Wrangler was present at Super Bowl LVIII in February, but not with a $7 million commercial buy: Instead, a pair of the brand’s Cowboy Cut jeans were worn by Post Malone as the rapper-turned-country star sang “America the Beautiful” before kickoff.
Leaving that type of cultural impact has been key to Wrangler’s marketing strategy in recent years, especially since Lil Nas X name-dropped the brand in global smash “Old Town Road,” from 2019, and helped kick off a larger Western trend (or “yeehaw agenda”) in fashion. (For its part, Wrangler tapped into the song’s popularity with an innovative mobile experience.)
Since then, Wrangler has teamed up with country musicians and cultural forces like Barbie, “Twisters” and Buffalo Trace bourbon and built positive momentum for its brand: Wrangler saw global revenue increase 1% year over year last quarter, per the most recent earnings report from parent company Kontoor Brands, which raised its full-year outlook.
To keep the ball rolling, Wrangler this week will launch its first new global advertising campaign since 2021. “Good Mornings Make for Better Days,” crafted by Wrangler’s in-house marketing and creative teams in collaboration with Ridley Scott Associates, will run across streaming video, social media, audio and TV.
A 30-second hero ad showcases customers and employees outfitted in vintage and seasonal Wrangler gear while enjoying breakfast at an old-school diner. When a jukebox playing ’70s hit “Jeans On” starts skipping, a man in boots and a cowboy hat gives it a line-dance kick — like a country-western Fonzie — before riding off into the sunrise in a pickup truck.
The campaign is steeped in Wrangler’s Western heritage and values around hard work, optimism, courage and taking on the day, explained John Meagher, vice president of global brand marketing.
“We all put our jeans on one leg at a time,” Meagher said. “Wrangler has always been there for hard-working men and women who get up and do whatever they need to do, and do it with confidence. We just wanted to really shine a light on and focus on that.”
Authentic cultural connections
“Good Mornings Make for Better Days” also sees Wrangler return to national broadcast TV and will kick off during the Sunday Night Football game between the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans on Sept. 15. The ad will run during a range of NFL and college football games, along with during the final season of Paramount’s “Yellowstone.”
“[Sports] is an area that we’re focusing on from a media perspective as well as a partnerships perspective to try to generate awareness across new consumers,” Meagher said.
To that end, Wrangler has signed name, image and likeness (NIL) partnerships with college athletes and, in a natural fit, is a sponsor of the Dallas Cowboys. Activating around sports allows Wrangler to engage a male consumer base for which sports is a passion and a key source of media consumption, especially as cord-cutting and the migration to streaming continues.
“Live sports, especially the NFL, gives us that broad-based awareness that hits everyone at once, like cable and network television used to do,” Meagher said.
For Wrangler, music acts as a second cultural pillar around which to market. Country music, specifically, has been part of the brand’s DNA for decades, spanning partnerships with legends like George Strait and contemporary stars Cody Johnson and Lainey Wilson that have allowed Wrangler to engage its core consumers and extend into new audiences.
“The strategy has evolved somewhat [but] country music is still very much at the front and center of how we activate,” Meagher said. “We’ve got a core group [of ambassadors] now, but we’ll look at what different audiences we want to engage with through our artists, as well as activating through festivals.”
Authenticity remains a watchword for marketers, and Wrangler is no different. Being true to its Western roots put the brand in position to seamlessly capitalize on trends in fashion and music, putting it in a better position than brands that try to chase trends.
“You could call it luck, but I think it’s been good planning,” Meagher explained. “Even when we do collaborations with brands, we always want to make sure that there is a level of authenticity to the collaboration… We’re not trying to be someone we’re not.”
Balancing brand building and performance
The advertising industry at large has faced a pendulum swing from performance marketing back to brand-building basics that sees marketers better balancing short- and long-term needs. Wrangler, as an apparel brand with both wholesale and direct-to-consumer sales, is no different.
“Marketing leadership has really been balancing our brand equity with short-term demand creation, and it’s a constant push and pull,” Meagher said. “My remit is to make sure that this brand stays strong into the future, and we remain the icon in America that we are.”
To do so, Wrangler balances its channel mix throughout the funnel, from streaming video and audio at the top, through mid-funnel tactics that build interest and consideration like paid social and an influencer program, down to lower-funnel tactics driving conversion like search and display. The brand also remains committed to radio as a way to reach core consumers on their commutes to job sites.
“I wouldn’t say there’s a silver bullet,” Meagher said. “I don’t think we’ve solved it, and I’m not sure any brands have solved it, but I do think we’ve got a really good model in place that is making sure we’re taking advantage of everything.”
Increasingly, taking advantage of all channels means investing in retail media, a space that is expected to grow 13.7% year over year to reach $153.3 billion in 2024. The proliferation and increased sophistication of retail media offerings by Walmart, Target and Amazon gives Wrangler another — if not fundamentally different — way to maximize conversions.
“Strategically, I think it’s a similar approach — the media is just sitting in a different place, like it might be a display ad on Amazon or paid search on Walmart or Google search,” Meagher explained. “They’re all different tactics that are doing similar jobs, just converting where the consumer wants to convert.
“Our brand has so many consumers with so many different needs, and I think that’s one of the beauties of Wrangler,” the exec continued. “It’s also one of the complexities of it: making sure that we understand who our consumer is and meet them where they are.”
