New DTC toolkit   //   June 7, 2019  ■  2 min read

Stitch Fix is spending more on marketing

During Stitch Fix’s third-quarter earnings call earlier this week, CEO and founder Katrina Lake said that the company spent $16 million in brand marketing last quarter, and is looking to spend even more heavily on it during the second half of the year as the company looks to diversify from its “normal bread and butter performance marketing.” The styling service reported revenue of $408.9 million, and net income of $7 million. 

Stitch Fix’s most notable brand awareness campaign to-date was when the company ran a 60-second spot in several cities during this year’s Oscars. Lake said that the company was pleased with doing a campaign tied to a “big social moment,” and hinted that the company might do more of those.

When asked what specific channels the company would use, Lake said that the company has been experimenting with in-person and out-of-home in addition to TV, but that “I think it’s still a little bit early to tell in terms of any specific channel learnings or what that will look like in future quarters.”

Lake said that the company isn’t looking to measure the success of these brand marketing campaigns by how many new clients they add, but rather around squishier metrics like how these ads do in raising “understanding of the brand, awareness of the brand, and affinity to the brand.”

Stitch Fix staked its reputation on being a data-centric company, but this increased investment will require the company to build a new creative muscle, as there’s no one way to measure the effectiveness of a brand marketing campaign. As Stitch Fix’s former vp of brand and creative Cristina Angeli previously told Digiday, at Stitch Fix “it took us a little while to get everyone thinking of brand and the importance of it, and that it’s not this direct payoff. It’s this thing you invest in, and you may see the fruits of those labors four months, six months, a year down the road — but it’s something you have to consistently hit and do.”