Gap Follows the Trend, Opts to Take Marketing In-House

This hasn’t been a particularly chill year for anyone, but Gap’s marketing department has seen more change than the average bear.

The clothing brand named Mary Alderete its new CMO six months ago, and she’s currently rolling out her first marketing campaign, called “Stand United.” Like many campaigns these days, it’s about civic engagement and registering to vote.

But here’s the most important change: Stand United is the first campaign in which every single aspect of its creation came from the marketing team under Alderete—without an agency in sight.

• Alderete told Adweek that Gap made the decision to go all in-house, “so that we could create that seamless experience across channels, across all the touch points.”
• The World Federation of Advertisers recently found that 74% of internal creative teams were created over the past five years, and 82% of that group reported that workloads have increased in the past year, per Marketing Dive.

Looking ahead: The in-housing trend’s resilience during the pandemic could further cement agencies’ place on the 2020 struggle bus.