Can the Gap make a comeback?
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies. ♪

On today's episode, Fast Company senior staff editor Jeff Beer. That cultural relevance, getting a bit edgy, getting a bit more kind of F-you than kumbaya, worked for them. Fast Company contributing writer Nicole Laporte. It sort of lost its way in terms of it didn't know what to do. It would chase, there were years when it would chase fast fashion. And as always, keeping tabs.

But this feels like you're at the worst produced, like, panel discussion. But first, here's the download, the news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation. ♪

In a surprise move, Starbucks Corporation announced that Brian Nicol would be taking over as chairman and CEO this September. Nicol is currently the CEO of Chipotle and was at Taco Bell and Pizza Hut and a number of other places before that. But you may remember Nicol's most from Chipotle's Portion Gate, a characterization I just made up now. I don't think anyone's called it Portion Gate, but we all know what I'm talking about, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Half portions of chicken. Just load that stuff up. It was a disgrace. It was a national disgrace on par with Watergate. Chipotle is not a crook. Nickel is replacing locksman Nareshman, who only lasted a little over a year as CEO. Starbucks is likely hoping this shakeup turns around what's been a disappointing year so far.

Ugh, my heart goes out to the Green Straw Mafia. Dating app Bumble cut its revenue growth forecast this past week, causing shares to drop nearly 36%. The company now expects a full year revenue to grow between 1% and 2% compared to an earlier projection of 8% to 11% growth.

It's been a tough year for Lydianne Jones, who took over as CEO from Bumble's founder Whitney Wolf Hurd last November. The decrease in numbers based on what they projected and what's actually going to happen in real life is much like what happens with most men when they show up on their dates with women. You said you were six feet tall. Definitely five foot nine. Yeah.

Layoffs continue in the tech sector with Paramount Global announcing this week that it would be laying off 15% of its U.S. workforce. This is just one of a number of high-profile layoffs announced in August. Tech companies Intel, Dell Technologies, Eventbrite, and LegalZoom have all also announced layoffs. In addition to media— Not LegalZoom! No, LegalZoom.

In addition to these tech companies, we also saw another media company lay off with Axios laying off a large number of its staff as well. Blink Fitness has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after 13 years of operation. If you aren't familiar, and good for you, you're probably rich, Blink is the budget-friendly gym owned by famously not budget-friendly Equinox. According to a statement from the company, they plan to stay open to members while they work towards a sale.

Blink did feel like a really weird addition to the Equinox Holdings brands. It's like Equinox, SoulCycle, Pure Yoga. Yeah. I think was another one over there. All of these very expensive brands that are very much tailored to people not...

in the price range of a Blink Fitness. Truth Social's back in the news with their revenue numbers that are going in the same direction as their owners' poll numbers. Down. See what I did there? Ha ha. Get it from this lefty troll.

Anyways, crooked Josh. Trump Media, Truth Social's parent company, released its second quarter results last week, which showed a loss of $16.4 million. The company only generated $837,000 in revenue. And they're disclosing this because they're now a public company, kind of, because they went public through SPAC. Yeah.

And that's the whole process that we talked about a number of months ago. So go back to March and listen to that episode if you're curious. But if you're worried about the Trump media revenue numbers, they say they expect to generate more revenue next year after it launches. And this was news to me when I saw this story. Truth Plus, which is apparently going to be a new TV streaming service.

Incredible work, guys. And finally, speaking of Trump, the former president took part in an X-Spaces conversation with Elon Musk Monday night. The interview was billed as, quote, the biggest interview in history. Sorry, it's so funny. 1.3 million people listened to it, which is like...

a kind of mediocre primetime cable news number. Yeah. Like, I'm pretty sure Jesse Waters is doing two million a night. Yeah. Well, anyway, the Trump campaign said it was the biggest, so... And I believe them. Famously honest Trump campaign. Yeah.

Anyway, the X-Bases got off to a rough start as technical issues delayed the event for about 40 minutes. Musk blamed the technical issues on an alleged DDoS attack and said that this, quote, illustrates there's a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say. It was a slog to get through that interview. It was rough. I was walking home from hot yoga last night and you texted me being like, oh, I'm joining the Twitter spaces and I...

I joined for one minute, and then I thought, not today, Satan. It was rough. And now us talking about this and how this newscast goes, our comments and DMs are going to be rough after this episode. We got the Musk stans and the MAGA bros jumping in after us. Be kind. Be kind, guys. And I say guys specifically. The biggest community that came for us, has come for us so far, is the design thinking community.

It's true, which is so on brand for a fast company. Which is so funny. They were like, these people are idiots. They don't know what design thinking is and how useful it is. Said head of design thinking at XYZ company. I was like, okay, dude. Whatever. Haters. And that's the news you need to know today. Josh, is there a dead mall brand that you miss?

So I'm not sure necessarily how dead this is. I might have just aged out of this, but nothing did I love more when I was a kid than a Hasbro toys shop in the mall. I didn't know they had individual stores.

Yeah, they did. I don't know if they still do. Obviously, I'm not like shopping for kids. I feel like most toy stores have kind of gone away as it's really become more like e-commerce space. Obviously, Hasbro is still a huge company with like a huge marketplace and you can get Hasbro toys and Target or more big box stores like that. But they had Hasbro storefronts.

In my local mall, the Warwick Mall in Rhode Island, maybe it was more of a small thing. Hasbro's from Rhode Island. They're based in Rhode Island. So maybe that was a thing. But someone let me know, like slide into my DMs, if you remember a Hasbro toy store, because it was a big part of my childhood. And specifically, I remember because they had my favorite action figures as a kid ever, which were, do you remember Ronin Warriors? It was a manga inspired toy.

anime show they were the best action figures ever because they had all different armor oh you know oh you mean my habit of uh of liking manga and uh and uh magic the gathering was it and oh by the way musical theater was a recipe for being super cool

Yes, yes, I was bullied. No, they were the coolest action figures and you couldn't find them anywhere else, at least at that time for my market research as a child.

But yeah, Hasbro Toy Store, that was like a big mall staple for me growing up. What about you? You have a very eclectic locale childhood. I know. So you might have some interesting finds. Growing up abroad, like when we went to visit my grandparents in America, like the mall became this like a mystical place. I wanted to be able to go to the mall so bad when I was a kid, but I didn't. And as a fairly, I mean... That had a sad turn.

