Gareth Weber (4:39)

The smell of average underwear. The smell of Duluth Funkno underwear Duluth Funkno Underwear how to fix plumber's butt Step 1 Identify the problem. Step 2, Carefully remove shirt. Step 3, Put on a Duluth Long Tail tee. Step 4, Double check your work. The Duluth Longtail tee, 3 inches longer to keep you covered. Get one@duluthtrading.com Crouching in average jeans Crouching in Duluth Trading Ballroom Jeans Duluth Trading Ballroom Jeans the crotch gusset gives you room to crouch without singing soprano. Get up there@duluthtrading.com so joining me is.

Fergus O'Carroll (6:04)

Gareth Weber, SVP, Chief Marketing and Brand Officer for Duluth Trading Company and Dan Lytle is founder and Chief Creative officer at Planet Propaganda in Madison, Wisconsin. Enjoy. It's a great pleasure to have these guys on the show. This is a brand that I've watched for a while and initially Just was like, wow, this is incredibly distinctive work. And it has remained that way over time. And when I see work of this caliber, I always think that there's gotta be some really funky, interesting, creative people behind this to not only to originally come up with this sort of creative direction, but also to write them and people who know this target audience and know this space really well. So for that reason, I'm thrilled to have these guys on. This is a really interesting category with some really interesting brands who do some unexpected things that we're going to talk about today. This is outside of Duluth. There are others that I think are in that competitive set that can be really interesting to talk about and hear about. So I wanted to first of all, welcome Dana. Great to have you here. Welcome on the show.

Dana Lytle (7:15)

Thank you.

Fergus O'Carroll (7:16)

And Garth, great to talk to you and to have you here to talk about this great brand.

Dan Lytle (7:20)

Thanks. It's a pleasure to be here.

Fergus O'Carroll (7:22)

So let's kick it off with a little background on the company. Dana, from your perspective, you have a longer history on the brand right now than Garth has. Garth comes from really interesting categories that will get into sporting brands, et cetera. That led him to where he is in the brand now. But you've got a little bit more of a background that maybe you can give us some context from your perspective on where the business has been, where the brand has been. Tell us what you can.

Dana Lytle (7:52)

Yeah, that sounds great. I do have this interesting perspective because I've been around for at least 15, 16 years, so I thought it'd just be a good little jumping off spot to do this. So I'm going to go way back because I think there's some through lines that come with this company all the way back to the beginning. It was actually started in 1987 by three Carpenters in Duluth, Minnesota. The company's name was actually Portable Products at that time and they had created this product called the Bucket Boss. They created it when they saw their carpenter friends putting their tool aprons around a five gallon bucket, which is a, you know, kind of an ingenious workwear solution that they can. They came up with. That product is still around today. And it's a great product. I actually have one in my garage right now. But I thought it was really interesting that products go all the way back.

Fergus O'Carroll (8:53)

To that and called a Bucket Boss. Is that what you said, Bucket Boss?

Dana Lytle (8:56)

Yeah, they actually.

Fergus O'Carroll (8:57)

And what is it now? Something you just something you can that holds your tool belt or. Or what.

Dana Lytle (9:02)

So these carpenters actually just like they saw all of Their carpenter friends just tie their, their tool aprons around their five gallon bucket and they're ingenious guys. And they, they created this product what all their tools can hold on the sides of the five gallon bucket. If you look at it online, you'll know it right away. It's, it's a really classic product, stood the test of time, and it's great. It has all the, you know, bells and whistles that it needs to have on there. But so the first debut of Duluth Trading Company didn't come until like 1983. And that was actually a catalog that these guys created because they wanted to give their customers this sense of attachment and even loyalty. So it was pretty interesting because it worked. In a couple of years later, they had made the 500 fastest growing companies list and had hit like, I think it was like 2000% growth two years in a row. And they were in that 6 to 10 million dollars in sales and they were projecting to be like double that, like 20 million the following year. You know, these, these guys just felt the pressure of all of that because they're three carpenters and they had really done a great job of like, you know, filling a need, and they ended up deciding to cash out and they got, they sold the brand for $14 million.

