Carhartt’s Bold Social Strategy: Record eComm Growth

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 to hit record revenue and attract a wave of new customers. But with inflationary pressures, a shortened holiday shopping window, intense competition, and the noise of an election year, the brand needed to innovate fast.

To overcome these challenges and connect with younger audiences—especially Gen Z, Millennials, and women—Carhartt executed a bold, full-funnel strategy on Meta and TikTok. These platforms were chosen for their reach and ability to drive brand awareness, new customer acquisition, and incremental revenue.

• Maximizing Incrementality: Carhartt doubled down on testing and optimization. By using incrementality testing and media mix modeling, they increased their investment in Meta and TikTok, making it the largest social media spend in the brand’s history. This was funded by a reduction by 17% less incremental media channels.
• Full-Funnel Social Strategy: The team crafted a comprehensive approach, targeting every stage of the funnel:

• Top-of-Funnel (Awareness): Focused on new customer prospecting, driven by a robust first-party data strategy.
• Middle and Bottom-of-Funnel (Traffic and Conversion): Tailored, seasonal messaging and optimized creative to push potential customers through the decision-making process. Tested a variety of new platform advancements to gain the leading edge versus the competition. 
• Record-Breaking Creative Volume: Carhartt produced an unprecedented amount of social creative, blending diverse brand storytelling with product-driven content from creators. With static and video assets tailored to seasonal needs and weather patterns, the creative not only showcased Carhartt’s legacy but also resonated with a new generation of consumers.
• Precision Measurement: The team implemented daily incrementality testing and media mix modeling, adjusting budgets in real-time to maximize incremental revenue. Brand lift studies were conducted for each campaign to gauge shifts in key brand health metrics like awareness, consideration, and purchase intent.

While the above created a solid foundation for the year’s social approach, impactful creative that gets new customers’ attention was imperative to be successful. The brand invested in a few key stories:

• Luke Grimes partnership: Rising star on Yellowstone–the #1 show on TV–known for similar values to Carhartt of family legacy and hard work. Took fans behind the scenes of Grimes’ journey, from his roots in the skilled trades to his rise in TV, film, music. Leveraged Grimes across a multi-platform campaign including key moments like the release of his debut music album, his Grand Ole Opry performance, and the highly anticipated final season of Yellowstone.
• Creators: Supported two major brand moments: Pass the Jacket, which celebrated Carhartt’s iconic Detroit Jacket through shared experiences, and Holiday Regifting, which captured the emotional power of passing down traditions and gear that’s built to last.
• Focus on Women: Increased focus on women by incorporating more women’s-focused creative than ever before, highlighting unique new products and benefits.

Goals

In one of the brand’s most critical periods, January Digital and Carhartt partnered to drive new customer acquisition and both last-touch and incremental revenue. To achieve this, we implemented a full-funnel strategy that guided new users from brand discovery all the way through to purchase.

• Elevate Brand Metrics: Increase awareness, ad recall, and purchase intent by strategically leveraging emerging media channels that deeply resonate with Gen Z, Millennials, and female audiences.
• Create a Cohesive Consumer Journey: Deliver a seamless, multi-touch branded experience across platforms, guiding audiences from discovery to conversion and ultimately boosting purchase intent.
• Acquire New Customers: Drive year-over-year increase in new customer acquisition, expanding the brand’s reach, and solidifying its presence among target demographics.

Maximize Revenue Impact: Achieve client goals by generating both last-touch and incremental revenue through precise targeting and impactful creative strategies.

Challenges

Carhartt and January Digital worked closely to optimize media mix investments, carefully reallocating budgets from less incremental channels to social media. 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 and Carhartt’s media team 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. Frequently refreshed first-party data from the client ensured audience targeting had the highest fidelity possible.

Results

This strategy successfully positioned Carhartt to break through the noise of a challenging year, strengthen its connection with younger consumers and driving significant revenue growth. By combining data-driven decisions with impactful creative, Carhartt reinforced its category leadership and paved the way for continued eCommerce success in 2024. Key outcomes included:

• Exceeded revenue goals: Surpassed eCommerce revenue goal.
• New customer acquisition: Increased new traffic by 53% YoY and expanded new customer acquisition by +18% YoY. 
• Meta campaign impact: Meta awareness campaigns contributed to YoY increase in incremental revenue and an impressive growth in incremental orders.
• Industry-leading performance: Demonstrated exceptional performance by surpassing industry benchmarks:
  • 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
• Women’s business growth: Drove an increase in women’s product revenue and traffic, marking a significant achievement in overall performance.