A fact that will surprise no one is that I did go through a bit of an emo phase. Oh, hell yeah. And...

You and me both. And I was like, man, I wish Hot Topic was in whatever country I was living in. And Hot Topic now is all full of Marvel merch. They've rebranded as the Loser Store instead of the coolest store in the world. They really shifted to nerd culture sort of stuff, but kind of like normie nerd culture now in a weird way. Yeah, Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts were always like...

very semi-taboo stores like when I was a kid. I don't know what Spencer's Gist is, but it's funny that that is a taboo store name. Oh, yeah, you should look it up. You should look up Spencer's. Yeah, it was interesting. But yeah, Hot Topic was a big thing circa 2004 to 2008 when I was in high school. Just if you wanted to be a scene kid, if you wanted to be a second wave emo kid,

That's where you had to go. The seatbelt belts. The seatbelt belts. You still wear checkered shoes, checkered canvas shoes. I do. I still wear the checkered Vans. Yeah. Ugh. Anyway, the reason we're talking about mall brands is actually because later on today...

Contributing writer Nicole Laporte came on the show to tell us about a turnaround plan at The Gap. The king of mall brands. The king of mall brands. But before that, we're going to take a look at what some top brands are doing in the sports and entertainment space. This is part of our ongoing monthly series of Brands That Matter with Fast Company senior staff editor Jeff Beer. Beer. Beer.

Welcome back to the show, Jeff. Hey, good to be back. So you didn't manage to con your way into the Olympics through Fast Company. No, no, no. I've got two years now to go wherever the winter ones are, but no, not this time. Right. Before we talk about Olympic partnerships, I want everybody to say their favorite Olympics moment. Josh, you go first. Oh, man. Oh, man.

I'm not going to steal yours because I know what you're going to say. You know mine. I've sent you so many clips already. I know. So I'm going to go with my second favorite Olympics moment, which is the Paul Valters clipping the bar with his extremely large member on the way down.

That was very funny. I tried to follow him on Instagram and he's a cop. I know that's not too bad. That's my that's my joke moment. My serious moment, though, is Steph Curry going off and winning the USA gold in men's basketball. Just an absolutely incredible performance. So I'll go with that one.

Jeff, what about you? I don't know. I have a feeling I know what you're going to say too, Yaz. But I think I hope. I don't know. But one of my favorite moments is I was interested in selfishly to see how the surfing would go in Chopu. Oh, those photos turned out so good. Well, one of my favorites is the photo of Gabe Medina where he came off the wave. And it looks like he's just like...

Holding his finger up and the board's right behind him. That picture's incredible. Surfing Jesus. That was one of my favorite photos. I did not like the Canadian basketball team getting knocked out by France in the quarters, I believe. I thought they were going to get a medal this time. We have an amazing team. And then my other favorite moment was the women's rugby sevens for Canada. Like, not a rugby nation. And it was one of the only teams that...

Someone from Prince Edward Island was on that team, guys. And she scored a try in that match, and it was awesome. So, yeah, those are a few of my favorite moments. Yaz, come on, what is it? What's yours? Guys, this is obviously Ray Gunn, the Australian breakdancer. Oh, my God. It's starting to flip. Is anyone starting to feel bad for her a little bit? No! No!

She's a legend, though. I saw a meme that said that I had a picture of a washing machine and it was like when your duvet cover swallows up all your other laundry and it was just like a picture of her superimposed on top of the washing machine. So awesome. Oh my God. I saw on Twitter somebody called her Napoleon Vegemite. LAUGHTER

But, can I be honest? And I know we have a break dancer on the cover of our current issue, but breaking was a mistake in the Olympics. Yeah, you're right. And don't buy our magazine. No! Just kidding. Buy our magazine, please. I know Ray Gunn... Ray Gunn is obviously the funniest thing that's ever happened, but there was also, like...

Wasn't there an Eastern European white lady in a do-rag that did a route? Yeah, it was just, and I'm pretty sure there's like the community of breakers, I guess that they call themselves, is like pretty split on this being included. And there's like a lot of drama around like the world dance thing.

I'm forgetting the full acronym. It's like four words. The World Dance Organization governing body that's like administering these sorts of things was like really more primarily a ballroom dancing organization. People feel like it's just kind of... Guys, this is a tale as old as time. I mean, look, you're going to go back to snowboarding entering the Olympics. It was the same...

It was the same cultural hand-wringing going over that. And I disagreed with it at the time as a sober. I thought it was lame. I imagine surfing had the same thing. Skateboarding, same thing. BMX, same thing. Look, breaking is weird. And should it be in the Olympics? Who knows? But if you go back into the history of the Olympics, I'm pretty sure ballroom dancing was in it. And there's all kinds of weird stuff in the Olympics. And I'm on the side of, I can't remember, there's this Irish comedian who was awesome. He was showing clips of Reagan and he was like,

You're criticizing her. What are you doing right now? You're on your couch. Look at her. She's in the Olympics. This is the weird. There's only so many times we can see people run at different measurements of meters. It's like, this makes it weird. This mixes it up a bit. And I can't disagree with that. I think you're defending it because a Canadian won. How dare you? A Canadian named Phil Wizard. No, that's not right. I watched the final. Oh, yeah. He won.

Absolutely. And that's not why I'm defending it. Okay. That's not why I'm defending it. And I actually, I have no interest in it. I did not watch it. Couldn't care less. But I do think the Olympics do need a little bit more weird. I'm actually more in favor of that than say more, uh,

action sports or whatever like BMX is weird I just think that like yeah some of it is a little strange but the other thing with breaking is do you did you guys ever own a PS2 did you guys play that snowboarding game SSX they all look like the characters from like the way they dress I don't know that's kind of the charm though of the Olympics I guess you're right setting aside like the individual community ideas of like

There's so many weird sports in the Olympics that people get really excited about for once every few years.

And that's kind of fun. The things that are cultural, whether it's breaking or skateboarding or surfing or whatever. Or for Americans shooting guns. Totally. There is this separation of there's the culture and there's the sport. And even outside of the Olympics, you look at some of these things like I'm sure the breakdance community, like the culture of it is a little separated from competitive breakdancing generally. Yeah. Like sanctioned whatever.