Fergus O'Carroll (10:38)

When did propaganda, your agency, Dana, when did that, when did that relationship start? 14 years ago?

Dana Lytle (10:45)

Yeah, it was about 15. I think it was 2008. Well, 2009 was when it happened.

Fergus O'Carroll (10:51)

At that point in time, would you describe it as a seller of sort of workman's tool belts and equipment, or was it always about apparel?

Dana Lytle (11:03)

It was really, at that time, it was really starting to get into more apparel and more product. And they had done a really, really good job at that point of like, getting some of the core products, the firehose work pants, the long tailed tee, Ballroom jeans, all of the classic, you know, products that Duluth is really known for.

Fergus O'Carroll (11:23)

So, Garth, tell us about who, who the brand competes against. Who do you kind of see as.

Dan Lytle (11:30)

Your top two or three in the workwear space? You know, obviously Carhartt is probably our biggest competitor and the one we, we spent a lot of time looking at. But then, you know, there's, there is something about the workwear right now is having a wonderful moment in culture. And so there's a lot of these D2C brands that are starting up and these smaller brands that are really focused on the space and doing what they can to take market share. So we're constantly looking at that.

Fergus O'Carroll (12:01)

You guys own your Own stores too. Are they, is that national or regional?

Dan Lytle (12:04)

Nets national. We have 65 stores across the nation. I mean we have concentrations, we're pretty, pretty dialed in into where people, where our target customers are. And so we have concentrations of stores around the nation. But yeah, we span the entire country.

Fergus O'Carroll (12:23)

So Dana, how do you. Because I'm fascinated by this brand, Carhartt. How do you think of Carhartt in terms of how it's messaged and how it's positioned?

Dana Lytle (12:34)

I think Carhartt is broader than Duluth. I think they've always kind of, I think, you know, appeal to the values of the Target where Duluth. We've really tapped the Duluth storytelling roots. Kind of that dry sense of humor and kind of the fun loving personality of their core customer. I think that's one of their, you know, Duluth is also a little bit, I would say maybe higher up the, the chain in terms of, from a market perspective. They are, they tend to be for, you know, the, I don't know, the person wants to spend a little bit more on, on those pants that are going to last for a while. They're going to be, you know, sometimes they're the construction owner versus construction worker.

Dan Lytle (13:28)

One brand I, I was thinking as you were talking that I didn't mention, but I think it would be instructed is a brand like Wrangler, which, you know, we, we, we don't really compete against, against them, but we share spaces around, you know, the sort of the ranching, the, the, the rodeo space, et cetera. I mean they own that space, but we also kind of live there as well. And I think Carhartt is similar in that they own workwear space. I mean they've owned it since the 1880s, I believe. And so they have a very, you know, very clear point of view with regards to it's all about work and it's all about, I mean even when they have their work in progress line and this and the fashion side of the business, it's, you know, born from that same sort of authentic DNA. And I think to Dana's point, one of the things that, you know, the, the one reasons I'm here and one of the reasons I love Duluth as a brand is that we make product that is equally born from work. It's more of a if to, to put a regional spin on it for like a self Central Wisconsin farmer dairy, you know, dairy farmer sensibility. Like what, what do these folks, you know, back in the day, like what problems could our apparel solve for them? Be very clear on that point in terms of, and then expanding from there. But also the same group of people, they have a very direct sense of humor. They're very down to earth. They don't take themselves seriously. And that same mentality is part of the DNA of Duluth as well. So I think one of the things that Dana's team did such a great job of when they took over as the agency of record is to expand upon that sense of humor that the brand had at the beginning. And Carhartt can't play there. Other, you know, Wrangler can't play there. Like there's a, there's a, I think this sort of, we don't, we make seriously great product and tell I think seriously good stories without the seriousness. And so there is this tongue in cheek quality constantly.

