The hype around the release of Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s new film about the former wife of Elvis Presley, had been building for months. There had been press conferences, magazine cover shoots starring its lead actors Jacob Elordi and Cailee Spaeny, and fans made TikTok montages dedicated to the duo. But it goes even further than that. Rather than swearing their allegiance, enthusiasts are wearing it. From a rhinestone-embroidered “Priscilla” T-shirt to a winged eyeliner kit and a gold heart-shaped locket tied on a black ribbon, like one Priscilla wore in real life, the merch-ification of the film is in full swing.

Spearheading the branded swag is the film’s US distributor, A24. Over the past decade, the former indie startup has acquired and produced some of the best, most zeitgeisty TV shows and films. Think “Euphoria,” “Uncut Gems” and the Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

These shows all have dedicated admirers, but even more notable is how A24 itself has accrued its very own fanbase. The studio’s alphanumeric string has become a brand in its own right, associated with a company that champions clever, inclusive and slightly weird stories. And like all erudite brands tapped into the cultural climate of 2024, it comes with merch. A24′s distinctive wordmark comes emblazoned across baseball caps, T-shirts and even forearms. There may be millions of Potterheads in the world, but how many have a tattoo of the Warner Bros logo?

A lot of A24 items sell out within minutes of being made available to buy online. A Reddit thread has more than 137,000 subscribers, within it a sub-reddit dedicated to discussing the merch. T-shirts regularly fetch double the retail price on secondhand sites, while some companies sell cheap dupes. In April 2022, the studio launched a membership programme, giving subscribers the chance to buy even more exclusive merchandise.

Aside from its own A24 products, the studio’s online shop sells promo products for each of its titles. This is often highly specific, an if you know, you know wink. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” saw the release of packets of goggly eyes and latex gloves with hot dog fingers. There was an incense temple for “Midsommar” and an embroidered grey pyjama set for “Beau Is Afraid.”

Its limited-edition runs and “drops” tap into the hypebeast culture of fashion. Its unusual collaborations and product drops echo streetwear goliath Supreme, which has released everything from hoodies with Burberry to logo-emblazoned dog bowls and toolboxes. A24 has made clothing with the streetwear brand Online Ceramics, candles inspired by “classic film genres” with Joya and most recently J Hannah, a Los Angeles-based jeweller, on a 14-carat-gold “Priscilla locket”.

Representatives for the brand notoriously don’t speak on the record. However, many of its collaborators say that A24′s creative director, Zoe Beyer, approached them with the initial idea. For Jess Hannah Révész, the designer of J Hannah, it was via an Instagram DM.

“It’s the biggest compliment when someone you’re already closely paying attention to and respect reaches out to say that they admire our work,” says Révész. “Those moments feel very special to me because it feels like a loop of creative inspiration and mutual appreciation.”

Its mass appeal also reflects the wider shift of merch from fandom to fashion. At its most basic level, A24 has become a club for cinephiles. A natural extension of “film Twitter.” Wearing its merch is a simple method of showcasing one’s onscreen interest offline. For years, there has also been a lack of memorabilia for cinephiles. Unlike music fans who can easily buy ephemera at concerts, fans of TV shows and films were often only left with sourcing bootleg T-shirts online. Rather than blockbuster productions such as Barbie, which saw its parent company Mattel partner with more than 100 brands and retailers spanning pink dresses, makeup and roller skates, product from A24′s hits tend to gather momentum over time.

A nod to A24 shows you know your niche rather than mainstream cultural signifiers. In a world in which the lines are becoming ever more blurred between online and offline, it’s not what you wear but who. For many, the biggest flex is a £30 baseball cap from a specialist film studio rather than a four-figure luxury bag.

Leading fashion brands including Barbour and PVH, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, have said they will pay £400,000 to garment workers in Mauritius after an investigation found that migrant workers were forced to pay thousands of pounds for their jobs.

Transparentem, a US-based organisation that investigates workers’ rights, looked into conditions at five factories in Mauritius and interviewed 83 workers in 2022 and 2023.

In a recently published report, Transparentem claims it found multiple signs of forced labour, defined as a form of modern slavery by the United Nation’s International Labour Organization. As well as workers paying illegal recruitment fees for their jobs, it alleges they were subjected to deception, intimidation and unsanitary living conditions – including having no access to clean drinking water, as well as cockroach and bedbug infestations.

