Levi's hires Snapchat CMO in the same role

Levi Strauss & Co. has hired Snapchat Chief Marketing Officer Kenny Mitchell to take on the same role for the Levi’s brand.

Levi Strauss announced yesterday that Mitchell, who was Snapchat's first CMO, is joining the company as senior VP and CMO of the Levi's brand. Mitchell had been head of Snap’s marketing since 2019, before announcing his departure earlier this week. Karen Riley-Grant, who was CMO of Levi Strauss & Co., left the company earlier this year. 

Colleen DeCourcy is Snap’s new head of marketing, while retaining her title as chief creative officer, a Snap spokesperson told Ad Age. Last year, DeCourcy joined Snap after her tenure at Wieden+Kennedy as global chief creative officer and president.

“Kenny is widely recognized as an innovative marketing leader,” Michelle Gass, president of Levi Strauss & Co., said in the company's announcement. “With Kenny onboard, I have full confidence in our ability to continue earning our place at the center of culture and building our global community of Levi’s fans.”

Mitchell called Levi's the “quintessential apparel brand and cultural icon,” in the announcement of his new role. The Levi Strauss company hit its 170th anniversary this year and its iconic 501 jean is 150 years old.

See Levi's ‘The Greatest Story Ever Worn’ campaign

Levi’s is a traditional brand, but it has been exploring how to incorporate technology into its marketing, which brings new possibilities and risks. Last month, Levi’s announced it would use AI-generated models to showcase more diversity to reflect its consumers. In the attempt to embrace the generative AI trend, there was a backlash against how the brand suggested it could create fake diversity and bypass real people.

Read more: Levi's AI models diversity push prompts backlash

Mitchell begins at Levi's on June 5. He will report to Gass, the former Kohl's CEO who joined Levi Strauss as president earlier this year and is set to succeed Chip Bergh as CEO.

Along with the Levi's brand, the Levi Strauss portfolio includes Dockers, Denizen and other brands. Levi Strauss reaffirmed its annual revenue forecast earlier this month, calling for 1.5% to 3% growth, to $6.3 to $6.4 billion, and reported that first-quarter revenue rose 6%, to $1.69 billion.

Mitchell isn't the only tech industry marketer heading to the fashion industry. Nick Tran, TikTok's former global head of marketing, was named CMO of Farfetch, a global luxury platform, on Thursday.

Snap, McDonald's and Gatorade

In 2019, when Mitchell started at Snap as its first CMO, the messaging app had 203 million daily users. Snap now has 375 million daily users. Since 2019, Mitchell helped position Snap as an alternative to the typical social network, trying to distance the app from the harms of the internet and focus on more playful concepts, such as Snap’s augmented reality technology. In 2019, the first marketing campaign under Mitchell’s tenure, “Real Friends,” positioned Snap as a place where people connect with friends, not just broadcasting to strangers as people might on YouTube, Instagram or Twitter. Last year, Mitchell led a campaign called “Open Your Snapchat,” which showed off the augmented reality lenses that have become a signature content feature on Snap.

Still, as Snap focused on close relationships and messaging, TikTok emerged in recent years as a social media phenomenon. Creators began sharing short-form videos that gave them a wide audience of random followers. Snap, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube have all tried to capture that activity, too. Snap has made changes with products such as Spotlight, where it allows creators to post more publicly. This week, Snap had its latest partner summit, where it revealed a video product called Public Story, and Snap said it is “making it easier to be discovered.”

Mitchell previously was VP of brand content and engagement at McDonald’s USA, and head of consumer engagement at PepsiCo's Gatorade, where Mitchell was an early advocate for getting Gatorade onto Snap. In 2016 the sports drink created the first augmented reality lens for the Super Bowl.

Snap has been developing new AI tools, such as the AI chatbot now available to message with all users on the app. Snap also has been using generative AI in augmented reality programs. And Snap has become a high-tech partner to the fashion industry. Augmented reality has emerged as a tool for commerce, as people can try on virtual products before they buy them. At its partner summit, Snap showed off a new smart mirror that retailers can place in stores, enabling customers to virtually change outfits.