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The Big Impression
DSW’s Sarah Crockett on building a flexible brand for unpredictable times
00:28:29
One year into her role as global CMO at Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW), Sarah Crockett is reimagining how the legacy retailer shows up for today’s consumer — across 500 stores, an upgraded e-commerce experience and a newly expanded digital media mix.
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- [00:00]
Ilise Lifring
Damien.
- [00:00]
Damien Fowler
I'm Damien Fowler.
- [00:02]
Ilise Lifring
And I'm Ilise Lifring.
- [00:03]
Damien Fowler
And welcome to this edition of the Current podcast.
- [00:10]
Ilise Lifring
This week we're excited to sit down with Sarah Crockett, Global Chief Marketing Officer at Designer Shoe Warehouse, otherwise known as dsw.
- [00:18]
Damien Fowler
Now, Sarah has been at the brand for just over a year, during which time she's been overseeing a brand refresh across DSW's 500 stores, as well as a sort of digital upgrade to its e commerce marketing.
- [00:32]
Ilise Lifring
Launching seven new marketing channels, Sarah is reimagining how the retailer shows up for modern consumers.
- [00:39]
Damien Fowler
And that means navigating everything from economic uncertainty to shifting consumer behaviors to the rise of the Gen Z shopper and the evolution of omnichannel experiences.
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Ilise Lifring
Let's dive into how Sarah and her team are rethinking retail marketing for today and the future.
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Damien Fowler
So, Sarah, you've just really come up on your one year anniversary as the global Chief Marketing Officer at Designer Shoe Warehouse, and I know that you're in the midst of a, what you might call a major brand refresh. Can you describe, you know, that journey over the last year, what you've seen and where you are right now?
- [01:19]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, absolutely. I can't honestly think of a better initiative for a first year journey. This initiative has started with us just getting a heck of a lot smarter on our customer, our existing customer, the broader consumer for the category, understanding what their needs are and how they're being served in the market for the category currently and where there's gaps that uniquely fit within our points of differentiation. So that's been a really rich process in the background still underway. We are currently in the sort of creative expression side of that project where now we know distinctly where we're putting our sharp points. How are we bringing that to life visually and tonally? And we're excited to introduce all of that work to the consumer here in the near future.
- [02:06]
Damien Fowler
That's exciting. What was it when you came in? What was the, the need that you saw in terms of the brand, in terms of like how you wanted to reposition it a little bit or should we say give it that refresh?
- [02:18]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, I think the need was very obvious that this whole dynamic in the retail sector in the footwear category has undergone tremendous change, just as many industries have over the last five years. So this was opportunity for us to recognize that, you know, five years ago the customer had a very different relationship with the category than they have today. And the consumer's changing so rapidly that I think the frequency of evaluating this type of Work goes up from what it used to be so exciting to understand the relationship from pre Covid times and how that's evolved to post Covid times. And now is our chance to really meet the consumer in their new mindset.
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Damien Fowler
Could you just dig a little deeper on that? I'm curious to hear you say more about how the consumer has changed over the last five years. What does that mean exactly?
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Sarah Crockett
Yeah, well, if you just take an example of their relationship with work. You know, pre Covid, there was an office culture that dominated all of our lives during COVID We all were introduced with at home work, which if you think about the footwear category and what you would purchase to go into the office versus what you're prioritizing when you're working from home, there's some significant customer behavior shifts right there. And so what does that mean with the relationship with the category is really important for us as an authority in the retail space and trend space to lean into. And that drives changes with our assortment, with how we're connecting with our customers through content, et cetera, et cetera. So that is one of just many examples of what we mean by change.
- [04:04]
Ilise Lifring
Now talking about changing times. We are now in a new era of tariffs. And your company just sent out a note to consumers warning of possible price increases thanks to global supply chain challenges and economic uncertainty. How do you as a marketer manage that? And how are you maybe changing up some of your marketing at this time?
- [04:25]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, I think number one, our priority is to be transparent with our consumer. We see that as a key role for us. We know that this conversation is on our consumers minds. So we wanted to fill in the blank so that they knew how DSW was managing this change. And like many companies would tell you, it's a very fluid situation. So the most important thing that our marketing organization and creative organizations can be right now is flexible.
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Ilise Lifring
Okay, now Sarah, how is maybe some of that messaging coming across in your marketing?
