Relevance is a sport: Gap’s Richard Dickson on swinging, missing, and winning

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**Richard Dickson** (1:44)
To some extent, what happened to Gap? We got spooked with some of the swings and ultimately, it became very safe and therefore not very interesting.
So to get people interested, you have to be interesting.
Our cat's eye campaign. We were trending number one on TikTok within 24 hours. I mean, if we had said three years ago, do you think Gap brand is going to be trending on TikTok, let alone trending as number one on search? No one would ever believe that. If we're not swinging, we're never going to hit.

**Bob Safian** (2:25)
That's Richard Dickson, CEO of Gap Inc., the business housing, Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Athleta. I sat down with Richard at the Ken Lyons advertising festival in France to understand how he's applying a playbook he used at Mattel to the challenges at Gap, the secret he says is leaning into pop culture. Richard talks about why Sydney Sweeney's viral jeans ad was surprisingly good for the industry, even though it didn't come from the Gap, and why he tracks brand love metrics on a dashboard every day.
Plus, timely lessons around the relationship between profit and social purpose, the need to keep taking risks after failure and more. So let's get to it. I'm Bob Safian and this is Rapid Response.
I'm Bob Safian, I'm here with Richard Dickson, the CEO of Gap. Thanks for being here.

**Richard Dickson** (3:25)
Bob, it's good to be here.

**Bob Safian** (3:26)
Before Gap, you were at Mattel, when Barbie was a little tarnished and then brought her into her glory. You went to Gap, also on a little bit of a lull.
Do you like the turnaround of taking an iconic brand to someplace else?

**Richard Dickson** (3:43)
It seems I like that pain, I like that pain, yeah.
Actually, it is true, I love iconic brands that had a breakthrough, and then ultimately through their lifespan had peaks and pits. I think Barbie is a great example of that. There are others and certainly the Gap story is one of them as well.

**Bob Safian** (4:02)
Do you think about it as renovation? Do you think about it as restarting, refounding?

**Richard Dickson** (4:08)
I think about it as revitalization.
And to the extent that you have to study a brand's history, ultimately, what made it great to begin with? Why was it interesting? Why were people interested?

**Bob Safian** (4:21)
To find that core again?

**Richard Dickson** (4:22)
To find the essence, the sort of what was the breakthrough that inspired such success?
And then along the way with brands, certainly that I've been a part of, they're generational. And so they go through trials and tribulations and a lot of, let's say, outside influences that change the brand. But ultimately, at some point, those brands either lose their way or reinvent themselves to be relevant. And in the case of what I have found interesting, it's getting involved in brands that arguably have lost their way and need to find that revitalized narrative to be relevant again. And I think for me, you know, my experience in doing that has a methodology, but it's really about the execution of that methodology that makes the success or doesn't.

**Bob Safian** (5:07)
Well, so far, the success has been strong. You've had nine quarters of positive sales, right? Market value is up to eight and a half billion dollars. And the driver that you've pointed to connecting all this is pop culture, which is for a lot of business people seems kind of soft.