Whatever you want to call it. Well, I guess that's kind of what the argument's about, though, is is this an art or is it a sport? And I think that happens a lot in the dance community overall, like not just in this sort of circumstance of like once you start to commodify something, are you cheapening the...

cultural relevance, you know, the ultimate like meaning behind it. I mean, at the end of the day, it's people dancing. So we don't necessarily need to. I also think two things can be true at the same time. Yeah. Wow, guys, this got unexpectedly deep. I just wanted to bring up Reagan at the top of this episode. We got to talk about branding. And what am I doing here? Yeah. Yeah.

So what kind of branding campaigns do you think stood out in the Olympics, Jeff? Well, I mean, there's a lot, but there's one that I wanted to point out that I think was particularly successful, especially in light of, I would say, to Josh's earlier point, his favorite moment, the USA men's basketball team winning and Simone Biles and the Nike campaign, which I wrote about when it came out, was basically a

You don't win silver, you lose gold.

It was very divisive because people thought, ah, this is the Olympics. This is like, you're supposed to be sportsman-like. And Nike was kind of like, fuck that. Let's go for pre-Mamba mentality. But that's what it is. And this year they kind of had the whole thing. Like they went back to that being, that idea for being uncompromisingly competitive. Am I a bad person? Tell me, am I? I'm single-minded.

I'm deceptive. I'm obsessive. I'm selfish. Does that make me a bad person?

I think it worked. I think in a world where you try to get attention and I think the vibe was that among a lot of the competitors and with the U.S. winning gold, particularly in a sport like basketball, it felt right. And I think it got a lot of traction. I kept seeing it pop up whenever U.S. would do well. I kept seeing these Nike references pop up. And apparently there's a report out this week that, you know, it's actually been been working in

the opening week of the Olympics, Nike and Puma managed to increase visits to their DTC sites while competitors like Adidas and Hoka and Ahn saw visits decline. Wow. Nike also said they were spending more on this Olympics than any previous games and

in hopes to revive sales, but they've kind of been on a bit of a slump. So I feel like that cultural relevance, getting a bit edgy, getting a bit more kind of FU than Kumbaya worked for them. So Nike's performance so far this year was kind of lagging behind on Orhoka. Do you think this could bring them back? I mean, that's a huge question. Bring them back? I mean,

Ah, maybe a little bit. You know, I mean, they've kind of been struggling a little bit here and there more generally, I think, particularly in running. But you know what? When it comes to sports like basketball, and certainly in sneaker culture, they're still very strong. And I think they need to...

if anything, a campaign like this around athletic sports, not just sneaker culture, a campaign like this getting back to the athlete-focused stuff, the competitive nature, and then combining that with, that they say, a little more R&D and technological development on their actual product, which apparently is coming, and they've been criticized for a lack of in the last couple years. That kind of brand approach combined with

Ideally, some more inspiring product will certainly help. But I just think it's a great start. I wouldn't say it brings them, you know, gets them back. I think it's a great start. Before we move on from the Olympics, I did want to ask you about a campaign that I have been noticing all around New York that has really puzzled me.

Figs, which makes sort of cool scrubs, keeps being like, we sponsor the doctors that take care of the athletes on Team USA. Oh, that's a walk. And I was wondering whether you think that's effective because to me it's like, this seems like very far from, like, I was like, you know, does this kind of thing persuade anyone? Well, I don't know. I mean, it depends on who the audience is. I feel like

Like, are they trying to sell to more health professionals and maybe the health professionals, you know, sports medicine? They're just getting into the mood of the Olympics. I mean, certainly everyday people would be kind of like, weird, who cares? I don't know. But I think the same thing could be said for, you look at like sponsoring just about any kind of

I mean, who knows? There's probably something out there where it's like, we're the official accounting software for the agents of the U.S. rugby team. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever that means. But it means something to somebody. They should do that. An accounting software should do that around like the next like crypto event.

thing and be like, you don't want this to happen to you. Hire us. We'll take care of your money. Right, right. That's funny. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's also about that. That's just about kind of niche audience, a bit of a niche product. They have their broad stuff, but this is just kind of

And why New York? I don't know. I'm not there. But that's an interesting view. Maybe they're just trying to tap into Olympic spirit. I guess. I don't know. Didn't rub off on you, obviously. Yeah, no. I was like, guys, stop trying to make this a thing. So moving on from the Olympics, let's talk about some sort of big campaigns you've been looking at. I know you've been thinking about movies. And I know Deadpool and Wolverine was one of them. Tell me a little bit about that. I mean...

Last week, whatever it was, D23, Disney's chief brand officer, Asad Ayaz, who's a former Fast Company most creative person in business, was talking about the role of viral stunts in getting that film, Deadpool and Wolverine, to cross the $1 billion mark. And it is an interesting look when you look back at this film and how they promoted it. He also talked on, I think, Matt Bellamy's

Town podcast about the advantage of having stars like Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds who are willing to just

get out there, not only as themselves, but also in character. So they're in character doing European football matches, but then they're also like on hot ones. You two climbing the hot sauce mountain together, living to tell the tale. And now there is nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you two. This camera, this camera, this camera, this camera. Let the people know what you have going on in your life. Oh yeah, we have a little film coming out. Fuck me. Yeah, that's cool. And Wolverine is coming out. And doing...

Chicken shop date. Hi, Amelia. Hi. Oh, my God. Thank you. It's so lovely to see you. I saw you the other day. Did you? On a bus. Oh, yes. Yeah. I remember I was on the bus and you were just standing at the window. No. Awkwardly. Your face was imprinted on the bus. Mm-hmm. And then before that, you were in my dream. Really? What happened? Essentially, this is our second date. Does your wife know that you're on a date right now? She does know that. She does? Yes. Okay, good. And the only reason I'm allowed here is that, you know, she's your number one fan. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh, my God.

- That is right. Brooke from Gossip Girl loves you. - Serena. - Mm-hmm. - Serena. - Blair. - Blair. - Serena. Everything has a Brooke.

