How Journeys is capturing Gen Z’s attention with a TikTok series starring Bigfoot’s daughter

Journeys recently turned to a familiar TikTok playbook to reintroduce itself to Gen Z shoppers, leaning into platform trends and enlisting Gen Z creators and store associates to generate content to boost the footwear retailer’s relevance among young consumers. But it was a more unconventional move—a six-part coming-of-age series starring Bigfoot’s shoe-obsessed daughter navigating her first retail job—that has become central to Journeys’ effort to “reinvent this brand for the next generation of kids,” said Stacy Doren, its chief marketing officer. “This brand has been really living in a performance media world,” said Doren, who took the CMO role in August after spending more than 10 years as VP of Levi’s Americas marketing. “But we’re ready to invest in building this brand and making it mean something again for this next generation.” The series, called “Jazmine from Journeys,” follows the aforementioned offspring of Bigfoot after she accidentally lands her job at the retailer when she impresses the millennial store manager, Alice, with her footwear knowledge. Its first five episodes have featured overarching plot lines such as her budding romance with Jaiden, a food court employee, and the workplace shenanigans she and her fellow store associates, Val and Ronnie, get up to during their shifts at Journeys, such as cheesy team-building exercises. “Jazmine from Journeys” is just one campaign in a larger effort by Journeys’ parent company, Genesco Inc., to revitalize the mall-based brand. Gen Zers, who were born from 1997 to 2012, are a coveted group for many marketers, especially as they increasingly flock to malls for in-person shopping. Over two-thirds (69%) of Gen Z consumers—who represent $360 billion in spending power in the U.S. alone—now shop in physical stores at least once per week, according to an October report from retail analytics platform RetailNext. In Genesco’s latest earnings call last month, CEO and President Mimi Vaughn said “Journeys’ turnaround was [Genesco’s] number one priority” going into 2024. For the second half of the year, in particular, Genesco’s primary focus was “increasing investment in the Journeys brand” with a revamped marketing strategy, hence Doren’s hiring as CMO last August. Genesco’s comparable sales jumped 10% in the fiscal fourth quarter that ended Feb. 1, largely driven by Journeys’ 14% comparable sales increase, Genesco reported in March. Since March 13, when Journeys announced “Jazmine from Journeys” on TikTok, the trailer and the series’ first five episodes have collectively amassed over 24 million views. The sixth episode, aka the season one finale, premieres this week. The series has garnered more than 150,000 engagements thus far, including roughly 10,000 users who have bookmarked episodes, Doren said. Most of those engagements, particularly the hundreds of comments left across the roughly two-minute episodes, have been from Journeys’ target audience of teenage girls and young adult women, she added. TikTok’s long-form revolution For Doren, “long-form was always in the game plan” as she and Journeys’ marketing team brainstormed ways to shift the brand’s TikTok content strategy from simply showcasing shoes to entertaining Gen Z viewers, she said. So when Journeys hired ad agency Anomaly last October to revamp its social media strategy, and the team also pitched the idea of a long-form TikTok series—specifically “Jazmine from Journeys”—Doren said she immediately rallied behind it. “Last year, if someone had said ‘[make] long-form, more polished content [on TikTok],’ I would’ve said, ‘You’re crazy. You don’t understand the platform,’” Doren said. Now, “Jazmine from Journeys” has emerged as a “lead storytelling vehicle” in Journeys’ brand platform overhaul—and its success has driven the retailer to make long-form social content the focal point of its upcoming back-to-school marketing push, she said. “Jazmine from Journeys” is part of an explosion of serialized brand video content currently tearing across TikTok and Instagram, with brands such as Tower 28 and Milani Cosmetics recently rolling out social media series with episodes hovering at around two minutes. Indeed, the Anomaly team highlighted several examples of successful episodic brand content—such as “The Dealership,” a mockumentary-style TikTok series produced by an upstate New York Chevrolet dealership that went viral last summer—when they pitched “Jazmine from Journeys” to the brand, Doren said. Jeff Stamp, chief creative officer and managing partner at Anomaly, spent nearly two years at TikTok as head of brand & creative for the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. “The length of video viewing was expanding every month” during his time at TikTok, Stamp said; by April 2024, when he left the company, “there was a big push to content that was a minute or longer.” Indeed, TikTok last year stated that users spend 50% of their time on the platform watching videos that are at least one minute long. And last month, TikTok started incentivizing creators to produce higher-quality content by offering additional rewards to creators in its Creator Rewards Program who post “well-crafted” videos—which TikTok defines as videos that are over a minute long, have a resolution of 1080p or higher and feature “polished editing.” “At first, it kind of goes against your instincts” to create content for TikTok that skews more polished than lo-fi, Stamp said. “But I think the marriage of this sort of more traditional, higher-production value style with the handheld moments of the characters shooting their own TikToks … is where it got really interesting,” he said, referring to scenes in each episode where Jazmine and her coworkers record themselves talking to the camera while in the Journeys storeroom. Anomaly and production company Unreasonable Studios approached “Jazmine from Journeys” as a more traditional content shoot with a two-camera setup, Stamp said. The series was filmed at a Journeys store in Atlanta, which meant the team only had access to the store and other areas of the mall at night, requiring them to complete all shooting between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m., he added. Anomaly, Unreasonable Studios and the director, Danielle Shapira, filmed the entire series in just three days, he said. Although the first season wraps this week, “there’s an opportunity for the story to continue on other channels offline, as well as into TikTok Live” down the road, Stamp said. Instead of a Bigfoot sighting, the next cryptid encounter could be Jazmine showing up at a Journeys store, he said. Data-driven Marketing Playbook: Join industry leaders on May 22 to explore how data can drive marketing strategies, optimize media buying and improve customer engagement. Learn more here.

How Journeys is capturing Gen Z’s attention with a TikTok series starring Bigfoot’s daughter

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