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Gen-Z, Millennial Opps: Vans taps first-ever CMO amid significant digital spend increase (Score 65)

Effective April 2021, Dollar Shave Club, Harrer will initially focus on driving deeper, more authentic consumer relationships and brand experiences for Vans via retail, brand and digital. She will also spearhead the brand's ongoing digital transformation, which I expect to lead to continued higher digital spend.

Vans recently committed to a new sustainability goal, promising to make its shoes' core materials 100% regenerative, responsibly sourced, renewable or recycled by 2030. This effort will appeal to its Gen-Z/millennial target demographic since this audience is more likely to spend money on sustainably sourced products.

The company also tends to partner with pop culture icons on limited-time shoe products; for example, Vans teamed up with Foo Fighters earlier in April 2021 for on a merch line that will support the Jensen Guitar & Music Company in CA.

So far this year, Pathmatics reports Vans has spent roughly $3.4m on digital ads, more than double the roughly $1.6m it spent within the same 2020 timeframe. The company's estimated full-year 2020 spend nearly tripled to $14.2m from that of $5.7m in 2019. Vans has earned ~689m digital impressions YTD via Instagram (55%), desktop display (34%), Facebook (5%), desktop video (4%) and mobile display (2%) ads. Top site destinations for this year's desktop display ads have included zillow.com (21%), listenonrepeat.com, thesaurus.com, stack.com and reddit.com.

Vans primarily targets Gen-Z and millennials, so it may make forays into additional digital channels such as OTT and/or podcast under its new CMO. According to Kantar data, the brand also invests significantly in print media via magazines.

Agency & martech readers - Since Harrer is Vans's first-ever CMO, she's especially likely to seek new agency partners for it. Right now, the brand has an in-house media team and also receives media planning assistance from Starcom IL. Thus, I expect you'll have the best luck offering PR, creative, digital analytics and/or social media management services.