Key takeaways:
- Collaborative Branding: Kate Nienaltow collaborated with The Business of Fashion to produce a video spotlighting Tapestry’s diverse talent, showcasing creativity and inclusion across its brands.
- Employee-Centric Approach: With a focus on authenticity, Kate selected 11 employees representing different roles and brands within Tapestry, emphasizing the company’s values and career mobility opportunities.
- Strategic Dissemination: Tapestry shared the video internally and externally, leveraging different platforms for varied audience engagement, while aiming to raise awareness of the Tapestry brand beyond the fashion industry.
Tapestry Global Talent Management & Employer Branding Manager Kate Nienaltow and her team recently partnered with The Business of Fashion on a video to spotlight employees across their house of brands, which includes Coach, Kate Spade New York, and Stuart Weitzman.
“After the Kate Spade acquisition a couple of years ago, our parent company rebranded from Coach Inc. to Tapestry Inc.,” said Kate. “So, one of our biggest priorities has been continuing to grow the Tapestry brand.”
A partnership with The Business of Fashion — a leader in the fashion industry publication space with a specific careers platform — was an effective way to grow their employer brand awareness.
The main goal of the video was to showcase creativity and diversity at Tapestry.
“As a house of fashion brands, we have a lot of creativity flowing through a lot of different functions, and it’s important to showcase that,” Kate said.
The team wanted to leverage the video as a tool to showcase what it’s like to work at Tapestry, as well as what it’s like to work in a creative function. So, they decided to focus on roles like product design, creative studio, merchandising, and visual merchandising.
According to Kate, inclusion is one of Tapestry’s values, so they hoped to include that element in the video as well. “We want people to know they can come and have a career here and that mobility is a big focus for us,” she said.
Kate began working across teams to get the project moving and select which employees to feature.
“We worked closely with our HR business partners to ideate and brainstorm some folks who we’d want to include in the video,” she said. “Our number one partner was our communications team. They helped brainstorm and put everything together from a creative lens.”
They decided on 11 employees to feature, then Kate began reaching out to get to know them better. She had video calls to learn more about their career journey, what it’s like to be at the different brands at Tapestry, and prep them for filming.
Then, The Business of Fashion, which is based in London, came to Tapestry’s New York office to take B-roll footage and film for about an hour with each employee.
The project was a new concept for everyone involved, which posed new challenges and opportunities for Kate and her team.
“There were moments where we needed to continue finding the right direction and messaging and figure out how we wanted it to come to life,” she said. “There was a lot of back and forth. And, since it was two brands, The Business of Fashion and Tapestry, we needed to come together to bring something to life that represented both parties well.”
Kate added that filming as long as they did meant a lot of great content had to be cut.
“To shorten it down to a three or four-minute video was hard, and we wanted to make sure we were doing right by everyone,” she said.
The long cut video lives on The Business of Fashion‘s website and was shared on Tapestry’s LinkedIn — and clips are continuing to get shared out.
“We ended up coming out with two cuts of the video: a long cut with a bulk of the messaging, and then a shorter cut that’s a bit more fun and snappy,” said Kate. “The shorter one is going to be used on The Business of Fashion‘s Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.”
They’ve shared the video internally as well — and it’s received a great response from Tapestry employees.
That response was key, Kate said, because employees will want to talk about the video and share it out to their networks as well.
“We’re really proud of the final product,” she said. “It speaks to us really well, and it’s inspiring to hear the authentic voices of our employees speaking about their experiences. They differ across our brands, but at the end of the day, we’re part of this one Tapestry family. Our values and who we are really shine through the video.”
According to Kate, they’ve done employee-spotlight videos in the past, but this was the first time teams came together in this way and worked with an external partner.
“This was a great experience and a great partnership,” she said. “But there’s definitely more that can be done. We’re a lean team, and we’re still growing and figuring out the right spots we want to hit.”
Moving forward, Kate hopes as they grow in the employer branding space, they can evolve their recruitment marketing efforts as well.
“I’d like to leverage the metrics of what we do and how it impacts the people tuning in,” she said. “We want to keep being proactive, not reactive, and be thoughtful about our long-term planning.”
She plans to continue building up awareness around their employer brand to reach prospective candidates outside the fashion industry.
“Reaching people within the industry is one thing, but going beyond it and becoming more well known just for who we are is going to be a big goal for us,” said Kate.
She emphasized to execute a project of this scale, collaboration across teams is key.
“I wouldn’t be able to do my job half as well without having the communications team as a close partner,” she said. “We’re able to have quick conversations to move things along. And it’s important to be able to get those key stakeholders in the room.”
Kate added at a more granular level, it’s crucial to pay close attention to detail throughout the process.
“It’s so important to be able to project manage something through completion and make sure every single thing is considered along the way and the ball doesn’t get dropped,” said Kate. “Attention to detail makes something like this shine even brighter.”
