How Gap Became Cool Again with Fabiola Torres | Live from the Tubi Cabana at Cannes Lions

0:00But you want to be the cool kid in the classroom. And if you want to be the cool kid in the classroom, you don't have to claim to be the cool kid. You just have to earn it. So the thing is how you actually play and when do you become like not retro but modern and not old but new. And how do you actually measure? That's the reason we featured Cat's Eye. They were between 17 to 21 years old. They never heard about Milkshake and it had like 800 million impressions.

0:30Jim Stengel:Hi, I'm Jim Stengel. I've helped hundreds of major brands discover and activate their purpose. Because when a brand's purpose is clear, compelling, and authentic, profit naturally follows. Each week, I welcome the CMOs, the chief marketing officers of your favorite brands, to speak to how their job is so much more than marketing. These leaders share their inspiration and challenges, along with how they try to build a full, healthy, and happy life in and out of the office. And it's that energy that reaches everyone they touch. And we're glad you're here to feel that energy and to learn from these remarkable leaders.

1:04Jim Stengel:So here we go. Welcome to a special bonus episode as we're continuing our series of conversations captured at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last month in the south of France. This one comes from the Tubi Cabana, where I had the opportunity to sit down in front of a live audience with Fabiola Torres, Chief Marketing Officer of Gap. Even with the hot summer sun toasting us and a stiff breeze from the sea, Fabi gave a cool tutorial on brand building. Over the past two years, Fabiola has helped lead one of the most talked about brand revitalizations in marketing. After leadership roles at Nike, where she spent almost 19 years, Apple and PepsiCo, Fabi joined Gap in May 2024 to help reimagine it for a new generation.

1:48Jim Stengel:With the incredible view of the Mediterranean behind us, tune in as Fabi and I dive into what it really takes to turn around a legacy brand and why great partnerships with talent begin with relationships, not transactions. This is my conversation with a CMO who loves to find new and interesting ways to be creative. Here's Fabi. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. How's everyone doing? Day one of Cannes. So far, so good. Have you met anyone extraordinary other than my guest so far? Yeah? Well, we have Fabi Torres here, GAP's CMO. One of the most extraordinary brand renewals I think we've seen in a long time.

2:33Jim Stengel:And we're going to talk about that. But the first thing I want to do is welcome, Fabi, to join us on day one of Cannes. You are on stage in the Palais later today, right? Yes. So what are you doing? Judging. Young Lions. Young Lions, yeah. Okay. So why do you like doing that? Well, I got a really interesting invitation, and it's always good to see new work, creative work, and young creative people. So I'm super, super excited and vested to be there with them. Outstanding. Now, do you have any work submitted this year for Lions? Yes, we're shortlisted. Excellent. Congratulations. Thank you. So what is the work that we're shortlisted?

3:11It's Better in Denim with Cat's Eye. I don't know if anybody heard about it. Yeah.

3:17Jim Stengel:Congratulations on all of that. How many Cannes Lions have you been to? This is my fourth. Fourth, okay. Why do you enjoy it? It's just seeing old friends, meeting new friends, seeing the work. I think a lot of us have so many meetings and so many commitments that sometimes we forget to see the work. So I will invite you to see the work to make sure that we are aware of globally what is being done and how we set the bar higher. Yeah, outstanding. Now, I want to get right into your career path is just amazing. So I assume everyone in the audience loves building brands or you wouldn't be here. So your career path is, it's like a dream.

3:59Jim Stengel:You have Nike for 18, 19 years, right? Apple following that. Pepsi, now Gap. And I've heard you say when you arrived at Gap, you felt like it was home. Yes. Can you say more about that? Well, you know, Gap has been a beloved brand for everyone, for every generation. And as my CEO says all the time, the brand was resting for a while. So when you feel like you can add value, you can meet the team where they are and feel like you can help to make it to the next level and bring it back. I didn't know at that time if it was possible, but I'm a little bit of a risk taker. I like the challenges and I love how Richard Dixon was bringing such a new perspective as a brand guy.

4:53And it felt like I was the right fit.