Feel some ketchup? Oh, yes, please. Going to a water balloon festival in Korea. I mean, they're like full court press. I would categorize that. What interests me about the campaign around Deadpool and Wolverine is you've got the kind of big ticket, star-driven things like that, like their appearances. And, you know, I think they're with a Korean pop band, Stray Kids. They were in a video with them, like all kinds of stuff around the world. But then there's also this...

aspect of it that the anchor wrote about, which I think is also really interesting is that this kind of digital culture of it all where they've kind of been seemingly allowing kind of selective piracy where it's like clips of the movie are out there and people, fans are using them in different ways, not just like for spoilers, but like to create memes, to share the clips. And it just seems to me that the, the studio is kind of

found a nice way of combining that big ticket official marketing with encouraging kind of the grassroots fan side of things as well. And I think we're going to see more and more of that.

Two things I'll say about Deadpool and Wolverine. The first is every fact I hear about this movie is like unbelievably confusing to me. Like Jennifer Garner is in it as Elektra apparently. And they were like Blake Lively is Lady Deadpool. And I was like, what the hell is going on? But the second I would say is, do you feel like the tide is turning a little bit against Ryan Reynolds? Do you feel like they may be a little overexposed? My Twitter feed...

is like slowly getting more anti, I would say. I think we're reaching a crest of a wave that's been building because this guy's been working on this movie and slowly promoting it for so long through his other brands and everything. But I do think he is smart enough to

because when I talked to him for our fall issue, one of the things he said was he's done for like a year and a half. Like he's not doing anything Hollywood for like a year and a half. I mean, I don't know what he's going to be doing with Maximum Effort in terms of like whether it's Aviation Gen or Mint Mobile or whatever. But and certainly there's, I think, another season of Wrexham coming out. But like

This has been like the blitz and it's going to taper back. The wave will recede. And I think he's smart enough to know that. I hope he is. I think he's super interesting to have out there in kind of brand culture. And I'd hate to see it

arguably, if it hasn't already, be completely overdone. I think part of that is because he's really seen culturally less as a movie star now. I think it's switched from like, oh, he's this marketing genius of some sort to an extent. I mean, you can't argue with his success on that level. So I think like naturally when someone starts to become seen more as like,

nakedly capitalistic in some sort of a way. I think that changes or polarizes someone's perception. And I also think with Deadpool Wolverine, this may be the case of like the widest chasm between like commercial success and critical failure. Like the reviews of the movie are bad. Clearly, you've never seen a Fast and Furious film.

Well, yeah, I mean, those movies rule. Or any of the 10. Yeah, that's true. I guess there is that chasm there, but that kind of slowly built up over time. I guess this is something that's like, and it's really marketed towards a niche, but like this is a headline that I think kind of encapsulates everything around how critics are receiving this movie. This is from NPR. Deadpool and Wolverine is a self-cannibalizing slog.

So that's kind of brutal overall. But I think I saw something that it's like eclipsing the largest gross revenue on an opening weekend for an R-rated movie. So like, who's the idiot? Yeah, it's like I'll counter that headline with $1.2 billion. Yeah. Yeah.

There's like some writer at Slate getting paid 60K a year who's like, you know what? Yeah. It's absolutely a valid point. But at the same time, it's like, there's a certain thing you can't argue with. You know, look, I think...

maybe this movie notwithstanding, one thing in my brief conversations with Reynolds is that he kind of knows the difference, like the way he talks about advertising and branding. I think what makes him special as a marketer is that he's built a following as a Hollywood person and has taken a...

very smart approach to advertising and been able to kind of put that on top. He's not unique in his sense of like advertising should be fun. It should be no bullshit. I mean, Jerry Graff, who's a legendary ad guy, has made so many ads that Reynolds, I'm sure, would love. Had his own agency, Barton Graff 3000. Amazing work, all done with that same philosophy. He's told to me over and over and over again. And Reynolds, though, is like,

but with millions of followers and people interested in him from a Hollywood perspective. So he, but he's been able that the skill, the real sort of innovation or the skill that he's had is the ability to meld those two things pretty seamlessly. Obviously for many people, not perfectly, but like that's,

that's where his greatest strength is. I mean, it seems like we were talking about this before you jumped on, but it seems like Deadpool was almost made in part to just fuel a marketing campaign versus like making a movie and then finding a marketing campaign for it. I mean, I think that argument could be made for this reason,

This film, you know, potentially. The first one, though, was the whole reason and the whole reason his whole career in marketing took off is they had no money. He was basically allowed to make this movie, arguably on a clip that leaked online.

because fan excitement got too much. And him and George Dewey, who is his Maximum Effort co-founder, who was a head of digital marketing, I think, at Fox at the time, or in the marketing department at Fox at the time, had to work with what they worked with. So they did the brand partnerships. They did the digital stuff because it was cheap, quick, and funny. So I definitely think the marketing, it wasn't created for a marketing campaign, but his marketing career was absolutely phenomenal.

born out of the first Deadpool. That makes a lot of sense. Well, thanks, Jeff, for taking us through all this. We'll be back with Jeff for Keeping Tabs, but first, a quick break followed by our conversation with Fast Company contributing writer Nicole Laporte about the return of The Gap.

Back in the 80s and 90s, Gap was synonymous with denim and khakis. But the rise of fast fashion brands like Zara and H&M, the shift from shopping in malls to shopping online, and the pandemic all hit the Gap hard. Then, former Mattel president and COO Richard Dixon came in to take over. And if you're wondering why a former toy company executive would want to move to a flailing clothing company, so am I.

Here to explain more is Fast Company contributing writer Nicole Laporte. Hey, Nicole, welcome to the show. Thank you. Hi, thanks for having me. Before we get into why Dixon took over a gap, give us a bit of background on what went wrong at the company.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it goes without saying that, you know, Gap was like the purveyor of that casual, cool aesthetic of the 80s and 90s. You know, it was a mall destination. It was such a thing in the culture. And yeah, it was the advertising. Lenny Kravitz was in Gap ads. Madonna was in Gap ads. It was just such an incredible brand.

It really peaked late 90s, like right around 2000. And then just as that was happening, you had the arrival of fast fashion brands like H&M, Zara, and also just online shopping, right? So the internet was suddenly a thing. You didn't have to go to the mall anymore. And all of those things crashed the industry, I guess, at once.

You also had Mickey Drexler, who was the CEO for years and years and years, the '80s and '90s, and really was behind the growth of the company and really clarifying the vision and creating the brand identity. He left and he was actually fired in 2002, right, when things started to go downhill. That was sort of the moment when Gap lost its way. And, you know, the short version of the long story is that it really never regained momentum again.

since I would say the last year. Throughout the aughts and up until the pandemic, the company churned through CEOs, churned through other management layers, creative partners came and went.

