How Hollister left California and found a new audience online

The old, cabana-like facade of a Hollister store is as familiar to the American mall-goer as the scent of Auntie Anne’s pretzels. So when people started noticing some of those storefronts being converted into sock stores, haunted houses, escape rooms, and axe-throwing venues in recent years, they might have assumed the retail chain was still struggling after its 2000s heyday.

Since last July, however, Hollister’s in-store traffic and revenue are up, thanks in part to a rebranding effort and a TikTok campaign to support it that began around nine months ago. The campaign is part of a partnership with IF7, the same Gen Z consultancy that worked with Hollister’s parent company Abercrombie & Fitch on its TikTok strategy aimed at a more millennial audience, which played a role in the brand’s resurgence.

“The idea was, ‘Okay, we’ve seen this incredible success for Abercrombie…How can we approach this differently with these learnings to try to put Hollister on a similar trajectory?’” Harley Block, CEO and co-founder of IF7, told us.

With the help of creators, Hollister’s TikTok engagement rates in February and March were up more than 136% compared to summer 2022, representing all-time highs, Block said. In the fourth quarter of last year, Hollister brand sales grew 9% year over year, hitting $698 million and achieving a third consecutive quarter of growth—a signal, the company said in its earnings report, that the brand is “reconnecting with teen customers.”

A new era

The aughts-era Hollister vibe, with its dark-paneled walls, loud music, and live feeds of Huntington Beach, isn’t one that’s necessarily resonating with teens today, Megan Brophy, VP of marketing at A&F and Hollister brands, told Marketing Brew. While the brand still sells low-rise jeans and lace camis, Hollister today, according to Brophy, is designed to encourage self-expression.

“Teens don’t want to be told about fitting into an aesthetic,” she said. “A lot of people can close their eyes and fit into the old aesthetic that was the beach in California and the seagull [logo], all those things. That is what culture and fashion was 20 years ago—it’s not now.”

Hollister’s marketing team has taken pains to change its brand perception. When A&F approached IF7 about a Hollister social campaign, the focus wasn’t brand awareness, which Block said was relatively strong, but instead on articulating the brand’s identity and showing that its products are more relevant to today’s trends than some might have assumed.

“It was really about, ‘How can we embrace the integrity and historical context of the brand but modernize it and make it so it’s really attractive and cool and trendy to this teen audience?’” he said.

Modernization was also the goal for the A&F rebrand, but while A&F’s TikTok campaign focused on finding creators across a wide range of industries and communities, from woodshop to cooking, Block said, the Hollister campaign was geared toward finding trusted voices among younger Gen Zs and leaning into trends like couples content and back-to-school outfit inspo videos.

There were other considerations to keep in mind since Hollister’s audience is generally younger than A&F’s. “When you’re 25, 27, 30, the lines are a little more blurred, but to a 17-year-old, 15 feels like forever ago,” Brophy said. “What was cool when they were 15 doesn’t feel cool anymore.”

One TikTok that’s performed well with Hollister’s audience, according to Brophy, is from creator Alana Lintao on “that one friend” who acts up on the first warm day of the year. The video, which has more than a million likes, is “a little bit more playful and a little bit more comedic, which is not necessarily something we might put on paper as part of our brand,” Brophy said.

The results of Hollister’s TikTok campaign to date have been a “constant reaffirmation of how much you need to be hands off as a retail brand,” she added. “It can feel so natural to want to over-engineer something…And that’s not the way to approach creators, especially within this age demo.”

Return of the mall?

Beyond its social push, Hollister is embracing in-person experiences, including through a concert series, “Feel Good Fest,” as well as focusing on the in-store experience—which has gotten noticeably brighter in recent years.

Online promo codes have been a major marketing tool for A&F, but at Hollister, 70% of the brand’s sales happen in-store, Block said. (That’s not to say it doesn't occasionally create affiliate codes.)

“An Abercrombie customer can immediately see something off a creator and buy it, and so much of the business is incredibly digital,” Brophy said, whereas a younger Hollister customer might not “have the same ability to act spontaneously and purchase in the moment or purchase as often as they might want” due to age-related limitations—like, for instance, having access to a credit card.

That became clear through the TikTok comments section, where Block said customers often wrote that they were “running to the mall” to buy something, or calling the store their “favorite place.”

Hollister’s in-store traffic could also be a sign of a larger, post-Covid cultural shift after years of discourse about the death of the mall: “Physical interaction and getting the hell out of the house has really increased in importance with Gen Z,” Block said.

While online and brick-and-mortar stores have been traditionally thought of as separate entities for marketers, Brophy said young consumers’ changing habits have led her team to think about making the brand’s digital experience complementary with the store experience.

“Not only will we continue to see stores open, but I think we’ll also look at evolved store expressions,” Brophy said. “A lot of the research work that we’re going after right now is, ‘What can the future of a store look like for a 17 year-old?’”

The answer, it seems, will not involve cabanas.