Pam Kaufman had barely settled in at the Gap when a music producer named Freddy Wexler got her on FaceTime. He’d just formed a boy band: five guys, brand new, no audience yet. Did the Gap want in from the beginning? It did.
So the Gap is now in the boy band business. The band, Just Your Type, will tour malls, meet fans inside Gap stores, star in a docuseries the company is co-producing, and design their own clothing line. Kaufman’s title is Chief Entertainment Officer. CEO Richard Dickson, who led the Barbie revival at Mattel, calls the strategy “fashiontainment.”
My first reaction was skepticism. It looked like borrowed interest: a brand renting the popularity of people who have plenty of their own.