The five factories supply brands including Boden, Asos and the Foschini Group, which owns Whistles and Hobbs.

After commissioning their own audits of conditions at the factories, fashion brands including PVH and Barbour have said that they will reimburse workers at REAL Garments, one of the factories named in the report, up to £400,000 in illegal recruitment fees.

Ben Skinner, president of Transparentem, said: “Migrant workers showed great courage in bearing witness through Transparentem. To date, only three brands have shown by their actions that they really listened to them. The cost of reform is high. But the cost of failure to reform is higher.”

PVH said it was committed to ensuring migrant workers were reimbursed for recruitment fees and related costs.

Barbour said it was taking Transparentem’s findings seriously and was working with other brands at REAL Garments to resolve the situation as soon as possible. “As an immediate action, we have made a commitment to contribute towards the remediation of impacted workers,” it said.

“We are also expanding our audit processes to ensure that we do everything possible to prevent this happening in the future,” a spokesperson said.

REAL Garments also said it was taking the findings of the investigation seriously and had taken action to remedy the situation for its workers. “We confirm that all the remediations including repayment of local transportation fees have been completed,” it said.

The Foschini Group said: “We have investigated this in full and are comfortable that we have taken appropriate action.”

Asos and Boden did not respond to a request for comment.

By Annie Kelly

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If 2023′s biggest flameouts taught the fashion industry anything, it’s that companies neglect their brand identity at their own peril.

Farfetch’s fire sale to Coupang, had many causes, but a big one was its inability to build a cohesive brand identity, even as it built a commanding lead in the luxury e-commerce market. Allbirds, which sold truckloads of wool runners via ubiquitous social media ads, saw its stock sink to record lows. Amyris, which banked on celebrities to lure in consumers to its beauty products, filed for bankruptcy in August.

To survive — let alone thrive — in today’s market, nothing is more important than marketing that shapes a brand’s long-term reputation. Look at brands like Abercrombie: In the 2010s, its reputation had tanked due to a series of public controversies, but it has since mounted a turnaround by ditching its exclusionary image, refreshing its product lineup and courting older consumers that already had an affinity for the brand. Or Chanel, which has succeeded for decades by embracing the brand’s original codes, such as tweed and camellia flowers, while updating the designs for the modern consumer.

A brand or product may be omnipresent on Instagram or TikTok feeds, but without a deeper meaning behind it, that visibility will only take a company so far. Performance marketing (marketing methods where brands only pay based on results received, as is common in social media advertising) is still an important part of any company’s marketing mix. In 2024, it should be used to amplify an extensive brand marketing strategy, rather than serve as its foundation.

This trend is only expected to continue into 2024 as the wider economic landscape remains uncertain, making it increasingly difficult to capture consumer attention. This year, marketers need to think about brand as the muscle behind everything they do, from large-scale campaigns and events to short-term social media ads users can swipe away with a tap of a screen.

“Consumers are making more considered choices, and if you haven’t done the work to connect with them on that level, then you end up getting swept away by your competition,” says Sarah Grech, brand voice lead at ad agency Mother Design.

Back to Brand Basics

Brand marketing is about telling a story. And what story your brand tells all comes down to its purpose.

“Any brand starts with an idea, and ideas that become brands evolve,” Gap Inc. chief executive Richard Dickson said on stage at BoF VOICES in December. “Evolution keeps the brand relevant, but purpose makes a brand immortal.”

It’s a topic he knows well: Dickson, who previously served as the president of Mattel, where he oversaw the evolution of the Barbie brand, which, when he joined the company in 2014, was outdated and underperforming. In harnessing its purpose — empowerment of young girls — while pushing the brand to embrace a more modern sensibility, it was able to return to success, culminating in the release of the blockbuster “Barbie” film earlier this year.

Now, he’s attempting to do the same with another iconic American brand that’s lost its way — Gap.

Purpose isn’t necessarily about aligning with a philanthropic cause or social movement; it can mean creating effective skincare with safe ingredients or designing the perfect T-shirt. Marketing should reflect that purpose, which can then be amplified in several ways: Through big-ticket campaigns, but also on social media or events.

