Customizing Tailored Brands: Matt Repicky on Marketing Men’s Fashion

Insider Interviews with E.B. Moss

Customizing Tailored Brands: Matt Repicky on Marketing Men’s Fashion

September 26, 2024

Matt Repicky, Chief Brand Officer of Tailored Brands – known for Men’s Wearhouse and Jos. A. Bank – shares what he’s learned about making iconic brands more culturally relevant. With a career trajectory that included Accenture to Amazon, a stint in Pharma, even leading global brand marketing for the Barbie brand at Mattel, I call Matt a “marketing polymath.”

(Don’t blink and miss his star turn in “Tiny Shoulders” – the great documentary on evolving Barbie’s very shape.)

Learn what Matt’s learned — going from dolls to men. In his current home of the past five years he’s been modernizing marketing for men’s fashion, which he’s done through keeping tabs on culture and leveraging customer insights, evolving the brand messaging with a refreshing use of humor…

He’s taken the Men’s Wearhouse from “like” to LOVE. Matt has also switched up the overall Tailored Brands media mix – from heavy direct mail to embracing TikTok and Pinterest and podcasting. When he shared his POV on DOOH I had to pop in with my new segment called, “The Inside Scoop!”

For its launch on Insider Interviews, I happened to speak to Barry Frey, the CEO of trade association, DPAA, for a five minute download on how DOOH is doing attribution and programmatic, to growing the careers of out-of-homers.

And, big reminder: this was only a five minute deep dive. You’ll want to head to their Global Video Everywhere conference on 10/15 in NYC for a full day of downloads.

Back to Matt, he described where they are with Retail Media and how they apply the cultural zeitgeist to messaging. Through it all, Matt is proud to lean in to Tailored Brands’ purpose-driven campaigns, such their “Threads of Valor” supporting Veterans’ organizations, and living his own personal brand through mentorship and supporting LBGTQIA.

And, being true to my personal brand, I manage to inject a little singing and a childhood story about MY Barbie into this otherwise smart and informative conversation!

Key Moments:

00:30 Meet Matt Repicky: Chief Brand Officer at Tailored Brands

01:21 Matt’s Career Journey and Marketing Insights – from Accenture to Amazon

03:00 Guiding the Barbie Transformation and Honoring Culture

07:13 Modernizing Men’s Wearhouse and Joseph A. Bank

13:25 Exploring Media Trends – From Digital Out of Home to TikTok

15:31 Inside Scoop: Digital Out of Home with Barry Frey