Josh Rubin and Evan Orensten are two big voices in digital culture. Highly creative minds who happen to also run one of the web’s most influential voices on fashion, style and culture called Cool Hunting. I ran my first campaign on Cool Hunting with Philips back in 2005, a promotion of their Ambilight TV. Fortunately, strategies around Cool Hunting have come along way since then and its good to see them making an appearance on the high street through their amazing partnership with Gap.
Gap to me, are a traditional brand. They haven’t made many digital inroads and I don’t think they have been set-up to be a digitally driven retail player. However, the incredibly smart move to get Cool Hunting on board has pushed them forward with two gigantic steps.
The first step is to tie in with a massive online influencer and within the area of fashion/style, they don’t come much bigger than Josh at Cool Hunting. What this has done for them is generate a huge amount of coverage, both mainstream news and online cultural news. Something that Gap would have struggled to do on their own, apart from their obvious and slightly sad logo debacle. Sadly, Gap’s lack of knowledge about online continues as there is no reference to the Cool Hunting partnership (as far as I can see) within their gap.com site.
The second step is to position themselves away from chinos, boring white shirts and badly fitting jeans. The usage of the Cool Hunting name and Josh’s eye for great products has meant that Gap have developed an interesting alternative string to their bow. Something that people wouldn’t have allowed them credibility for if they had simply said “we are going to do a Gap concept store”.
I think this marks a new age for marketing. Taking really genuine online influencers, people who have been crafting for years on their blogs, their websites and most importantly their audiences, and developing an offering alongside them to push into the more real space such as the high street, but potentially into theatres, movie screens, brand design etc.
