Road to Brandweek: Vans' Kristin Harrer on Agility

Whether you’re an old-school brand keeping it real or a Gen Z brand just trying to “keep it 100” during the pandemic’s social distance, authenticity still matters to brands growing with their consumers. Vans' #OffTheWall approach to brand-building uses art and creative self-expression to keep its 55-year-old purpose feeling younger than its years. Kristin Harrer, the former Dollar Shave Club chief marketer who took the CMO role at Vans in April, joins the Brandweek virtual lineup Sept. 20-24 to discuss Vans’ one-on-one relationships with consumers and the authentic experiences it provides them, even amid Covid-19. Ahead of the event, Adweek spoke with Harrer about marketing around the pandemic, ways recent events have influenced the brand’s approach and giving a voice to all communities within its consumer base. Adweek: This year has brought unprecedented challenges for marketers. What’s been the hardest lift for you, and how are you getting through it?Kristin Harrer: Even before the pandemic started, [parent company] VF and Vans were focused on driving transformative digital thinking into every aspect of our business as a means of connecting more deeply with our consumer base. From a marketing POV at Vans specifically, we have leaned heavily into using the power of digital to do what we’ve always done—supporting creatives and creative communities—but now faster and at a global scale. A good example of this is our 2021 brand campaign called “This Is an Ad for Creativity.” Given the unprecedented amount of uncertainty that Covid-19 has brought into our lives, we wanted to use our ad budget to put the spotlight on the creatives and give their work a platform to be seen. To that end, we took the budget that would have otherwise been used to produce an ad campaign and instead gave it to 80 artists from around the world who were impacted during the pandemic. It was the right time to uplift and support creative talent and diverse voices who had the inherent power to inspire all of us during a time when we needed it most. What lessons do you think the marketing and advertising industry will take from this period? What changes has the pandemic accelerated?Well, clearly the marketing and advertising community got a crash course in how to accelerate a digital offense and build one-to-one relationships with consumers to serve them better. Beyond creating a consumer journey that delivers what consumers want exactly when they want it, I think the bigger, more important lesson we all learned was the importance of being agile. It’s imperative that brands are able to act fast now more than ever—and we not only have to build that capability and capacity internally, but we have to protect it. While necessary and helpful to run the business, sometimes our own marketing processes can prevent us from anticipating and leading culture when the world shifts overnight. The 2021 campaign ‘This Is an Ad for Creativity’ gave creatives a platform for their work. An example of Vans' agility in practice over the last year was our “Foot the Bill” initiative to help small businesses across the country navigate the impact of Covid-19. The campaign itself was executed in a week from concept to launch. Each small business that was selected to participate in the FTB initiative—think skate and specialty shops, music venues, restaurants, art galleries, etc,—designed a Vans shoe and T-shirt to be offered for sale on Vans.com/footthebill as a way to raise awareness and support for their business in their local community. Using the Vans Customs platform, consumers were able to further customize and purchase each business' design. We ended up producing close to 1,000 pairs of Custom Vans shoes and around 250 T-shirts per partner. Overall, Vans committed to contributing to approximately $4 million to support over 160 small businesses during the months that Covid-19 emerged. Given that we’re a brand that has always stood by and supported local communities, we’re pretty proud of that impact and how fast we were able to move to make it happen. The pandemic coincided with a period of great social change and awareness. How have you addressed this in your marketing, and how has it changed how you market to your audience? (Vans’ Pride campaign featuring young LGBTQ+ artists seemed to speak directly to some of consumers’ concerns about the brand.)Vans is an inclusive brand by nature. We started by serving the underserved skate community in the '70s and never really looked back. To this day, our mission is to fuel creative self-expression communities around the world. Oftentimes we find ourselves going back to our roots of finding the creative communities that have been forgotten, ignored or overlooked by society and the world at large, and we do our best to lift up their voices. The “Together as Ourselves” work we did for Pride and LGBTQ+ youth this year serves as a good example of our mission at work. In our Americas region, we partnered with four creative minds that also happen to be part of the LGBTQ+ community—skater and photographer Sam McGuire; musician, singer and songwriter Serena Isioma; painter and printmaker Mich Miller and multifaceted artist, poet and dancer Tyris Winter. In addition to telling their stories, we also donated $200,000 to four different LGBTQ+ organizations around the world. In North America, we supported GLSEN, which works to cultivate a safe and supportive school environment for all students regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Globally, we also supported Casa 1, Where Love is Illegal and Tokyo Rainbow Pride. For the ‘Together as Ourselves’ Pride campaign, Vans partnered with four creative minds: (From left) Mich Miller, Serena Isioma, Sam McGuire and Tyris Winter. So, while we’re a brand that’s truly open to anyone, we’re also not for everyone—and that’s OK. We know who we are, and we’re clear about what we stand for. And that authenticity differentiates us and gives us credibility with the creative voices we want to uplift the most. How has your sector changed during this time, and how has that affected your marketing? Where have you seen wins for the marketing industry this year? The private sector is increasingly who youth looks to as a driver for change, and there is an expectation that their favorite brands will use their platform to raise awareness for good. It’s no longer enough for brands to stand by on the sidelines. We have to stand up and stand alongside our consumers on the issues that are aligned to our mutual values. At Vans, we care deeply about inclusivity, connectedness and self-expression, so if an issue arises that collides with these values, you can bet we’ll have something to say about it. A good example is the work we did for the Asian and Pacific Islander community earlier this spring to stop Asian hate. We partnered with Get Lit—Words Ignite, an L.A.