Carhartt x January Digital: Record Holiday Performance

Industry Description

Established in 1889, Carhartt is a global premium workwear brand with a rich heritage of developing rugged products for workers on and off the job. Headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, with approximately 5,800 associates worldwide, Carhartt is family-owned and managed by the descendants of the company’s founder, Hamilton Carhartt. For more information, visit www.carhartt.com.

Overview

Carhartt set its most ambitious eCommerce goals for 2024, aiming for record revenue and significant new customer growth. However, the brand faced several challenges as it approached the crucial holiday season—its busiest period of the year. These included inflationary pressures on consumer spending, a shortened holiday shopping window due to a late Thanksgiving, increased competition, and the added noise of an election year.

To achieve its ambitious growth targets, Carhartt, in partnership with media agency of record January Digital, implemented a highly focused, full-funnel eCommerce strategy. This plan aimed to drive incremental revenue, attract new customers, and leverage social commerce, all while expanding content efforts.

Carhartt’s first-party data strategy prioritized new customer acquisition while targeting existing customers at key moments to drive repeat purchases.

January Digital tapped into premium inventory to surround the audience through a multi-touch full-funnel approach, harnessing tactics such as:

• Official sponsor of Yellowstone’s final season: Carhartt became an official apparel sponsor for the final season of the #1 TV series, Yellowstone. This included sponsorship of all episodes, marathons, and a heavy push around Black Friday/Cyber Monday—Carhartt’s peak shopping period. The campaign also showcased Carhartt apparel worn by Luke Grimes in pivotal moments throughout the season, their brand partner in 2024.
• Social commerce investment: Carhartt’s biggest investment yet across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and influencer partnerships, including campaigns like the “passing a jacket” challenge to showcase durability and versatility across influencers and Rigifting.
• Vertical video content: Created engaging Reels, TikToks, and Shorts to connect with mobile-first audiences.
• Tailored gift guide messaging: Personalized gift guides by gender, interest, and price point for maximum relevance.
• On-the-go shopper targeting: Captured retail shoppers through streaming audio ads and programmatic outdoor placements.
  

Goals

To address aggressive growth goals amidst many challenging external factors, Carhartt and January Digital aligned media strategies across the organization to:

• Drive e-commerce revenue to meet holiday goals with a specific focus on incremental revenue
• Enhance awareness, favorability, and purchase intent
• Attract more new customers to Carhartt.com
• Deliver measurable results that demonstrate effectiveness while optimizing marketing spend

Challenges

Carhartt and January Digital worked closely to optimize media mix investments, carefully reallocating budgets from less incremental channels. As the brand’s largest media mix shift in years, aligning expectations across teams was critical to success.

The next challenge was producing a high volume of creative assets—video and static imagery—to support a full-funnel strategy designed to acquire new customers. Despite the high production demands, proactive planning ensured timely delivery of all assets.

To maximize engagement and drive sales, January Digital collaborated with retail merchandising, the website team, and creative to craft a seamless consumer journey. Leveraging data, the team curated a product mix that resonated with the target audience while aligning with business goals and inventory priorities. Daily merchandising reports helped mitigate revenue loss from out-of-stock products.

Results

Carhartt and January Digital’s 2024 Holiday full-funnel eCommerce campaign exceeded both client expectations and industry benchmarks, driving record performance for Carhartt. Key results include:

• Exceeded revenue goals: Surpassed eCommerce revenue goal.
• New customer growth: Drove 3% new customer growth YoY with 1.4MM new site visitors in Q2, +7% YoY.
• Carhartt.com traffic: 45% YoY growth with 41% growth in new customer traffic.
• Largest brand demand lifts: Saw the greatest brand demand from a single campaign in the last five years.
• Industry-leading brand performance: Outpaced benchmarks with YoY lifts in awareness, recall, and purchase intent:
  • CTV: +9% increase in brand awareness (6x industry average)
  • YouTube: +2.5% lift in ad recall (1.4x industry average)
  • Meta: +3.3% lift in top-of-mind awareness (1.6x industry average) and +7.9% lift in purchase intent (3.16x industry average)
  • TikTok: +2.5% lift in brand favorability