It was a bit serendipitous to start a series on branding and then have the current Abercrombie and Fitch debacle land in my lap for Brand Day #2.  

Here is a take on it from the A & F CEO’s point of view, a former A & F employee point of view, and finally an A & F customer point of view. Chime in and tell me what you think.

Let’s start with a quote.  This is from a recent Salon.com article about the CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch.  Note the words in bold, which were spoken by the CEO.

When I ask him how important sex and sexual attraction are in what he calls the “emotional experience” he creates for his customers, he says, “It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that.”

Now let’s hear how that plays out in reality from a former 5 year A & F employee, N, who doesn’t want to be public since she still knows people who work at A & F.  I talked to her this morning about what it was like to work there as a manager.

First, here is a part that is probably pretty common in retail and I don’t really have too much of a problem with it. 

Our employees were only supposed to work 1-2 shifts per week (5-10 hours). They had to purchase a specific outfit before they were allowed to be on the schedule. A few times a year the company releases a ‘key look’ we all have to wear. It might be 2-3 outfits we could choose from, but once the key look changed, everyone has to buy it (at half off) and wear only that to work. The ‘look policy’ is incredibly strict as well. We weren’t allowed to wear makeup, no nail polish, no crazy hair color or cut, and you had to look completely natural. Everyone had to be ‘styled’ perfectly as well, so the tuck of the shirt is done in a particular way, the roll of your jean cuff, how many buttons on your shirt are buttoned/unbuttoned.

If a brand wants a certain look, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, right?  It certainly is a common phenomenon in retail. I wouldn’t want to work there, but that doesn’t mean other wouldn’t.  

But she goes on to describe more problematic issues with the branding.

I (sadly) managed  an A & F stores for 5 years right after I graduated college. One of the main reasons you experienced poor customer service is because the pressure on the manager to staff the store with good looking ‘models’ (that is what the sales associate position is called) is completely overwhelming. That is what my job performance was based on.  It did not matter if my store was beating sales goals every single day, I had the best customer experience, and the store was folded down to perfection,  if a higher up walked in and I had one ‘ugly’ kid on my sales floor, there was gonna be hell to pay. At least one day a week we were required to go to college campuses and other places where we could ‘recruit’ good looking kids to come work in our stores. 

It was incredibly frustrating. There are not many good looking, ‘popular’, and aspirational teenagers who want to work 5 hours a week for minimum wage. The kind of employees I had to search for are the kind of kids who don’t need a job. The managers are held to unrealistic expectations when it comes to hiring. We had weekly manager meetings to sit down and talk about where to go out in the city and find good looking workers. If I went one week and did not find a ‘recruit’ I was in trouble.

That barely scratches the surface of what goes on in those stores. We also had to send pictures of our new hires to higher ups to ensure they were up to standard.  If we found out someone from corporate office was coming to visit the store I would have to scrap the schedule for that day and call in all of my best looking kids to have them work instead of whoever else was originally scheduled. Miserable work experience.

The kids that work there are in two groups. either models or your stockroom employees. The models are the ones you see on the sales floor folding, helping customers, running the cash register. Turnover for the employees is incredibly high and managers are so busy with everything going on those associates rarely get much of training, which I think contributes to poor customer experience.  Instead of chatting, texting, doing whatever those employees should be helping customers and folding. I always felt bad for the kids I hired for the stockroom. They knew what was up and why they were back there.

Now, let’s here how that branding effort translates into an actual customer experience. Kelly M was in the same conversation I had this morning, only she was talking as a customer.

On rare occasions I’d stop in to A & F, just to look around and to have a sense of what I was already judging, and each time I determined that the styling of their clothing remained unchanged for 15 years.  During the 2000s and the height of a conservative and sexist/hostile time, I was taken aback by some of their t-shirts, such as a men’s tee that read, “you look like I need another drink” and something like “you were hotter freshman year” and women’s tees that generally presented a message of being slutty, drunk or both. 

One particular time I had gone in with a friend to look around for giggles. I found something somewhat intriguing to try on, but alas, there was nobody around to assist me. I spotted a guy toward the front of the store looking like he had nothing going on in his head. I had to walk up to him and tap him on the shoulder. Admittedly, I proceeded to objectify him, “uhh, hey sweet cheeks I need to try this on.” Ditzy and unapologetic, he was like “ohh okay!” as he let me into a fitting room. He kinda lingered a little bit, as though he was waiting for me to invite him in with me to make out with him. weirrrddd.

And then? Then my friend and I were completely ignored for the remainder of our time there.  Nobody had acknowledged us upon our entrance, and it was the same for our exit. I think WE were the ones saying, ‘Have a good night!’ Needless to say, I’ve had no desire to visit Abercrombie ever again. Our chemistries just don’t match up.

So, what does it all mean?  It means that whether they knew it or not, they had communicated their true corporate self and it was a corporate self that was and currently is shooting itself in the foot by being short sighted and letting ego take precedence over smart business practices.  

Perhaps you have heard it said about individuals, ‘Outer beauty without inner beauty is no beauty at all’.  The same is true of A & F and any other company.

Who you are, and what a company is, can not be hidden for long.  It cannot NOT be communicated, one way or another.

The original article where the conversation started is by Monica Bielanko over at Babble.com

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Drawing by Marty Coleman, whose dad used to shop at A & F in NYC back in the 60s & 70s for special Christmas presents.

Quote by – Paul Watzlawick , Psychologist & Philosopher