-based nonprofit fighting to empower youth and inspire communities through poetry, to launch a campaign in May for Mental Health Awareness Month called “We Will Be Louder.” The campaign launched on TikTok to celebrate the work of spoken word artists Gordon Ip, Jelina Hendrickson, Della Dragon and Afra Alam, all of whom shared poems rooted in their experience navigating mental health within the context of their own cultural heritage, united by a singular call for an end to the hate crimes that continue to impact their communities and families. It brought me to tears the first time I saw it. That’s how I knew we were doing the right thing. What excites you about the next 12 months?Given that I’ve only been at Vans for four months, I am genuinely excited to continue my learning, listening and leading journey at Vans by steeping myself in our culture, our history, our heritage and bringing that to life as much as humanly possible for our employees and our consumers. At some point over the next year, I look forward to getting back out into the world to visit our global teams, athletes, artists and consumers on the ground across Asia and Europe, and of course hitting the road in the RV with Steve Van Doren and his team right here at home in the U.S. There’s really no better way to understand the brand than by flipping burgers at barbecues and doing a few store and skate park visits with Steve and his team. Have I mentioned that I love my job? Beyond that, I am pretty stoked for a few events we have coming up in the back half of the calendar year. First, Vans Checkerboard Day will take place in November and combines creativity with a global charitable giveback program. As we continue to battle Covid in communities around the world, we want to offer a point of digital creative inspiration by getting people involved in virtual creative activities that also unite them with their communities. We believe that creativity is an essential part of being human and want everyone to be able to find an outlet to express themselves through this effort, especially in a year where inspiration matters so much. Since Vans Checkerboard Day was established in 2019, the global initiative has raised and donated more than $2 million to nonprofits across the world. And second, the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing. Beyond the skate and creative cultures that are endemic to Vans, the work we do with the global surf community is very compelling to me personally. I am someone who derives a lot of energy from traveling and spending time in nature. I learned to surf, albeit not well, in the winter, in the snow on the Oregon coast and have done a handful of destination surf trips to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Bali and Hawaii. While I wouldn’t call myself a surfer, per se, I do really love the sport, the culture and the people. So, personally, I am very much looking forward to the VTCS coming up at the end of the year on Oahu. We revolutionized the format last year and look forward to pushing the boundaries even more this year so that more people can engage with the event if they can’t be there in person. Stay tuned. In an increasingly direct-to-consumer market, connecting with consumers is more important than ever. How are you doing that in the current climate?From Paul Van Doren having the vision to open his own direct-to-consumer stores in the '60s—yes, the 1960s—to our global fleet of stores around the world today, our retail locations and our world-class store associates continue to be the primary way that we engage brand loyalists, newcomers and everyone in between. Our retail locations are the best place, hands down, to experience our core brand pillars of action sports, art, music and street culture. If you were to visit one of our flagship stores in downtown L.A., Oxford Street in London, Shanghai, Seoul or Tokyo, or one of our House of Vans locations in Chicago or Mexico City, you would see that the focus is about deepening our connection with consumers through a variety of brand experiences aligned to our core pillars versus driving pure transaction and sell-through. Whether it’s a DIY Vans Customs station, a girls' skate clinic or a live DJ session, it’s all grounded in our mission to enable creative self-expression for consumers all over the world. Beyond our owned retail and HOV doors, grassroots events have always been and continue to be an extremely important part of the brand portfolio. From our early days on the Warped Tour to today where we’re hosting events on the ground in local communities and finding ways to digitize them so more people can participate or tune in, grassroots events remain a core part of who we are—even in the age of Covid. Stay tuned for some fun stuff coming on that front—digitizing events through various gaming platforms to reinventing action sports competition formats so more people can watch and engage, we are doing what we can to up the ante on what events means when we’re alone together. What’s one thing you wish more consumers knew about your brand?We aren’t a shoe company. We’re a people company that makes shoes. Taking a people-first approach has always been and will remain a top priority. We remain committed to this through a variety of donation programs and initiatives that are ongoing throughout the year and often agile and reactive to what’s happening in the world. For example, when the pandemic hit, our immediate focus wasn’t on what it meant for our business, but what did it mean for our people—both internally and externally—as part of the global Vans family. With that in mind, in addition to the “Foot the Bill” initiative that I mentioned earlier, we’ve donated more than 24,000 Vans shoes to health providers. We partnered with organizations to provide shoelaces and canvas to make face masks and shields that would otherwise be used in making our shoes. How Vans Authentically Uplifts Communities to Strengthen Brand Relationships

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Road to Brandweek: Vans' Kristin Harrer on Agility During the Pandemic

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