It sort of lost its way in terms of it didn't know what to do. There were years when it would chase fast fashion and try to create those kind of cheaper looks and very kind of trendy looks. Then it would pivot the other way and try to go a little more luxe and have $600 leather jackets. And it just didn't have that clarity, which is what we all love about the Gap, right? It's like the very basic, iconic Gap.

And then the pandemic was kind of the last, not nail in the coffin, but, you know, something that really battered the company as it did

All retailers, more stores were closed. Revenue sank. It was just a mess. So that's the company that Richard Dixon walked into last August. And, you know, I live near a Gap factory store and I'm actually, maybe I shouldn't admit this on the podcast, a frequent shopper there. I don't hate, I remember the Gap fondly. That was my back to school go-to. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah, if you need khakis, your dreams. It was like a uniform. I grew up in suburban Connecticut, which is probably like if you're ever going to find a Gap, like preppy aesthetic. Suburban Rhode Island, same deal there. I think we all had the same sweater, like the V-neck sweater and the jeans. Oh, yeah. The crazy thing about the Gap, though, is like they started this culture of having sales all the time that I feel like

is almost off the rails at this point. Like, I would never buy anything full price from Gap, right? Yeah, and I talked to Richard about that a lot, and they went so crazy with the inventory that even the non-outlet stores didn't.

felt like you were walking into an outlet and it was just like, yeah, why exactly? Why would you buy anything full price? You go straight. They kind of trained you. Yeah, go straight to the back to the sale aisle to get the teacher for five dollars. And so, again, that, you know, obviously that's not a great business model. I do have to admit, my mom was one of those people who would buy something. But if she saw it was on sale a couple of weeks later from from like the Gap or Old Navy, she would go back and get the store credit. Oh, my mom does that for the extra sale. Yeah.

The Gap kind of became like a punchline. Did either of you watch Crazy Stupid Love, that really bad Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell movie? I vividly remember them making fun of The Gap in that movie. And I feel like that's kind of indicative of how people felt about The Gap, that it was just sort of like...

like very uncool brand. Yeah, I think it's just, you know, I say in the story, it's sort of where you go for like, yeah, the deeply discounted sweater or, you know, like your kid's school uniform pants, but nothing else sort of,

When you're forced to buy this thing that you don't even really want to buy, but you know the Gap will have it and it won't be that expensive, that's where you go. Now that we've set the scene, let's get into why Dixon wanted to jump from Mattel to Gap. I mean, to the outside world, it looks kind of crazy, right? Yeah.

especially coming off the success of the Barbie movie. Absolutely. Anyone you talked about Richard Dixon will describe him as the brand guy. I mean, that's what he's known for. That's really what he did at Mattel was dig into that brand and redefine it and make it culturally relevant. But it does beg the question, like, why would the brand guy who spent nearly 20 years at a toy company, at a Barbie company, go into retail? But he has this interesting backstory where he actually grew up in fashion and he kind of has this very poignant personality

His grandparents are all Holocaust survivors. And when they came to the U.S., to New York, they set up, one of his grandmothers set up a couture line in the garment district. And so he talked about like literally sitting next to her while she was selling these beautiful garments.

And then his mother was president of Acajo stores, which I wasn't familiar with, but I guess it was this big thing in the 80s. And it was similar to The Gap. It was casual clothing, it was t-shirts and shorts and jeans. And then also his father, it was like it never ended. His father was CFO of Ellen Tracy. So on weekends when he was in high school, he'd work in the stores or work in the warehouses.

And so he had this love of fashion. He had this familiarity with retail. And after he graduated from college, he entered Bloomingdale's executive training program. The connection between Mattel and The Gap, which again, isn't totally evident at first glance, is that

They're both these sort of heritage brands. They're American brands that people have a strong connection to, and they have a strong origin story. And what he did at Mattel and at Barbie specifically is very much what he's doing at Gap. You kind of peel all the layers back and you say, what was Barbie originally created for? It's not really about that she's this

kind of crazy ideal of beauty, which by the way isn't even relevant anymore. This doll inspired creativity

and inspired play. And what can we do with that? And so that's kind of what he's doing at Gap is going back to like, what is the origin of the Gap? Well, the Gap is like basics. It's classics. So how do we take those basics and those classic items and make them relevant? And that's really exactly what he did at Barbie was take this iconic doll and make her relevant and come out with this movie and do partnerships with interesting brands and make millennials care about Barbie and introduce

the astronaut and Barbie career woman and sort of revive what

what was a very outdated toy into something that's completely part of the cultural conversation as we saw with the movie. Totally. I think we can all still acknowledge those dolls look kind of fucked up. But yes. I mean, yeah, the movie was so great about, yeah, we don't all stand on our toes. Yeah, yeah. So has he sort of shared his turnaround plan for The Gap? What is he trying to do?

He started last August, so I guess it's basically exactly a year now. It's very similar to what I was just saying about Mattel. Going back to basics, going back to like, what was the original purpose of The Gap? So the original purpose was it was opened by...

Don and Doris Fisher in San Francisco in 1969 to sell jeans, cassettes, and records. The music was kind of just to draw young people in. But you're selling jeans. So this very basic... Come for the music, stay for the jeans, I think would be a great tagline of a new brick-and-mortar store. Exactly.

Exactly. But this idea of basics, like we're not trying to make the trendy outfit. So let's go back to making great, comfortable, well-made, reasonably priced T-shirts, jeans, khakis. You know, it's sort of a limited palette. And then two, make it modern. That's when you enter into partnerships. So he's hired Zach Posen to be the creative director there.

He's doing partnerships and he's done these cool partnerships with Doan, with Palace, which is this Northern California skateboard brand. When he partners with people, he lets the other brands have a very strong voice. So the Palace ads, you'll see

these kind of shaggy skater kids like driving cars. And, you know, it doesn't look like Gap orchestrated that campaign. It looks very much like Palace did it, but yet they're wearing the Gap sweatshirt. And so he's very good about mixing, in this case, the Gap brand with whoever the sort of outside partner is. But I think it's those two things, it's going back to basics and then somehow working to give it modern relevance.

