As early as 2015, Kanye, who was interviewed, said ‘I’d like to be the Steve Jobs of Gap’, but now even if the dream comes true, for both Kanye and Gap, who are currently in dire straits, this situation may not be expected by anyone. arrive.
A few months ago, Kanye, who was forced to “resign” from the Internet, finally returned to social media recently after he was banned from accessing Instagram for 24 hours and cleaned up his personal posts due to his inappropriate remarks. The news is related to Yeezy Gap.
In the dynamic, Kanye not only “flattered” to Bob Martin, the current chairman and CEO of Gap, but also boasted about his achievements in joining Gap: “We made money by selling the ‘perfect black sweater’ priced at $80 each. Took $14 million…”
Kanye’s “call for credit” and his impatient request to meet with high-level executives are all reminiscent of the financial crisis that Gap experienced some time ago.
Gap, which thought it could turn the tide with Kanye, showed negative profit growth in its second quarter financial report in 2022. This poor performance directly led to the departure of CEO Sonia Syngal and was temporarily filled by Bob Martin, the current executive chairman of the board.
Sonia Syngal
After Kanye and Gap’s publicity campaign, although the cooperation did not achieve the success expected by both parties, for Kanye, with the blessing of his own influence and the exposure brought by his frequent upper body as a single product, he has done his best. It’s time to be a “spokesperson”.
On the 22nd, @yeezy’s first official account was created without warning, and the first content it released was a new round of YEEZY GAP ENGINEERED BY BALENCIAGA’s advertising visual blockbuster. The 50-second ad, directed by Thyago Sainte and creatively directed by Betsy Johnson, shows masked shoppers wearing the new season’s collaborations buying products.
Just as the popularity of the advertisement continued to ferment, Yeezy officially deleted this dynamic, and replaced it with a video of 9 virtual characters wearing the new series of clothing.
On the Yeezy official website where the account is connected, after clicking on it, there is a Video Game game interface, which can realize the display of different items by customizing the character change, and can also perform playful game operations.
Combining the single product for sale with the game, coupled with the characteristics of this tripartite joint name, this idea is exactly the same as the way Balenciaga 2021 autumn and winter series released and simultaneously launched the game “Afterworld: The Age of Tomorrow”, so many people speculate that this A propaganda act by Demna Gvasalia and Balenciaga.
YEEZY GAP ENGINEERED BY BALENCIAGA
BALENCIAGA
This is not only reminiscent of Kanye’s earlier move to register a trademark for YEEZUS, this time Kanye will not only start the operation of the physical store, but also use the development and launch of the game to enter the metaverse.
The online Kanye is constantly revitalized, and the most anticipated Yeezy Gap offline store has finally unveiled its mysterious veil.
The Pop-up held for the new product launch this time is located in the Gap flagship store in Times Square. It was remodeled by the team of Kanye and Demna Gvasalia from the outside to the inside of the store.
The billboard with the word “GAP” and its surroundings were replaced with dark colors, and the iconic model shape and white dove elements of the three-way joint venture were placed above in the form of a huge advertising curtain.
As the first Kanye to release a series in the official store after joining Gap, it naturally attracted a lot of fans and trend players to come and find out. Judging from the long queue at the store entrance, the popularity of this release has not diminished.
And as people lined up to enter the room, the furnishings inside surprised many people.
In such a huge store, stacks of single products for this sale are stacked in huge packaging bags. There is no single product classification, no size labeling, and even no trace of any layout at all, just like being directly from the store. It’s the same as when the truck is transported down, and people can only keep rummaging in the two rows of clothes piles, quite a sense of being in the Vintage market shopping for goods.
The sale site is naturally chaotic because of such a “performance art”-like scene arrangement. Consumers can only keep rummaging for their favorite items while throwing them aside. Such a chaotic way of sale also seems to echo the previous advertisement. Pile of clothes appearing in.
Although the display method of the goods is controversial, the visual installations in many parts of the interior and the overall dark design still have the strong personal style of Kanye and Demna.
Among them, the game devices synchronized with the online also attracted many people to experience.
From Gap wage earners to opening Pop-up in flagship stores around the world, Kanye once again proved his ambitions with his actions.
The “Spaceship” MV restores the scene when Kanye used to work at Gap
Although the Yeezy, Gap, Balenciaga tripartite co-branding and the earlier YZY Gap single product did not bring the expected benefits, but under the blessing of Kanye and based on the Gap price, the self-released silhouette jacket was released as a representative single product. After it came out, from star Icon to trendy players, there was a wave of dressing up from top to bottom.
Kourtney Kardashian
Yoon Ahn / Dua Lipa
With the release of YEEZY GAP ENGINEERED BY BALENCIAGA’s three-way cooperation series single product “Squeeze Toothpaste”, Justin Bieber, who is Kanye’s friend and Balenciaga’s spokesperson, has upper body joint single products from the concert scene to the daily watching. The spokesperson of the series walking.
Justin Bieber
Playboi Carti
Pusha T
With the release of a series of single products, from T-shirts to sweaters, while taking into account the seasonality, the uniquely recognizable elements such as “Gap” and white pigeons make the series of single products active in a lot of fashion bloggers and trend players In the control of , there is a great momentum of development of “Yeezy Gap for all”.
“Dove T-shirt”
“Dove Hoodie”
From the creation of Yeezy’s independent account, the development of the game, to the holding of offline Pop-ups, perhaps because of the financial predicament Gap is facing today, such publicity is enough to prove that Kanye attaches great importance to this sale. According to Kanye’s consistent In terms of character and attitude, he also needs to urgently prove to the outside world that Gap has not “bet on the wrong thing”.
From the beginning of the announcement of the cooperation between the two parties in 2020, the celebration that started at the Gap store in Kanye’s hometown of Chicago, and now entering Times Square in New York, Kanye is still working hard for the vision of “everyone can wear Yeezy”.
With the announcement of the next series of events, Kanye from New York will not stop there. Through the avatar of Yeezy’s official social account, we can get a glimpse of Kanye’s ambition: he is still looking at the whole world.
