CASE STUDY
UGG
Building a relentlessly relevant brand
Challenge
A beloved brand known for its iconic boots, UGG was looking to expand its relevance and connect with Gen-Z consumers in an emotive and ownable way. With a mix of established and emerging markets across the globe, UGG wanted to not only identify their target customer but understand where and how to create deeper engagement and drive further growth with them. The brand needed to show up as a more assertive and compelling brand— inspiring its consumers to join a community that stood for something beyond trendy footwear.
But creating a relentlessly relevant brand for UGG meant balancing several key challenges. We had to reach (and win with) Gen-Z consumers without alienating UGG’s existing core customers. Which meant managing the tension between making bolder moves to meet the self-expression of younger consumers and maintaining the classic UGG brand for legacy consumers.
Solutions
We began our immersion by conducting internal stakeholder interviews to understand the vision and aspirations for the brand. We then conducted global consumer qualitative research to better understand consumer perspectives on the brand, their lifestyles and communities, and to generate a hypothesis for a global brand direction.
Using this as a foundation, Prophet implemented a rigorous quantitative process to deliver consumer target segmentation for UGG driven by customer style attitudes and core emotional & functional needs. Out of the 6 segments identified, we prioritized 3 unique segments that UGG could act on and start driving engagement with. Our team also provided targetable Micro-Communities built around passions, hobbies and other interests with these segments for future activation. From these inputs, we worked iteratively with the UGG team through workshops to define UGG’s global brand positioning and voice, and how to activate this newly defined brand.
Results
Prophet worked with UGG to identify and prioritize consumer target segments along with a global brand strategy to align the product, marketing, and overall consumer experience across all of its brand touchpoints.
Prophet delivered a brand book used to communicate and rally the new strategy internally and guide activation efforts across functions and organizational teams. Our work aligned UGG and the parent company, Deckers, to have a unified focus on their brand’s “north star” and their primary consumer targets.
“The Prophet work was a rallying cry for the entire organization to galvanize around our primary consumer target. We’re all speaking the same language now and that was almost indescribable in terms of how far we’ve come in a very short period of time.”
Carole Diarra
Vice President of Marketing