I'm not sure necessarily everyone, and I'm not terribly familiar with who Zach Posen is and why this is an interesting choice for Gap to bring in as creative director, right? Yes. You know, Zach Posen sort of

He was like this, he was hailed as a boy genius for a while. Then he kind of just ran his brand into the ground. Like he's been bad PR. And he was primarily like a runway fashion. That's correct. But then he also designed. Yeah, Delta. So he did these. And I've actually been on Delta flights. I'm like, oh, there's the Zach Posen uniform. I want to talk about Dixon a little bit as a sort of cultural tastemaker. Yeah.

It seems like he's got cool friends. You know, he's friends with Pharrell. Tell me a little bit about his own sensibility. You know, people I talked to said that he hasn't just been sitting in, like, Mattel headquarters and El Segundo, you know, behind a desk. Very much out and about. Obviously, you can see he has Hollywood connections, the Barbie movie. Yeah.

He's friends with Dianne Furstenberg. You know, he really loves fashion and becomes friends with these people. J.J. Abrams couldn't say nicer things about him because J.J. also did a collaboration with

with Hasbro, and they are working on a Hot Wheels movie, still very early. Oh, God. When's the Gap movie coming out, and what's that going to be about? That's like a 50-part miniseries or something. Or the story of a lonely pair of khakis trying to find... Right. No, and he's very, he loves art, and I was talking to the head of design at Mattel who said, Richard will just be in an art gallery and just text some cool image or some artist,

And then the next day, the artist will be in Mattel and they're doing a collaboration. And he really encourages people to be out, his employees specifically, to be out and about in the world and just like breathing in culture. So the Gap team was sent to the Whitney Biennial.

I guess, do an early tour and be inspired. And, you know, when Gap executives go to Tokyo, he was saying, you know, you're not allowed to just do your meeting, have lunch and fly home. Like, I want you to go out and go to stationary stores, but like not just retailers. Like, you know, he just, I think he wants everyone to just be out in the world and being inspired. And he wants them to bring that back and see it play out in sort of the company culture and

in the products. Now, you mentioned Doris Fisher and the Fishers, who are the founders of Gap, still own half of the company's stock, which I was actually pretty surprised to learn. I didn't realize that either. It's still a family-owned business, so the Fishers own 40%.

And so Don and Doris founded the company. Don has passed away, but there are three sons and two of them sit on the board and, you know, are very involved in the company. And Bob Fisher was even, you know, right before Richard Keen, they had let a CEO go and he kind of stepped in as interim CEO.

They're very hands-on. They care deeply about the company. As someone pointed out when I was reporting this, like they could have sold years ago. The company does $15 billion in revenue. So by the way, it's just being pointed out that the gap never...

It's been a very sizable company, even while it has been flailing. But the point is, it should be twice that by now. And actually, if you go to the changing rooms of Gap stores, there's pictures of Doris and Dawn with their jeans in the changing rooms. That is how I know who these people are. Wow. You're really a Gap shopper. This is so embarrassing. I just buy all my basics there. Yeah.

But that's their intended plan. Millennials buying basics. I know. Yeah. You need to be in their ads. I know. Yeah, sponsor us. We're very, we come cheap. What is that Gap logo at the bottom of the screen? Most innovative companies brought to you by the Gap.

You know, when I went to interview him at the beautiful, by the way, Gap headquarters in San Francisco, which is this stunning, like, $150 million building, you know, they're a very prominent philanthropic family in San Francisco, and a lot of their private art collection is in the Gap. So when you're walking around and there's, like, these Lichtensteins, you're like, oh, right, this is still a company that's really owned by a family and it matters deeply to them. You know, Richard...

obviously understands that and he really leans into it. He has meals with them all of the time. He meets with the grandkids. And Richard is very much like, talk openly, I guess, about everything that's wrong. So he will ask the grandkids, like, what do you not like? Why doesn't the Gap speak to you, to your generation anymore? And he was kind of funny. He called it the G3 dinners because it's three generations of Gap. It's like the grandkids, the sons, and the Doris is still alive.

So he's very much about understanding what the company means to them, what their original vision is. Let's be real, though. Those grandkids are rich. They're not buying Gap. No. They're not rocking the Gap hoodies. They don't understand what, like, value, you know, they're not like, oh, shit, discount. Yeah.

That's true. Good point. Yeah, I know. Makes for a good story. Yeah, it's true. I mean, they need the company because they need their billions. It's true. They need their billions. They need to be in touch with the common man to get their billions. They need the gap to sell more clothes so they can buy Laura Piana. They don't want to work. They don't want to work. They don't want to fold sweaters at the gap. So it's been a year now.

And I'm curious whether you see any signs of a turnaround or where you see Gap heading. Yeah, it's pretty remarkable. He started last August and already you're seeing, you know, the stock rose for Q1 reports. Sales went up 3%. For the first time, you saw also under the Gap umbrella, there's Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta and Old Navy. And

And for the first time in literally a decade, all of those brands saw revenue increases. So that was quite remarkable. When that happened, the stock shot up 20%. And then market share hit $11 billion, which is nearly quadruple what it was when Richard arrived. So that alone is, you know, the numbers are absolutely moving. And then, you know, his big flagship,

campaign was the Linen Moves campaign earlier this year. And it was that very cool video set to the song Back on 74 by Jungle, which had been a big viral sensation.

And it was really cool. Again, it doesn't feel like this Gap ad. It feels like what it is. Like, oh, these kind of cool, interesting artists came, put their clothes together, did, you know, perform the video. But it has the Gap stamp on it. So, yeah, I think that was kind of the biggest example of what he's done so far. And then you've seen, yeah, the Anne Hathaway down at the Met Gala. Devine Joy Randolph, right? Yes, right. So that was a surprise. She showed up at the Met Gala with this very cool denim gown.

gown, this like flowing, beautiful gown that again went, you know, was all over social media. It did occur to me as you were talking about Gap collaborations, you mentioned Doan earlier, there were these celebrity collabs. The last big Gap collaboration I remember is the Kanye West-driven Balenciaga collaboration. And I'm curious when you were doing your reporting,

I guess whether that like still had an effect on brand perception, right? Because there was a brief period of time where it was cool and everybody was trying to buy those jackets. Then obviously that is not the case right now. Kanye and Gab had this big partnership. I think it was predicted to generate like a billion dollars in sales, like some crazy number.