4:58Jim Stengel:Yeah, so good. Now, you've had, obviously, you've had an impact in every role you've had at Nike, Apple, Gap. But it seems like, at least to me as an outsider, the impact you're having on Gap is sort of transcendent. I would say it's larger than the one you've had at those other companies. Correct. So am I right in that? Yes. I think it's the new era of communication as well. Yes, the impact of social media and the instant gratification. Back in the day when I started my career at Nike, we did amazing creative. I was there for four World Cups, three Olympics. We did the first women's campaign and different things.

5:39Just the output is different because of the variety today. Social media and all the things. TikTok just takes you to the next level. But I love what I do today, and I wouldn't change it.

5:53Jim Stengel:Tell me about the brand is healthier, business is healthier, your margins are higher. So it is a classic brand turnaround. I was in a panel earlier this morning where someone said there is no marketing playbook anymore. but there has been a playbook for this. So could you walk us through a little bit about your arrival at Gap? What has happened? What are the stages of this turnaround? What were the major drivers? So tell us that story. Well, it sounds like a very old marketing talk, but I'm going to tell you for a second. It was a playbook. It is a playbook. And we started by fixing the fundamentals and accepting that we were doing something wrong.

6:35And it's just a realization of the current team that we needed to work together versus in silos. And when I arrive, it's always about 360. It's always about obsessing the consumer that we're focusing on the wrong consumer. The consumer is aging. And it doesn't matter if you're actually aging, but your mindset needs to be young. You have to be looking to someone that is inspired and aspired to be. So I was coming from a world of really being consumer centric and we started without work. And then we started being like treating Gap as a persona. And when you're treating your brand as a persona, it has a seat on the table and it's more fun for everyone.

7:18And we started kind of building creative capabilities internally as well. Social media team. I came from a world that's been managed internally. So we love our agency partners and it's a combination of both. Yeah.

7:35Jim Stengel:Was there a time in this turnaround where you knew it was tipping? Was it a piece of work? Was it an initiative? Was it a collection? When did you realize that, OK, the ship is turning? Cat's eye. I think it's, you know, and it wasn't just us. It was the consumer right away voting for us, the audience voting for us. It was a huge risk for us because during that time, Cat's Eye was not really known. So it was right after the Academy, they just released a new single, but we decided that it has to be like a generational song. So we pick Milkshake, which is a 21-year-old song. And it's when you actually see nodding heads and saying like smiling, I remember that song, I can't connect.

8:26I may not know these girls versus Gen Z, Gen Alpha. They love these girls. They knew they followed the Netflix show and everything. So our goal was connecting to at least two audiences. We need to recruit Gen Z and then retain millennials. And when you have that goal, and again, it may sound boring, but how do you make it relevant and exciting and moving? And when I personally saw the set, we put out two huge sets. And I said, this has to be the best one yet.

8:58Jim Stengel:Now, when we were speaking one-on-one about two weeks ago, getting to know each other about preparing for this, I asked you, what is not talked about enough when you were interviewed? Because your brand is pretty well covered. And you said to me very quickly, relationship with talent. Correct. And I quickly said, well, what do you mean by that? When you say talent, how broadly are you describing that? So could you go there and talk about the relationship with talent at Gap and why you think that's not addressed enough in our discussions? Well, you know, I grew up professionally at Nike and they taught us internally that you have to treat your athlete like your family.

9:41That means you're not a fan, you're not their manager, you're family. and I think when you come to a brand like Gap when we talk to music talent or entertainers they're famous already or they will become famous it's about meeting them in the right place but treating them as family I'm coming from a shoot right now something is cooking for fall and when we met the girls when we met John Miko when we met Troye Sivan it's about welcoming them to the family and making sure that they're comfortable We push them a little bit. They push us a little bit. We open the creative conversation to have a little bit of their point of view.

10:23Social is key for them, whether comfortable or not comfortable. It is a true relationship. I saw the girls at Coachella, and they run down to give me a hug. And it feels so good because it's just we, it's a relationship. And they know that we're there for them anytime they need us.

10:41Jim Stengel:How is it different working with talent than your agencies? I hear from creators a lot that the briefs they get are not very inspiring, that they're a little bit too hands-on, a little bit too control-oriented. So when you brief a creator for some work, how do you treat that differently than you would a traditional ad? Well, I mean, first, my team is super young. Like my head of influencer, she has 50 ,000 followers. So she is a creator. So when you have somebody like understands that world, they talk the same language. They have a conversation like any other peer and they start building the brief together.