Dana Lytle (15:43)

We think of average as the enemy. And if you combine that with the no nonsense, none too serious personality, we, we created this truth for Duluth that's we, it's called poke average in the eye and it's something that has been in the brand from its, you know, this, this version of it and, and it's carried for the last, you know, 15, 16 years. But it's totally in the DNA of both their customer and the company.

Fergus O'Carroll (16:14)

We'll be right back. Want always on brand metrics that deliver value to stakeholders. This episode is brought to you by Tracksuit, a beautiful, affordable and always on brand tracking tool that helps consumer marketers and agencies answer the question is what we're doing working and not so secret. Fact is that companies pay $100,000 or more for brand tracking, which is out of the question for many modern brands whose business budgets are under pressure. Tracksuit provides enterprise level brand tracking without the big price tag. Their in house research experts do the heavy lifting using best in class practices to craft and launch your survey and get you results fast. Tracksuit is fast becoming the common language for marketers and agencies to measure and communicate the value of brand building. Check it out@gotracksuit.com that's gotracksuit. Now back to the show. So let's dig into the campaign. So Dana, where, where did this signature Duluth style, this ad style, illustration style come from? And it's, and what was the thinking behind it?

Dana Lytle (17:35)

So, you know, we did a lot of interesting tests. We have this, a great animator, amazing animator, guy by the name of Nate Tice, that was the one that came up literally with the style after a bunch of tests on it and you know, we looked at a bunch of different things and depending on how, who you talk to, you Always hear everything from people describing it as cartoons or animation or even, you know, rough sketches. And we love the. The not overly processed look of it because it kind of has a back of a napkin feel to it. Like someone just sketched it out in front of you.

Fergus O'Carroll (18:19)

Yeah, it's like one of those flipkart. But you're actually reminding me, like those little card decks that you used to flip. Right. And you'd see the animated figures moving as you flip from card to card through the whole deck. Right. That's funny.

Dana Lytle (18:29)

Yeah. And it's. I think that's part of the appeal and why it's been so widely, you know. You know, kind of looked at and. And admired and stuff. But I think there's some. It's interesting because I think there's humanity in that and with that hand done quality to it, which really relates, you know, to the customer that. That we're talking to, because they're. They're big on working with their own hands. It's interesting because the, you know, the style was really like, we had to do it. There's two parts to it. One was a technological concern because we did this initial test of the campaign with a really early on digital campaign. It was a cost per acquisition model, and we had to create something that was simple and that didn't take too much bandwidth. So there's some just, like, real, kind of funky.

Fergus O'Carroll (19:25)

That's great. That's so great to hear that. That makes so much sense.

Dana Lytle (19:28)

Yeah. And it's funny how those parameters do that. There's. It's actually pretty funny, too, because at that time, you couldn't even rely on sound, and sound is an iconic part of the Duluth spots. But we had to look like. We had to create little, like, elements. Like if there's a spot, a ballroom Jean spot, where we put in a treble clef and a bass clef to show, you know, the. The guy's voice getting higher, you know, when he crouches and getting lower when he has the Duluth pants. But. So that was some of the. Just the functional stuff. The other part was Garth referenced this a little bit ago, and it goes back all the way to the beginning. But Duluth has been known for this great storytelling, and way back from the beginning, they were illustrating the catalog covers and all of the products in full color. And we couldn't obviously do that for the test ads because just at that point, bandwidth wasn't available. But we needed an effective storytelling mechanism that could give this legendary quality without the full color illustrations, because Duluth, they were about a $60 million company at the time. We needed to create work that stood out because they didn't have the budget to take on the Carhartts of the world and do all that stuff, too. So that's really kind of how that all formed. And we just have kept, you know, using that, and it's become so distinctive out there and a huge part of the brand.