- [05:01]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, so maybe an example of what flexibility means for marketing is looking at future seasons. And if one of the challenges that we'll have as an organization is around pricing. And I say if, because again, this is a very fluid situation. If we look at the news headlines and see supply chain pressures yet again, very familiar times, what does that ultimately mean that we should be doing to plan around flexibility? And that might be focusing more on what the those unique value points for DSW as a retailer are versus focusing on a individual style of shoe. DSW, we hear time and time again is a valuable resource to the consumer because of our breadth of assortment. You may have a need for a specific occasion, you may not know exactly the style or the color of the shoe you want. You know, you can come to DSW and you will find that and often more. So we want to understand how we can highlight that relationship with the consumer meaningfully in this time of uncertainty. And that is a flexibility win as well, because it's less individual style specific.
- [06:14]
Damien Fowler
Does that mean as a marketing department you've got to move fairly quickly?
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Sarah Crockett
Absolutely. We are constantly looking and evaluating and pivoting. I think pivot is probably the word of the month this year and it absolutely is going to be the word of the month as we continue to move ahead with 2025 execution.
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Ilise Lifring
And on that note, you've launched like seven new marketing channels within the past year. To future proof the brand, what are these channels? And then what is the strategy behind becoming more omnichannel?
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Sarah Crockett
Channel mix is such an important part of any marketing strategy. The whole point of channel mix is just enhancing your opportunities to intersect with the consumer in the paths that they are already naturally taking. I'm not a huge believer in sort of interrupting their path in a very disruptive way. That's sometimes a negative sentiment that the consumer will have on that brand. So really understanding how different channels can be used to create different outcomes has been a huge part of the journey over the last year. So examples of some of those channels are prioritizing something like Omnimeta, which is an opportunity for us to have store specific outcomes within the meta platform. Or if we're exploring digital direct mail, we're having a lot of great success with streaming audio. Streaming TV influencers play a very meaningful role. So we are an omnichannel business. Our channel strategy needs to reflect an Omni strategy.
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Ilise Lifring
Now, when you're thinking about all those multiple platforms, what drives your choice first? Is it the format or audience behavior?
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Sarah Crockett
Audience behavior is number one. I'm a big believer that you can't force a change in customer behavior. And again, it's our job to understand customer behavior and then understand how we can add value to that journey that they're on. That's the frame that I like to use for any content strategy.
- [08:24]
Damien Fowler
I've shopped at DSW in the past and I'm pretty sure Ilise has tofi.
- [08:27]
Ilise Lifring
Indeed.
- [08:28]
Damien Fowler
Yes. So you have a pretty broad consumer set. How do you think about that consumer set? Do you think about it in terms of demographics? And how do you think about acquiring new consumers and keeping the ones that have already shopped with you.
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Sarah Crockett
That's been a huge part of this first year. Again, starting our brand strategy journey by understanding the consumer. And the good news is we did identify a very clear customer mindset that transcends generations. Are there certain behaviors that vary by generation? Absolutely. To your point, dsw, because of our broad assortment, has a very broad consumer base. So what we now understand is what is that shared mindset that a Gen Z consumer can relate to as well as a boomer consumer can relate to. And believe it or not, there are plenty. And so that's going to be our focus, is ensuring that DSW intersects with our target consumer audiences, both existing and new, in ways that are very relatable to them. And we have plenty to offer and we're going to underpin that with consistency in who our brand is by again connecting to that shared mindset.
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Damien Fowler
You know, obviously one of the keys to digital marketing is sort of understanding in quite a granular way who is shopping with you. And one of the ways of doing that is through loyalty programs. And I know that recently the DSW has launched a retail media network which perhaps, you know, taps into some of that kind of data. Could you talk a little bit about that and why it was important to go ahead and say launch a retail media network?
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Sarah Crockett
Yeah, absolutely. Well, we have a very robust vendor community. We sell the best national brands in the business. So the retail media network is a way for us to extend our partnership with our vendor community in ways that bring additional value through content and messaging to our consumer set. So that's one, one thing, I will say the other piece to your question around loyalty. Absolutely. A critical, probably one of the top one to two initiatives as a marketing organization that we have is ensuring that we're continuing to nurture the relationships with our consumers. We've had an industry leading loyalty program for years. Our VIP program has been adopted by many, many customers, millions of customers across the industry. And that is them raising their hands, saying that they're interested in hearing more from DSW regularly and getting those exclusive benefits that only a VIP member can get. So we are in the process of looking at that program, evaluating where we can continue to make enhancements, certainly not sitting on our laurels because we've built this industry leading platform, but continuing again to nurture it and find ways to enhance it. As we do this brand work to sharpen our points of differentiation, you can absolutely expect to see that reflected in our future loyalty program.