11:22We write the brief. Sometimes it doesn't fit. You can throw it away or it's the perfect brief, but it's never really the perfect brief. It's a conversation. And we started with zero influencers. Right now we have 1300. It depends on what we're trying to do with them. Some of them is just products. Some of them are speakers. Some of them are brand ambassadors. Some of them are even creators and photographers or creators and videographers or creators and stylists. We really are surgical in terms of how we select them in the world of fashion. And we're living in the world of everyday fashion. We're very democratic and inclusive, but we don't want to be disappearing or becoming wallpaper.

12:06We want to be distinctive.

12:09Jim Stengel:So you just came from a shoot. Can you tell us anything about that? No. I was actually here a year ago in this stage when we just shot Kasai. And I'm coming from the fall campaign. We shot two talent. I can give you that. It's not a group. It's two main talent. And we're meeting them in the right point of their careers, I would say. So it will be different. A lot of brands are dancing right now. So we're going to see what others act. When you go to a shoot, what do you do? How involved do you get? It depends on who you ask, but if you ask me, I'm very involved. If you ask my creative director, he's like, I wish he was not that involved.

12:58I think it's a contribution of a lot of voices, a few voices, sorry, not a lot of voices. I sit in the back, my creative director and the agency creative director sits in the front, but I send all the notes. I obsess the expression, the movement and the styling. They can obsess the creative direction that we approve already in the storyboarding and everything. For me, it's a representation and the mood of the brand and the emotional thing of the brand. Sometimes it's a little bit intangible. we don't want to shoot happy people we want to shoot confidence and uplifting so that's a little bit of the difference and i go to every single shoot and i'm not quiet but i'm not the loudest voice how many shoots a year we do eight shoots a year yeah that's a lot of time

13:53Jim Stengel:do you take your team with you use it as a team building exercise well we have to we spend so many hours together. And the thing is that the tier one campaigns is three or four years, but then we shoot collaborations. I don't know if you saw our Victoria Beckham collaboration. We're launching a new one in two months. We're shooting in Paris next week. So it depends on the tiering. And I don't go to all the collaborations, but some. You're all very engaged in this conversation, I can tell. I'm going to come to you with some questions in a bit. So you might want to think about where you want to take the conversation.

14:31Jim Stengel:But I want to move to another area, which I think is another remarkable thing about your career. You worked at every brand I think you've worked on has been a multi-generational brand. I would say Apple is, Nike, Pepsi, and now Gap. That's not easy to do and retain a point of view and a unique voice. So I think all of us as brand builders want a large audience, but we have a lot of discussion in our business about target audiences and prime prospects and point of entry consumers. So what have you learned about building a brand that is multi-generational and still retains a voice, a unique voice?

15:14Well, there's a few things. As I said before, you always try to be or treat this brand as a persona, but you want to be the cool kid in the classroom. And if you want to be the cool kid in the classroom, you don't have to claim to be the cool kid. You just have to earn it. And I used to joke at PepsiCo. I said, like, listen, we're like in the front seat right now. We're not cool. So how do you move back and back and back until the end of the road? And that happened to us at Gap. We're like, okay, nobody's talking about us. Nobody's talking to us. Nobody is actually mentioning in the chats, in social and everything.

15:52How do you make sure that we accelerate sitting in the back of the classroom? And the other thing is making sure that you have a recruit, retain, and reactivate strategy for that multi-generational consumer. And again, it sounds very methodical, but when you actually become the creative voice of that, you're going to recruit Gen Z through social media, TikTok. You're going to retain by making the best product offer. You're going to reactivate the gap lovers. How are you going to reactivate? Music is a unifier. It's a cultural unifier. And I think when you use music the right way, I work at Apple.

16:29We work together with Apple Music. And it's just amazing when you can create with music. If I put a 2001 song right now, I can guarantee you that 99 % of the audience right now will sing it. and even if you're like 18 today. So the thing is how you actually play and when do you become like not retro but modern and not old but new. And how do you actually measure? That's the reason we featured Cat's Eye. They were between 17 to 21 year old. They never heard about Milkshake. They never heard that Milkshake song. And it had like 800 million impressions. But they were so young. so then they couldn't stop singing it but dancing it what are the watch outs that you've discovered

17:17Jim Stengel:when you're on that path to build a multi-generational brand what are some of the things you have to avoid be careful about i think knowing your brand and really understanding the true dna of the brand there's a lot of new leaders in our organization that say i want to be like the gap in the 90s? And my answer is, no, thank you. We don't want to be that brand. Like, I think maybe it was the tip of the era, the best era of the brand. We want to be the brand of 2026. And some of them don't agree with me. But the thing is, is that when you when you're a current brand, I think the watch house is looking back too much.

