PacSun's Youth Advisory Council | Fast Five Shorts
This segment from the Omni Talk Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, and Quorso, analyzes PacSun's groundbreaking Youth Advisory Council featuring top influencers. Chris and Anne debate whether this represents genuine youth engagement or clever marketing, and what it means for retail's future.
- 20:16 – Industry-first youth advisory structure
- 22:13 – Influencer-as-advisor model advantages
- 24:20 – CEO Brieane Olson's culture-building success
For the full #fastfive episode head here: https://youtu.be/xSLvyg5Sze4
#pacsun #youthmarketing #influencers #genz #retail
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Transcript
Pacsun announced this past week that it has formed an industry first Youth Advisory Council.
Speaker A:According to a pacsun press release, unlike traditional ambassador programs, the pacsun Youth Advisory Council, the YAC as I'm calling it, selected members.
Speaker A:Wait.
Speaker A:The Youth Advisory Council, I'm sorry.
Speaker A:Grants selected members direct access to PacSun's strategic decision making processes and a spot at the leadership table.
Speaker A:The council is intentionally structured with young people who regularly meet with Pakistan executives to share their perspectives on the same topics reviewed at leadership meetings, while also contributing new ideas that reflect the values and priorities of their generation.
Speaker A:Ann?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:I'm gonna put it bluntly.
Speaker A:Are you buying or selling the industry's first youth advisory council?
Speaker B:I'm 100% buying.
Speaker A:I figured you would.
Speaker B:I think this is a really smart move for a few reasons.
Speaker B:One bcg, we've worked with them, Burns Communication Group.
Speaker B:They put this event on at most conferences that you're going to called the Z Suite.
Speaker B:It's where they take a panel of gen zers and they put them up in front of retailers and just open it up to questions.
Speaker B:How are you shopping?
Speaker B:What means are you looking to help?
Speaker B:Just with product discovery.
Speaker B:Where are you going?
Speaker B:Any question that you want.
Speaker B:And those rooms are packed every single time.
Speaker B:Because every retailer and every solutions provider, Google's looking for this type of insight to really understand what this next generation is looking for.
Speaker B:Second point, we've also started to see this trend in the fashion industry where publications, fashion publications are hiring influencers now as editors.
Speaker B:And the reason that they're doing that is because they one have the insight of what they know their loyal, engaged followers are paying attention to.
Speaker B:But then the other side of that is that they also can put out that content, that editorial from that publication to their engaged followers and that cycle continues.
Speaker B:And that's no different than what pacsun is doing here with this advisory council because they're taking well known influencers who are, you know, who have a devoted following.
Speaker B:They're getting insights into how to develop that right product for the rest of their demographic.
Speaker B:And, and then they're also putting that content out and I think and they're putting that product out in front of their followers.
Speaker B:So to me this is a brilliant, brilliant move and they're giving some great mentorship opportunities.
Speaker B:Like side note, that's great.
Speaker B:How wonderful would it be to be, you know, a young 18 year old, 20 something and you get to be part of this council?
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, okay.
Speaker A:I, I disagree with you on the first part.
Speaker A:Agree with you on the second Part, I think the first part, I think that's fine.
Speaker A:I mean, yeah, I've been at those, I've been at those events, I've been in those rooms.
Speaker A:Like lots of companies are doing that.
Speaker A:I don't think that's competitively differentiated.
Speaker A:I think it's easy to do too.
Speaker A:And I've been at things where they've said they're gonna do that and then the executives just pencil whip it and meet with the executives, meet with these people for 30 minutes and they go about their day and don't really take anything back.
Speaker A:It improves the business.
Speaker A:So when I first read the headline, I was like, oh man, if that's what this is, I'm not buying into this at all.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:But your second point, I think is really important because this is seemingly unique.
Speaker A:As I read into the headline, you look at the list of who's on this advisory board, it is a who's who, at least seemingly so based on the backgrounds that they're sharing.
Speaker A:Yeah, the staff, bona fide influencers.
Speaker A:And so to me, this is less of like an advisory council, depending on how they set it up.
Speaker A:I may be giving them too much credit here, but I'm kind of doubting.
Speaker A:I'm not.
Speaker A:It's more to me like an advisory board, like of a startup where you're bringing these people in, you're potentially getting them equally yoked to the success of PacSun.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:They have their influencer channels too, so they're gonna want to promote PacSun.
Speaker A:And so I think about this kind of as maybe a new wave model to get a different representation on kind of your board, your boards in general.
Speaker A:Because like, when you think about the money you're putting towards like the old white guy on the board from Options and things, you could probably spend the same amount to these people who could actually help drive the business as well.
Speaker A:And that's what I think is really unique about it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:I also think that Brie Olson, the CEO over at PacSun, gets a lot of, should get a lot of kudos for this move.
Speaker B:She is consistently an out of the box thinker and I've built a culture at her organization that supports things like this being successful.
Speaker B:Would this work at any other retailer?
Speaker B:You gotta have the culture, you gotta have the fit.
Speaker B:I think Bree's done a tremendous job of making sure that she's got that in place so that they can actually take from this council and learn something and do something with it, versus just being like, okay, we met with you for 30 minutes, we're gone.
Speaker A:Although I would push that a little bit.
Speaker A:I think it should be able to work at every retailer.
Speaker A:If it doesn't, that's because of your culture not being able to make it work.
Speaker A:And that's another issue that you gotta solve, because as you're trying to get younger, as the generations are growing and the spending power shifting, you have to figure this out for sure.
Speaker A:So if you can't make an idea like this work, you kind of suck.
Speaker A:And your culture needs to change.
Speaker B:You need to fix your culture first so that ideas like this can work.
Speaker B:That's where the focus needs to be.