- [11:32]
Ilise Lifring
At the same time, you're becoming more digital and omnichannel the store itself is becoming even more important. Can you go into a little bit about how you're leveraging the value of your stores alongside those digital channels?
- [11:48]
Sarah Crockett
Absolutely. I will say our stores are our number one marketing channel. The reason for that is that we have the best of the brand intersecting with our consumer and our stores. And that starts with our staff. That relationship that our consumers have with our field team is so rich, we hear about it all the time. And what experience leaves a consumer with a memory usually includes another human on the other end of it. Right. So our stores are critically important and we're looking at ways to uniquely use this 500 plus footprint to build more and more engagement with our consumers. So experiential activations in our stores, you both have been DSW shoppers, you know what they look like, they tend to be large. We have a lot of opportunity to use that space differently to create additional value for our consumers and we love that. We're hearing more and more about Gen Z raising their hand and opting for brick and mortar retail. And we get a double benefit in that because our category, the footwear category we constantly hear, is a category where consumers do prefer an in person experience. So we want to make sure that there's very obvious benefits to crossing that DSW threshold.
- [13:02]
Ilise Lifring
Now I want to take a moment to look at the major takeaways over your past year and the campaign so far that you've launched at dsw. What were those key areas that you're tracking now after you year one?
- [13:16]
Sarah Crockett
So I love to track in a both qualitative and quantitative approach. Quantitative tells you very directionally lift, you have your KPIs. I like to look at customer lifetime value as a starting point. Depending on the initiative, you'll have different objectives. If it's a retention based initiative, of course you're going to want to look at retention rate, frequency, things of that nature. New customer acquisition, looking at predictable lifetime value and looking at customer metrics as a whole. On the qualitative side, we look every single day at our customer feedback, every single day at that feedback from our retail stores, from our digital stores, from our social media platforms that provides us with a regular drumbeat. You couple that with a more traditional brand equity measurement capability to see where are you moving those needles. If we're trying to elevate ourselves in the consideration set of our target consumers, I may care more about that bridge between awareness and consideration than I might care about the awareness growth on its own. So it really depends on the initiative. But I think a combination of qualitative and quantitative is always a good solution.
- [14:32]
Damien Fowler
Now, as you look back, was there anything that really stood out to you as a highlight or a surprise in terms of a channel that popped or audience behavior that was perhaps counterintuitive or not something you expected? Just curious for your take on that.
- [14:48]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, I mean, as I mentioned earlier, we've tested into a lot of new channels, and it's been a fascinating experience. One that comes to mind on the heels of that question is streaming audio. We are seeing consistent and meaningful success in that channel. And I guess maybe why I would say that's a bit of a surprise is because it's not as much of a visual channel, which the rest of our marketing funnel really represents a visual channel strategy in so many ways. Even the shopping feed is a visual of a product. Right. But when you're talking about streaming audio, it's really about a verbal storytelling. And we know more and more consumers are opting into podcasts as their means of daily content. Music, obviously an important part of everybody's life, I hope. And so this is an opportunity to yet again intersect with the consumer's journey and where they're opting to choose their time and creating content that clearly is standing out to them in a positive way.
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Damien Fowler
That was really cool. I'd love to hear one of those ads.
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Sarah Crockett
Hey, all you gotta do is go on our website and show some intent, and I bet you're gonna start to hear some. Yeah.
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Ilise Lifring
So have you seen any unexpected behavior or feedback from specifically, like, Gen Z shoppers that might have, like, changed your approach to content or your platform strategy?
- [16:12]
Sarah Crockett
Not so much unexpected. Maybe that's because we've been really deeply rooted in a lot of this customer research. But we do love the fact that this generation is leading the charge and going back to brick and mortar. As I said, that physical shopping experience does not come at the cost of digital engagement. By the way, there's no longer a digital and physical world, and it's not that black and white. So what that opting in and raising their hands to say brick and mortar as a preference means to us is that we need to find new ways to again communicate and introduce the DSW brand and the benefits and the unique points of differentiation in a lot of these digital channels to drive that physical store outcome.