Fergus O'Carroll (21:08)

Before we jump into playing some of the spots here, I think it's important to point out that there are dimensions to this. To this creative idea. Number one, there's the fact that it's sort of an illustrated style. So for the listener, it's sort of like the flip card thing that you might be familiar with, but you might also kind of think of Red Bull and what Red Bull did with illustration. I mean, it's not polished at all. It's very, very ro. Sketched outline. But in addition to that, there's the humor, and in addition to that, there's that damn amazing voiceover. And maybe the most important part is it's not a skinny model dude. It's an everyday guy who's chunky. He's got this body style where he's just like that stereotypical trades guy. He's got a big belly. You know, he's got the baseball cap on. He's not a polished model. It's a real, everyday, American, rural dude that's in this. Let's talk about that. Was that deliberate and. Or did that just organically happen that this main character that appears in most of these spots is this sort of everyday guy?

Dana Lytle (22:25)

It was absolutely deliberate because it was the Duluth customer, and they knew their customer. And we were really focused on the trades in the initial, you know, kind of campaign that we tested. And. And it was, you know, they. They went all the way down to a product level, you know, because they. Bigger buttons for bigger hands. You know, there's, like, the way that the, you know, waste fans are. It's like all that level of detail, and we took all that same kind of, like, you know, detail from a. That they put into the product. We wanted that in. In advertising as well. One of the cool things about the. Those ads, Fergus, was like, we really created this, like, average versus construct because, you know, the idea was to position all other workwear was average and obviously directly implying that Duluth was the superior workwear and that that's how one of those ideas, when you look at the collection of the spots, is there's. They're all kind of based on this kind of average versus idea.

Fergus O'Carroll (23:39)

Yeah, that's sort of idea. Sorry, go ahead. But it's sort of an idea of comfort, right?

Dana Lytle (23:44)

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and it's a great way to, like, really point out the amazing benefits that Duluth has. And one of the things that I've always loved about this brand, this predates me even, is the, like, they talk to the customer. It's all about, you know, benefit versus feature. And. And that's such a simple idea that, you know, I've seen so many companies making that mistake. Garth and I've been talking a lot about. This is about obsessing about the customer and understanding it. And the. The original nomenclature of all of the products were benefit driven, not feature driven like most, you know, most companies do. They, you know, it's like Ballroom Jeans. You know what the benefit is for Ballroom jeans. You know, they're drying the fly pants, you know, you know, that stuff. And I.

Fergus O'Carroll (24:38)

That was just so the listener knows. We're not talking about ballroom dancing here. We're talking about room for the balls. That's, in essence, what this. And that's the wonderful underpinning. I mean, it's so funny. I. I just stay put. Pouch. And this. Is this. This whole lingo, this whole language that is dilute, that's sort of come out of this. Does that carry through to in store signage where you use some of this terminology?

Dan Lytle (25:07)

Oh, yeah, of course. Well, we spend every season brainstorming for new products. You know, our naming is a big, big effort for us, you know, to be able to, like, connect back to. Yeah, this sort of. You can. You can see or hear the benefit in the name all of our signage, all of our. All of our branding efforts. And Dana was talking about this like, we. We show up at the same. All of our touch points, the same sensibility and sense of humor. There's just one other thing I wanted to add, and it wasn't until I got here that I really dug into some of the genius that Dana and his team brought to the table. Basically, what you're looking at is a series of brand campaigns that are masquerading as product campaigns.

Fergus O'Carroll (25:48)

That's right. That's right. Good point.

Dan Lytle (25:51)

Yeah. Just talking about, you know, Ballroom Jeans. Okay, that's good. We're selling some. Some. Some denim. But. But really what it is is like, okay, this is how we approach. This is how we look at the category. This is how we approach everything we do. Overall, it's just reinforcing the brand voice again and again, and I think that's just really smart.

