. And that are often made out of materials that have a significant environmental impact. And those then go into landfill.”
On Big Data in the Fashion Industry
“I think machine learning and big data certainly has a very big role to play in the apparel industry. I think that one of the things that big data can help us to do is to make sure that we are making the right amount of product, that we are having the right size, right color, right style in the right store, right place at the right time for the consumer who wants it.”
On Customer Personalization
“I’m fascinated by Stitch Fix, which is a growing emerging player in the apparel market that develops really deep database insights into their shoppers and delivers custom packages to their several million consumers of basically handpicked outfits and pieces of apparel.”
On Amazon’s Influence
“I think Amazon is very, very good – they’re world class at some things. They’re not good at everything. I would say they are world class at transactions, right? And it’s the very transaction … I find myself using Amazon in a very transactional fashion. That’s challenging for brands because Amazon is not a great place to tell stories about your brand.”
On “To Amazon or Not To Amazon?”
“We’ve made the decision to not be on Amazon. And that comes down to the power of the brand, the availability of the brand in other channels. And also the ability, I would say, to be able to police Amazon, because it does require a significant amount of resource just to manage that channel, manage the resellers on it, manage what they’re selling, and try and keep some differentiation between the product line that you might find on Amazon and the product line that you might find in other places.”
On Social Media Stories
“I’ve mentioned, of course, Instagram, which has been a fabulous storytelling platform for the brands is now enabling eCommerce through the Instagram platform. And that’s something that, for example Timberland is working on right now.”
On the Power of Storytelling
“Why does storytelling matter? Why should brands tell their stories? I mean, they think it’s because stories are the way we connect with others. Our brains I think are really hardwired to remember and respond to stories. And our emotional response to stories is much higher than it is to other ways of communicating.”
On Keeping Stories Simple & Effective
“The art of storytelling for brands is in kind of being able to create an open story that has emotionally compelling elements, has human elements, but at the same time has a kind of cost simplicity that people can understand and remember, but that openness that allows consumers to build that story as well.
One of our brands, JanSport, just launched a TikTok campaign a week or so ago around COVID-19, where they’re giving away 10,000 backpacks with food and supplies and they’re doing that by giving one away for each video that someone creates sharing what’s in their home backpack.”
On User-Generated Content
“I think it is a powerful way of involving consumers in the storytelling about the brand. If you go into Instagram, there’s all those 23 million posts with the hashtag Vans. And the massive majority of those are not brand created, right? That’s created by our consumers who are telling their own stories and the role that Vans plays in their life. And some of the values that they’re espousing, some of the values of creativity and independence and weirdness sometimes, right?—that’s what Vans stands for.”
Today’s Guest – Leo Griffin
Chief Digital Officer, VF Corporation
Leo is a growth-focused executive with extensive leadership, marketing, strategy, finance and M&A experience in technology, media and consumer sectors. If you would like to connect with Leo you can find him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Your Host – Bernard May
CEO & President, National Positions
Bernard has been leading the charge at the award-winning National Positions for over 15 years, headquartered in Westlake Village, CA. Bernard’s expertise has also been highlighted by the Inc. 500, Forbes, LA Business Journal, and many more.