18:00And I think the only way that I look back, we have amazing archives, we have amazing creative work, is to get you inspired to create something better, to create something current, and to create something surprising for the current generations. And the current generations is even us, is this era, is the 2026 multi-generational consumers. And it's not easy. It's not easy. We spend so much time doing that. But it's not about the creative content only. It's experiences at retail, your gap.com, your creators, the boys, the styling, everything is a 360. And when I came in, it was very vertical. It was only content.

18:40And you go to a store and it's pretty disappointing. And it's like, no, we have to take care of everything.

18:47Jim Stengel:You have three teenagers. I do. How do they help you be a better CMO? Well, I mean, they're honest. And as any Gen Z today, they're like, they don't talk bullshit. So it's like, really, they like, they like, when I moved from PepsiCo to Gap, my oldest came and said, why? Why are you doing this? It's like, it's not cool, man. It's not cool, especially after being at Beats and being at Nike and being like CM of energy drinks and all the action sports events and different things or product innovation. And I said, we'll see. We'll see. Now they're shoppers. Now they come to my shoots. Now they want to take pictures with talent and send it to their friends.

19:32So it's the best, I would say, honest input and insight at home because they've been with me my whole journey since they were on strollers and shooting with LeBron James or Kobe Bryant.

19:47Jim Stengel:That's a good childhood. Yes, yeah. So what other brands other than yours do they like? What are you learning from them about their affinity for brands? Well, they like small brands. I think what this world is, is about the most coveted. They're not too massive. They're not too generic. They're not too common brands. At least my kids, they like that. Not super high branded, big brands. But of course, they like the Apple phones, the headphones, everything. But it's just about who is talking to them. And it's about the content that speaks to them. And it was interesting, my youngest, he was 13, and he went to the shoot with me, and he knew about Cat's Eye because he watched the documentary and everything, the Academy.

20:37And then a few weeks later, he came and said, have you seen that it's viral? And I said, yes, of course, I know the numbers. But he was, like, shocked. And his friends, he talked to his friends, like, a few weeks later. And the friends were like, can I get a picture with your mom? And I said, like, no, they're like your friends. But it was just so interesting, the process and the thinking when you have something viral and it comes to their phone versus their mom telling them. It was super cool. It was the biggest, biggest surprise, biggest accomplishment from our team and our brand in the last decade or so, two decades.

21:15Jim Stengel:I'd like you to share with our audience, you're an experienced marketer, an experienced CMO. You're really thriving in your role now. What do you think are one or two characteristics today that are most critical for leaders of brands? Listen, I think don't ever stop being curious and don't ever stop networking and listening to other people. I have a lot of good friends in the industry that they're very honest with me because they know me for a long time. And we can have an open conversation. I have one in the back, is we have a very open conversation, what is right, what is wrong, what we're doing right or wrong.

21:56And when I hear compliments, it's like, OK, I know it's the right way because I know they're honest with me. And then listen to your team, listen to the young members, listen to the old members of the organization, because there's this truth, there's truth everywhere. We just have to filter and making sure I push the work. I have very high standards, but I love my team. I respect them. Sometimes I'm a little like a teacher, but I don't care because that's my legacy. And we're doing great, and I like to celebrate the work. I think it's curiosity, listen, network, and celebrate your work, even if it's very small.

22:38It just builds up to your team.

22:41Jim Stengel:Fabio, how would you describe the impact you've had on your organization? Every leader comes in and leaves some sort of imprint. So how is the organization different since you've joined at Gap? I'm a team builder, and I love to build teams and leave that legacy. I have my Nike chats. I have my Apple chats. I have my PepsiCo chats. I put together these teams chat with 140 people they never had that before they never had that transparency before we share where we are what we're doing all the time inspiration comes everywhere I think I've been way more open they used to work in silos I share I'm on the shoot and I share with my leaders and my peers what we're shooting.