Fergus O'Carroll (26:12)

And there's a lot of debate about that. We've had many guests on the show talk about it as the need for it to be separate initiatives. Both need to be happening at the same time in terms of brand versus performance marketing. But. But the consensus among certain circles is that they need to be separate but happening at the same time. I don't personally buy into that. I think they can happen at the same time in terms of branded performance advertising. I think you're a great example of it, and I've brought up a bunch of other categories. You can do both, Dana, at the same time. Do you think of it as being that way?

Dana Lytle (26:50)

Absolutely. I think, you know, you know, Garth put it well, it's like we purposely, you know, this was a core product strategy. I mean, we, you need to have the, you know, short term goals and, and, you know, and, and getting those kind of that performance. I mean, otherwise you're not in business. And so I think that's like a, that's a mandatory. And that strategy ultimately was that from the very beginning. We started with their three core products. And each year we just kind of layered on there and, and every once in a while we'd try to hit like a new market and say, okay, well can we expand this category? And you would try a new spot or turn a new campaign that went into it. But I think you should do both. Not all companies can do that, but I'm in the same camp as you are, Fergus. I don't think they have to be separate. I think that's part of the, you know, the journey that you got to figure out for the brand that you're working on. For Duluth, it was one and the same, and they were both extremely effective.

Fergus O'Carroll (27:57)

Your agency is in Madison, Wisconsin, which is a college town. And I'm just curious, how did this high quality of work come out of Madison? Because I don't think of Madison. I don't think most people would think of Madison as being sort of an adtown. Were you always an ad guy? I mean, how do you describe it?

Dana Lytle (28:19)

So I'm not an ad guy. I actually didn't plan. It's my second job. And I started Planet when I was 24. I grew up in a entrepreneurial family. My dad was a newspaper publisher, and my agency experience was Planetary primarily. I had a short stint in another agency here in Madison. But, you know, we've always been a strategic creative shop. And it's something that we, you know, want to do in terms of like, it's like really dialing down to like, what we always like, look at those, like, single significant ideas that really can, like, help brands on a precipice that can get over those cash chiasms that, you know in those critical points in their journey. And so, you know, we've, we've imported talent. You know, right now we're pretty much remote. And so we have people all around the country, Boulder, Washington, D.C. a lot. In Chicago, we actually have somebody that's going down to Mexico, Mexico City for a while, you know, Minneapolis. And so we do that. But over the years, we've just, we've been able to pull a lot of really great talent. And it's, it's the thing, it's cheesy, but it's the thing that I, I've always been grateful for because the level of talent that we've been able to, to get for all of our accounts has been amazing.

Fergus O'Carroll (29:54)

Garth, for you, when, I mean, the brand has been around since roughly 1987, you're about, you're a year and a half and I think you said what was the appeal for you? Is there a major strategic initiative going on in terms of a whole new growth trajectory that they need somebody with your set of experiences. Because coming out of sportswear and apparel.

Dan Lytle (30:14)

Right, right. And I have, I would say my. What gets me out of bed in this, in this job and doing it for a long time is taking, working with, working with an established brand, but taking them to different places, whether that be to a new, new consumer or from domestic to international or, you know, what, whatever it might be, new product categories. You know, let's standing up a. On a sportswear line in a equ. That's that sort of thing. So the project here really is. So we've been doing sort of the same look and feel for, you know, a number of years. And it is, if you, you know, do a survey of, of the ads, it's, it's really focused on the, the male consumer and ironically, the, our shopper, the, the, the like 60. Over 60% of all purchases are made by women.

Fergus O'Carroll (31:14)

That is fascinating to me. I meant to ask that exact question. I was thinking about that earlier because even I remember when we had the folks from the Old Spice campaign on widen people, Wieden and Kennedy and they talked about that. One of their big insights was that 80% of the deodorant category or body washes were bought by women. For men. Men.