And then, like so many Kanye partnerships, it just went south. Like the Kanye partnership with reality just really went down the drain. It was definitely a, you know, a black mar on Gap because he started kind of trashing Gap and saying that they weren't, you know, living up to the contract and they weren't, you know, I don't know, that the stuff wasn't showing up in the stores and all this. And

And then, of course, his PR tanked with the Adidas revelation and all the anti-Semitic stuff and anti-everything stuff. It was just a mess. I didn't really discuss it with them because it predated Dixon. But I think it was just, that's definitely a huge embarrassment for them. Even before the whole thing went south, like...

It just showed how a desperation, I think, like when the gap is chasing Kanye, it's just like, really? That's just so far afield. It just felt like from the get-go, that was kind of a strange decision. They are not talking about the Yeezy line. No.

Yeah. Josh, would you wear a Gap sweatshirt today? Yeah, absolutely. I think I have a Gap sweatshirt in my closet right now. No, but the one that says G-A-P, like the big, you know. Oh, no, I wouldn't wear one that said Gap. No, I don't like... Can I tell you, though? So because of all this, like, my head being in Gap, like, I have a Gap sweatshirt from the Doan collection. Mm-hmm. And it's a... I should go get it. It's a classic gray, and it is...

a great sweatshirt. I mean, to be honest, I don't care that it says Gap. I don't care that it says Zoan, but I wear it almost every day because it is so well-constructed. It's very cool looking. I can't describe it. It's like the right neckline, the right weight, the right length. And people have commented. They're like, I really love that sweatshirt. And I don't even think they care about any, it could just be plain gray. So, and I also just bought a Gap denim jacket because I just needed one. And I'm like, I'm just going to go to Gap.

And it came and it just fit. So there's definitely care being put into the construction of the garments. And sort of like I've become a believer over the course of reporting. You've been Gap-pilled. Yeah. The only reason I wouldn't wear a Gap sweatshirt with Gap on it is I don't like anything.

any clothes with big brand names on it. I just, it's just, I don't like it. I don't want Old Navy. I don't want Ralph Lauren. I don't want it in big letters. If it's a little logo, fine. But like, I just don't like that.

Yeah. That's fair. I would say two things about Gap, which is, Nicole, I agree with you, but there are two things they could change, which is, do you remember when back in the day those Gap bags had drawstrings? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. It was like so, it's like core childhood memory of mine. That's so true. Yeah.

Yes. Bring those back. Oh, you want them back. Interesting. I want them back. Yeah. Yeah, those are gone. Now it's just like, that's a good point. Okay. Yeah. You know, it's probably just terrible for the environment, though, to make those bags in some way. That's correct. Plastic. Right. Non-recyclable. Listen, Exxon, fix your shit. I'm not going to go after Gap here. And then number two, their online shopping experience is trash, but that's fine.

It's getting better, though. Have you been to Gap.com recently? They have cleaned it up. Not super recently. So they have cleaned it up. They cleaned it up. Because for a while, it was very stressful. Well, stuff's like coming at you. And I'm like, I'm losing my, yeah, because then this, and it's like you have to do this advanced math to even understand. How many coupons can I combine? I'm bringing it up now. Oh, it is a lot different now.

It's like more spaced out. It's not like everything. It's cleaner. Yeah. It's not like dramatically different, but it is. But it's a little bit. Good on you, Gap. Yeah, good on you, Gap. I think it's safe to say this podcast is rooting for Gap's turnaround. Yeah. This $15 billion a year company really needs our support. Well, Nicole, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Thanks for talking Gap.

Okay, we are back with Jeff and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each one of us shares a story, trend, or piece of pop culture we are following right now. So Jeff, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? This is going to come off initially as a bit of a downer, but it's not, I don't think. So I'm keeping tabs. We'll be the judge of that. Okay, okay, yeah, that's fine. I'm keeping tabs on the kind of

discussion around legendary advertising copywriter and creative Jim Riswold. He died last week, I believe, at the age of 66 after a long battle with cancer. Now, I don't think a lot of people outside of advertising have heard of Jim Riswold.

But I will tell you right now, you definitely, definitely know his work. He was Dan Wyden at Wyden & Kennedy's first copywriter hire at Wyden & Kennedy. And for nearly two decades, he was basically the pen or the voice behind Nike and consequently Wyden & Kennedy. I mean, so Michael Jordan and Spike Lee's Mars Blackman,

Michael Jordan, like the, is it the shoes? That whole campaign, that's Rizwald. Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny, Hair Jordan, that's Jim Rizwald. Bo Nose, Bo Jackson, that's Jim Rizwald. Charles Barkley's I'm Not a Role Model, that's Jim Rizwald. That's so iconic, the Charles Barkley ad, I'm Not a Role Model, so iconic. The late 80s, 90s period, that's...

arguably Nike's reputation as an iconic advertiser. A lot of that was built, particularly, I want to say, on the basketball side. And Rizwald was really the agency creative behind the copywriter, behind all of it. Wyden and Kennedy's chief creative officer, Carl Lieberman, he wrote an email to staff last week, and he said that

Aside from Dan Wyden himself, it can be said that Jim Rizwald is objectively the single largest creative influence on the way Wyden & Kennedy has done what it does over the course of its 42 plus years in existence. If it weren't for Jim, Wyden & Kennedy wouldn't be Wyden & Kennedy. And I encourage folks, everyone to check out, there's a great obituary Tim Nudd wrote in Ad Age this week. And he cites, Rizwald wrote a 2006 essay titled,

for them called Just Do It Wrong. And I'm keeping tabs on it because I do think that this, I like this essay and I think that brands and creators could get a little bit out of it. And he wrote this,

So just do it wrong, obviously, in reference to Nike. And Riswald wrote in this essay, it was wrong to pair Bo Jackson with Bo Diddley. It was wrong to pair an odd duck of a fan named Mars Blackman with Michael Jordan. It was wrong to have Charles Barkley declare that he was not a role model. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. No amount of research would have told you that any of these ads would have been successful.

He's wrote, I worship wrong. And he encourages the industry to create more advertising that dares to be more than not wrong. So his point was like so much of brand work is just trying not to offend, trying not to take a risk, trying not to stand out.