- [17:00]
Damien Fowler
Now, at the beginning of this conversation, we talked a little bit about the economic uncertainty, and of course, that impacts consumers and consumer sentiment. We have touched on this a little bit. Just wanted to dig in a little bit more on that changing shopping habits or changing shopping habits, you know, as it relates to consumer sentiment around anxiety about, you know, spending. What does that mean for your media strategy?
- [17:27]
Sarah Crockett
The largest impact is on the messaging and the creative, more so than the placements or the buys. And I think it's really interesting. We as marketers often always talk about the media strategy, right. And a lot of times that's placement and target setting. But sometimes we, we leave out what I think is of equal importance, which is what are you actually putting into the box, right. What is the creative message that you illuminating to drive that, that value creation? So I would say the biggest impact is on our messaging. We know and we hear the consumers raising their hand again and saying value, value, value. And guess what? DSW has always been an amazing destination for value. So this is something that we're looking in our hierarchy of messages and saying we want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of that consumer and they're very clearly telling us what's most important to them in this moment. And that allows us to build the most relevant messaging to go through our media strategy in that channel mix.
- [18:27]
Damien Fowler
We talked about talking about creative messaging and creative placement. Obviously one of the hot topics of conversation right now is AI. How are you thinking and connecting with AI? Whether that's an AI customer service point of reference or user generated content. How are you thinking and using AI in your sort of marketing strategy?
- [18:51]
Sarah Crockett
Yeah, we're very active in our use and exploration of new capabilities across our marketing and creative functions. I do genuinely believe that all of the new capabilities that are being introduced from AI are really aimed at efficiency. That's the name of the game. I know there's a lot of conversation and sort of fear mongering around replacement of people and sure, I'm sure there's some element of that. However, I heard somebody phrase it this way and I'm going to sort of take a nod to it. People who use AI are likely to replace people who don't use AI. And I think again that speaks to that efficiency play. But we are absolutely across our media buying strategies to our creative content development, even concepting, looking at ways to continue to use it as a new.
- [19:44]
Ilise Lifring
Input it into our last section with these quick questions now. What's a digital marketing trend you think is overhyped and one you think more brands should be leaning into?
- [19:57]
Sarah Crockett
As a marketer, I love nothing more than a shiny object. And we have plenty of history of overhyped marketing strategies and channels. You know, in the past I would have said the metaverse, but that already has been sort of revealed. Right? You know, I actually think we're in a unique time right now where the digital trends that are catching fire, personally I find quite additive and useful. I don't know that there's been a period of time where I would have so easily been able to say that, but actually when I look at the landscape, I actually think there's underhyped digital capabilities. And something that comes to mind for me there is visual search. I find visual search to be a fascinating part of the customer journey. That has certainly started to catch on, but it's not necessarily as hyped as frankly I think it deservingly is. I personally have found so much value in being able to use visual search to shorten that journey from that thing like where did you get that? Oh my gosh, I wonder what that is. To being able to quickly take a snap of it and load it into whether it's Pinterest or Google and find exactly what you're looking for. That is a huge added value that I'm excited to continue to see how the consumer adopts.
- [21:19]
Damien Fowler
Next question. What brand outside of retail is doing something unexpected in digital that you admire?
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Sarah Crockett
So I am a huge ice hockey fan. My answer here may be a little bit unexpected, but it's going to be the NHL. The NHL has been a fascinating organization to watch over the past years. This year in particular has been really special for the NHL because of their innovation, their content. First of all, they do a masterful job of human stories around their players and their teams and the media relationships and the coaching relationships. They introduced the four nations format this year, which was revolutionary and at a time a political tension. So I know that wasn't necessarily planned, but it certainly proved out in the numbers to be highly effective. They're showing tremendous success in adjusting their demographics in the direction they're aspiring to. They have fan tools that as a hockey fan I use every single day. Their app is incredible. And again, I think just the community and the network of content that dominates my feed because of the diversity of sort of angles that they have has just been phenomenal to watch and I just give them so much respect.
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Ilise Lifring
What would you say is your favorite DSW digital innovation or campaign moment so far?