For menswear brand Mizzen+Main, that’s meant reflecting how customers use their product in their advertising.

“We know that our customer is a working man … part of reaching [our core customer] is understanding what he does and how he engages with our hero product, a performance dress shirt,” said chief marketing officer Bethany Muths.

The brand hosts a video series called “Thanks for the Time,” where three men — wearing Mizzen+Main apparel and holding microphones featuring the brand’s logo — discuss “water cooler”-esque topics, such as methods for doing math equations in their heads or hotel hygiene. And when Mizzen+Main did a pop-up coffee truck to build awareness, it set up shop in the heart of Dallas’ downtown office district, where they could catch working men on their lunch break.

Conceptualising that story is one thing, determining where to tell it is another. As marketers prioritise their brand marketing strategies, they should also consider new channels — or using their pre-existing channels in different ways — to meet their customer where they already are.

“Right now, you’re seeing a ton of ads, and the ones that are really cutting through are those that are really savvy, showcasing content in a way that feels deeply personal, genuine and well researched,” said Jamie Wachlarz, chief marketing officer at influencer talent management agency Estate Five.

In influencer marketing, Wachlarz said, that means partnering with creators that already have been evangelising your brand and allowing them to flex their creative muscle in crafting the content. Brands can also use influencers not just for their influence, but to create user-generated content that they can then run on different platforms, which will bring a more personal touch to a brand’s social media ads.

While shifting approaches on pre-existing channels matters, Erin Kleinberg, founder of agency Métier Creative and body care label Sidia, said it’s also about appearing in the places that customers want to see them. For her brand Sidia, that means top-tier spas, such as at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or in the locker rooms at cult-favourite fitness classes like Tracy Anderson.

“It’s like, ‘Oh my god, I love this brand and it’s showing up everywhere where I am,’” she said.

Brands Under Pressure

Marketers will undoubtedly face renewed pressure from their finance departments to justify their spending in the face of a more challenging macroeconomic environment. They have to balance that reality with the fact that even with the strongest brand marketing strategies, it takes time to fully see the impact on the brand’s bottom line.

Jon Claydon, chief development officer at affiliate management agency Acceleration Partners, recommends brands take a page out of the performance marketing playbook to measure the effectiveness of brand marketing efforts, even in their early stages. Looking at metrics such as brand lift — positive momentum around consumer perception of a brand — and brand awareness can help demonstrate progress. That can be measured with a number of tools, such as TribeDynamics’ earned media value and Launchmetrics’ media impact value, both of which determine the online chatter and impact around a particular campaign, product or viral moment for a brand.

Still, brands shouldn’t feel that they need to perfect their brand marketing strategies before beginning to publicly experiment. The best brands, according to Ben Hennes, chief creative officer and co-owner of creative agency Happylucky, have the sort of relationship with their consumers that makes them feel they’re a part of the brand they’re shopping.

“As long as brands have a real understanding of their purpose and existence in the world, I don’t think they have to go dark for years before they come out with something,” he said. “They can start to have a real conversation with consumers and just be really transparent about who they are and how they’re marketing.”

Tiger Woods announced the end of his 27-year-long Nike sponsorship deal via a statement on Instagram on Monday.

The legendary American golfer — the winner of 15 major professional golf championships, including four PGA Championship wins — first signed with Nike in 1996 on a five-year, $40 million deal, which at the time was the sport’s largest ever endorsement contract.

Since then, Nike has paid Woods, widely considered the sport’s greatest of all time, more than $500 million under the endorsement, according to sports business expert Joe Pompliano.

Speculation had grown for months that 2023 would be Woods’ last as a Nike athlete.

Despite signing a 10-year contract extension in 2013, Nike ceased manufacturing golf equipment — such as clubs and balls — three years later. Nike co-founder Phil Knight later conceded that the brand’s golf equipment business had lost money for 20 years straight.

However, the brand continues to make golfing footwear and apparel to this day.

Woods did not indicate whether he plans to sign with another sportswear brand following the end of his Nike endorsement, but ended his statement with a cryptic message: “People will ask if there’s another chapter. Yes, there certainly will be another chapter.”

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