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 Never mind that he reportedly bagged Madonna for a cool $10
million to hawk Gap corduroys while singing a remix of Get Into
the Groove with Missy Elliott. That's all just in a day's work
for imagemaker Trey Laird. The real story is that Laird's
creative vision—always making an emotional connection to the
consumer—has put the Gap back in the black.
"Gap had lost its style. It didn't have any edge," says Laird,
who broke into the art-directing business working for Peter
Arnell and then Donna Karan. Customers were fleeing too. In the
27 months before Laird's arrival, the Gap had suffered
consecutive same-store sales declines and had alienated core
customers with products that were deemed too trendy. Laird's big
idea was to bring the advertising back to its roots, taking the
images out of the studio and putting them into everyday life.
Already Gap's same-store sales for the four-week period ending
Aug. 2 were up 13%.
For a guy with so much influence—Donna Karan and Nautica are
still clients—Laird is remarkably humble. A native of
Nacogdoches, Texas, he studied architecture in college but ended
up with a degree in marketing. After following a girlfriend to
New York City, Laird found a job selling shoes at Bergdorf
Goodman, where he met adman Arnell. And, well, you know the
story: resume, junior-account-executive job. Now Madonna and
Missy. What next? "We're only just beginning," Laird says. "We
have so much more work to do."
—By Kate Betts
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