And I think his career and his work kind of did the opposite of that. And yeah, I really like it. I love that. Yeah, I hate cancel culture too. Just kidding. A real opus for heterodox thought for wrong things. That wasn't my point, guys. Cheers to Jim Reswald. Cheers to Jim Reswald. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? I'm keeping tabs on the state of Elon Musk's ex-servicemen.

So we're recording this on Tuesday. I'm going to frame it as this. So I unfortunately listened to an hour and 45 minutes of the over two hour Twitter X space between Elon Musk, a conversation between Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Content-wise, it's not really much to write home about. It was basically just Musk setting up Trump to give his stump speech, essentially, overall. Although, strangely, Donald Trump had a weird lisp throughout the whole thing. It was very strange. People were making jokes about his dentures were out and he was kind of talking. So that was the kind of weird thing. But content-wise, it was exactly what you say. It was rambling. It was full of inaccuracies and weird connections. But

What I really want to talk about is the failure of spaces and all similar products as a medium in a lot of ways. One, from the technical perspective, there was a huge, like a 45 minute delay as the space was crashing consistently, which has happened basically every time they've tried to do one of these big spaces like the Ron DeSantis one. I think there was a big Vivek Ramaswamy one.

Space where it fell apart in that way. And Elon Musk is like blamed it on a large scale DDoS attack, which who knows of the veracity of that. But even when you get on, it's an incredibly underwhelming medium, particularly for conversations with this. It's basically like jumping on a conference call. It's all everyone just like stealing the format that clubhouse did initially and taking that on.

And I think there's some novelty to it because it feels intimate in a certain way. But then you get into it and it's really just this kind of like very rudimentary, like conference call style thing where like the sound quality is pretty bad. And everyone's like it always starts in this sort of sputtering way. And then it's just this stream of consciousness that.

nonsense for a while. And I just don't like it as a medium for any form of, of entertainment in any significant way. It just feels, especially as an audio medium, a professional, it just feels underwhelming. I was going to say as a professional audio guy, what is the issue spaces or is the issue, this idea of a live show?

unstructured or loosely structured, certainly unproduced audio experience. Is it the experience or is it the product, I guess is my question.

I think it's a little bit of both. I think the product is like objectively bad tech as it is right now because it can't handle the capacity at this space. Now, maybe if you're like, I think there are some live medium, I think Instagram Live and some of these other forces for the right thing, I think are appropriate. Like, I think AOC does like some pretty good work

Instagram live use type stuff where it feels organic. It's very much someone being like, okay, ask me anything. You're interacting with me directly. But this feels like you're at the worst produced like

panel discussion a conference it's just like and i'm not going to get on my high horse about there needs to be a ton of production value to these sorts of things but like it does make a difference of having like really well choreographed intros and getting into something and setting up these things in a really produced way and i suppose that's a little bit of the user era at

that point. But it's also speaks to the tool itself that you don't really have the ability to integrate any of these things to make the listener experience something better. And that does matter because it like it has to do with the aesthetic and the integrity of the product you're putting out. So that's why all of these big scale Twitter spaces, I think, have been

so unsuccessful because it just feels sloppy. I avoid them like the plague. Yeah, it just feels... Are they video at all? Is there video? No, it's just audio, which is fine. That's not the problem. You can do a live interview on NPR with, you know, whoever you want on there, Asmahalad or whoever is like interviewing you. But like...

That's a produced experience. And so I come away listening to this and doesn't matter if it's Trump or Elon or whoever's doing it. I just don't think there's a successful way to paint yourself as competent, especially in politics, doing a space. It sounds like the audio only like unstructured video gives us something to focus on. Like you're citing Instagram lives, which is like, and I've seen a few different ones and someone sort of

Even if they're kind of fumbling through and it's something you're interested in because the whole reason you're there. But like the video aspect, if they're stumbling along, the video aspect distracts you from the audio stumbling a little bit or the lack of structure. Whereas when it's audio, it's like all...

All you have to focus on is the terrible audio. Exactly. It's just a misreading of the medium in a lot of respects and is just like on top of a bad technical design of the product. But that's my audio professional take on the billed as the greatest, biggest interview ever in history. Really doing great with the expectations game on the Trump campaign right now. Yes, absolutely.

let's get out of this. What are you keeping tabs on? Yeah, I got to close this out. I got to cut you off. Listen, listen, I just wanted to talk a little bit about the Olympics closing ceremony and say that I'm just so happy we have Tom Cruise, one of our last true freaks out there. He's so insane. It was like, you know that Twitter, he was like, no one.

Tom Cruise, I'm going to rappel off this building or whatever. I'm just, I was like, you know, like whatever the, the rappelling device he was using was also insane. I know it looked like he was dancing in air. Yeah. It was honestly incredible. There's a lot that is very dark about him. Like I remember the day, the Daily Mail reported about Suri Cruise going to prom. He was like,

at the ERA's tour dancing, and I was like, whatever, man. But...

I love him. Like, I'm so glad we have him. He's so strange and I'm obsessed. He is one of those figures, Ram, that is like, I say divisive and conflicting within my own brain, like you're talking about. Like, there's like a one-hand Scientology, on the other hand, Tropic Thunder. Well, did you see, like, I remember I went to see Top Gun Maverick and I was like, when he

when he comes on screen, you're just like, oh my God, it's Tom Cruise. You know what I mean? Like, he's like a real movie star and it's,

I'm just happy that that's still a thing. Yeah. There's not quite a movie star like Tom Cruise anymore overall. And I don't think you can be that level of movie star and not be insane. But yeah, there's a lot of stuff. But like Jerry Maguire is like one of my all time favorite movies. Cocktail. So good. Cocktail's great. The Risky Business, of course, is a classic. You can't. Yeah. Even his legal thrillers like The Firm. Yeah.

The Firm is really fun. The Firm is a really good movie. Yeah. Yes. Not mentioned enough. Thankfully, we did. All right. And that's the news you need to know today. Yeah. That's it for Most Innovative Companies. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Thanks, guys. Our show is produced by Avery Miles and Blake Odom, editing by Julia Xu, mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres, and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week. Y'all ready?

Return of the gap. Return of the gap. Return of the gap. You know that it'll be back. Return of the gap. Return of the gap. That's so stupid.