How PacSun’s CEO is putting her trust in Gen Z

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How many retailers can say they have 12-year-olds helping them make business decisions?

At PacSun, they can. The company operates a youth advisory council composed of over a dozen people between the ages of 12 to 26 who provide regular insights to company leaders that help inform PacSun’s broader business strategy, according to CEO Brieane Olson.

That council is part of a broader strategy from the retailer to listen closely and gather input and feedback from its target consumer sets, which Olson describes as a “cocreation” model.

“Cocreation, in essence, is taking your audience and not treating them as a recipient, or marketing down to them, but actually building with them—not for them,” Olson said. “That very subtle distinction will be the difference between brands having real staying power and being able to build affinity with these younger generations…or really starting to phase out.”

Olson sat down with Marketing Brew at Cannes Lions to tell us more about the retailer’s decade-long transformation. Here are a few highlights.

On transforming a legacy brand: If you’re considering a brand transition, do the research. Go beyond social listening—really integrate listening and a constant feedback loop. At PacSun, we’re very fortunate [that] we have over 300 stores, plus a robust digital business and a social commerce business. We have an opportunity to gather information and data from our customer from all of these different platforms and channels, and then also reach them on social channels and Reddit…We love being able to look into our history and look at our archives and understand if there are opportunities for nostalgia or moments to be able to reconnect the consumer with the PacSun of the past.

On building a house brand: We really started our transformation journey about 10 years ago, and it really came from a place of recognizing that we couldn’t just be a retailer anymore—we needed to really be a brand that resonated with Gen Z and Gen Alpha in super meaningful ways…Ten years ago, if you walked in a PacSun store, you wouldn’t find a single piece of product that carried the PacSun namesake, the PacSun label. Now, over 50% of our product and our revenue is attributed to the PacSun brand.