Dan Lytle (31:38)

Yeah. Yeah. And we, you know, and for us, it's, it's for, yeah, for the men. For the Family and that's just been a truth about the least for, for a while. But you know, obviously where, so where is the growth and, and how can we get more women to enter the brand and interact with the brand and buy things for them for themselves as well? And so that was a, that was a strategic initiative for the, for the company. And then I have a lot of experience in that specific area. But then also like, you know how, you know, how do we grow what we're doing well into other areas. And so that, that was one of the things that really excited me is it's not just like bringing. Building more of a, a women's business and excited to say that that that is trending in, in the, the right direction and, and, but, but without losing the essence of the brand which also has really been so successful. And Dana used the word earlier but, but what speaks to women for themselves is a bit different than, than what you know, was working for women who were buying for him. And so that, that was one thing and then, and then frankly the other thing and Dana and I talk about this all the time is like, all right, these are this, this, you know, I'll use this example. It's somewhat apropos, but it comes from the sports side where way back in the day, beginning of my career I worked, I worked at Nike and it was when they were trans just do it had been the campaign for so, so long. And then they started transitioning to using just do it a couple times a year or then it became one time a year. Then it became just for the Olympics or something like that. Like it was a very special thing, you know, when they very intentional when they did it. And we've been talking about like what is sort of next like what do we want to add around this, you know, these icons of the brand in a similar way, not exactly like what I just described, but that's also extremely from a creep I started. I'm a creative that kind of moved into marketing and strategy. And so just on a creative thought.

Fergus O'Carroll (33:52)

Executionally, how do you market to women? Using that same architecture of the existing spots is a huge opportunity.

Dan Lytle (34:00)

Yeah, yeah. And of course you learn a lot about your, your customer, your consumer, the target consumer. You're going after what would be relevant to them and try to meet them there. But one of the things we have definitely learned and I'm happy to say is that it's a different type of humor, but the same sort of down to earth irreverent humor works for either gender. So it's just we have to modulate it, obviously. But that. That is where I think for me it feels so good, is that we can be as cheeky as we want to be in a different way with her, just like we've been with him. And so that feels like a really great place to launch from.

Fergus O'Carroll (34:45)

When does that initiative roll out in terms of the campaign, if there's campaign associated with it?

Dan Lytle (34:50)

Yeah, we have a couple already out there. So we see a little over a year ago, we launched the first spot, this first tonal, and then we did another one spring of this past year, which was even more successful. And we are going like we have.

Fergus O'Carroll (35:14)

In the same illustration style.

Dan Lytle (35:16)

No. Yeah, Great question. So it's live action, but it has this same sort of cheekiness to it. The thing that we've learned, we tried, and Dana can speak to this too, but we tried the illustration style on the women's side. It wasn't successful. Successful. And I think part of it is because, like, people like to see clothes on figures rather than, you know, illustrated. You kind of know what a workwear pant looks like. Right. And. But when you're doing some. Some work. We were selling overalls, which is one of our most successful product launches in a long time. People want to see what they look like, you know, so we had to shift in terms of a production approach. But we were, you know, are able to keep the humor and able to feel very much on brand. And the. The two styles live well together, even though they're quite different in terms of how they're produced.

Fergus O'Carroll (36:13)

I would love to see that. There's almost an episode in and of itself in that Dana. Which we can do at another time, but we'll drop those spots onto the website also and so people can have a look at that and it'll be great as it continues to roll out to see whether both of these campaigns can live in peril in terms of having distinct executions. At least visual, at least distinct executions. Thank you both. It is. Garth Weber is SVP Chief marketing and brand officer for Duluth Trading Company. They are out of Madison, Wisconsin. And Dana Lytle is founder and chief Creative officer of Planet Propaganda. Check them out. Do some great work. And they're in Madison, Wisconsin. Thank you both for being on the show. Show. Great work and a great story. Thank you.

Dan Lytle (37:02)

Thanks, Fergus. My pleasure.

Dana Lytle (37:04)

Yeah, thank you, Fergus. It was great talking to you.

Fergus O'Carroll (37:06)

And we'll see everyone on the next episode.