- [22:52]
Sarah Crockett
Well, I think the best is yet to come, honestly. And you're asking me right on the heels of us doing some content creation for upcoming back to school season. So I'm kind of obsessed right now with, with, with the future. I love what we're also Doing in our social channels with influencers, engaging with the community and simply being part of the conversation. We're seeing those green shoots as a result within our content strategies and we're seeing that we are adding to those communities. We actually just had a woman, Natasha Lauren, post on her channel a couple of weeks ago, her experience in a DSW store where it was just a totally joyful reel around Easter shoe shopping. And it just kind of exploded in the conversation and really it was all about being in the comments of that post and DSW's activity, both from content creation to our influencer strategy to how we show up in the feedback, is something that just gives me a ton of joy. I like to think of innovation not only as new inventions, but new ways of driving targeted results. And we're just seeing a lot of learnings as we're opening up these new channels and really trying new things with our community. It's proving to be really fun and informative.
- [24:13]
Damien Fowler
That's great. We've got one more question. I think you might have just answered it, to be honest, but I'm going to ask it. So what's one piece of customer feedback, good or bad, that stuck with you and changed how you think about the brand?
- [24:27]
Sarah Crockett
I absolutely love our customers and one of the things that I find fascinating about them is how proactive they are about communicating with us. We actually just received as an example last week a handwritten note as as one example addressed to our brand president from a customer, and she touched on some things that we hear very consistently from our broader customer base. DSW is a place that you can go and escape and wonder and really discover whether it's something that you knew you needed for a specific occasion but you weren't exactly decided yet. We helped you get there, or it's something that you didn't even know that you need. And maybe, just maybe, it's something that helps you express a side of you that you haven't yet leaned into, or something that gives you joy. Right? It's a fun place and I can't tell you how much we hear that from our consumer base and we're leaning into that. And frankly, I think we all need a bit more of a fun place in our life right now. So being able to lead with that in an environment that's somewhat volatile is something refreshing not only to our customers, but to our employees in our field.
- [25:39]
Damien Fowler
So, Alice, that was really insightful, I thought. What was your big impression from that conversation?
- [25:47]
Ilise Lifring
You know, I love when brands are honest and transparent about Marketing in times of economic uncertainty, with all these tariffs up in the air plans still, it's like a moving target at this point. And Sarah was really talking about how DSW is moving to like, more broad based marketing. I would say, rather than focused on individual styles and communicating those, they're looking into marketing more categories overall. As she said, like customers, when they come into dsws, they don't necessarily have a specific brand in mind. So broad is better almost at this point.
- [26:30]
Damien Fowler
That is an interesting pivot because they can't necessarily guarantee the inventory that's coming because of the interruption, potentially potential interruption in the global supply chain, what's coming.
- [26:41]
Ilise Lifring
So, yeah, so true.
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Damien Fowler
That is a point of. Of interest for a marketer, I guess. So. The other thing I thought that she brought up that was interesting is the fact that they have 500 stores and they are very what she called the most valuable marketing vehicle for them. It's interesting when we were talking about all these multiple channels they're using and at the same time, the brick and mortar is such a key part of their strategy. And even more interesting was the fact that Gen Z and younger consumers are going into these stores to find, you know, products and shoes. But I thought her point that, you know, that there's no longer a digital and physical world was an interesting one. They've harmonized those two things and I think that's something that's interesting and new that we're hearing.
- [27:30]
Ilise Lifring
Yeah. And then out of all the seven different marketing channels that she's introduced over the past year, what really caught my interest was that streaming audio surprised them the most because it was just not visual like the other channels. So that was just surprising to them how well it's doing.
- [27:49]
Damien Fowler
It speaks to the power of podcasts and the fact that the omnichannel campaigns are reaching into the audio world in such a powerful way.
- [28:00]
Ilise Lifring
And that's why we love podcasts.
- [28:02]
Damien Fowler
We do. And that's it for this edition of the current podcast.
- [28:08]
Ilise Lifring
This series is produced by Molten Heart. The current podcast theme is by Love and Caliber. The current team includes Kat Fessy and Sydney Cairns.
- [28:16]
Sarah Crockett
And remember, number one, our priorities is to be transparent with our consumer.
- [28:22]
Damien Fowler
I'm Damian.
- [28:22]
Ilise Lifring
And I'm Ilise. And we'll see you next time.