🧘🏼‍♀️ Lululemon's "nosedive" ad: When marketers confuse the soul of a brand with its share price, plus 40+ links of brand news

Issue #75

Weekly Exhale

The founder of Lululemon, Chip Wilson, is three billion dollars poorer than he was this time last year. Lululemon’s stock is down more than fifty percent. Still holding an eight percent stake, Chip’s the kind of unhappy shareholder who can afford to make some noise.

So he did.

He took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal and penned a Don Draper–style manifesto headlined “Lululemon is in a nosedive.” In it, Chip mourned that the company had “lost its soul” and “forgotten its muse,” while demanding the entire board be fired.

The story writes itself: a visionary founder builds a cult brand; the company scales; the finance people take over; the magic drains out.

Within hours, the story had migrated to LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit as a cri de cœur for marketers everywhere. Some even felt affirmed — seen, finally — as if Chip had spoken on behalf of every marketer who’s ever had their instincts questioned by a CFO.

Chip’s narrative is wonderful, poetic even. But that’s all it is: romanticism over reality. A story that overlooks the inconvenient details and, ironically, misses the operator’s view of how big brands actually work.

Chip says: They lost their way after I left.

Reality: Lululemon is five times the size it was when he walked away, with revenue climbing from under $2 billion to nearly $11 billion.

Chip says: The brand is crashing.

Reality: Lululemon will still grow 2–4% this year. After the hyper-growth of three cultural peaks — yoga, athleisure, and the pandemic — a little gravity was inevitable. You don’t fall from that height; you level off.

Chip says: The brand has turned into the Gap.

Reality: Even after its dip, Lululemon’s market cap has grown 2.6x since he left. Nike’s up 2.2x. Gap? Less than one.

Chip says: The $1 billion Mirror acquisition was a disaster.

Reality: It cost half that, and the same year Lululemon wrote it down, the stock hit an all-time high.

Chip says: The Disney collaboration cheapens the brand.

Reality: It sold out in hours and lifted Gen Z awareness by fourteen points. Maybe Mickey knows marketing after all.

Chip says: The brand no longer understands its muse.

Reality: Chip’s from the “not for everybody” school of marketing — aspirational, exclusionary, and very 2008. Sure, that worldview built the brand. But it also got him fired.

Chip says: The brand bowed to Wall Street.

Reality: Chip is Wall Street. This isn’t about the soul of the brand, it’s about the price of the stock. The emotions of a single-digit billionaire who flirted with double digits and can’t quite bear the downgrade.

At worst, Chip’s move is straight out of the post-truth playbook: take a self-interested agenda, wrap it in “truthiness,” and frame it as a collective fight everyone can rally behind. It flatters him as the visionary and marketers as the misunderstood innovators who just need to be unleashed.

No surprise, Lululemon’s board isn’t biting:

“Chip Wilson has not been involved with the company for a decade and continues to make inaccurate and misleading statements about Lululemon.”

Calvin McDonald, Lululemon’s CEO, already told investors last month that the brand had become “too predictable,” admitting that U.S. sales had slowed. Why? Controlled accountability.

The real headwinds are macro: a saturated U.S. market with drawers full of leggings, and a fashion cycle that’s shifted toward baggier styles and a more nihilistic mood — a far cry from the girl-boss optimism Chip once built the brand around. And the flashpoint for the drop in share price? The one CEO’s aren’t allowed to say out loud: Tariffs imposed by He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Around 40% of Lululemon’s products come out of Vietnam, one of the hardest-hit markets.

Marketers love to point to Vuori, Alo, and SKIMS as the new cool kids. SKIMS just launched thongs with pubic-hair detailing, the kind of irony Chip probably wishes he’d thought of. But Lululemon is ten times their size and at a completely different life stage. As boring as it sounds to marketers chasing “edge,” the path to a $100 billion company lies more in repetition than rebellion. International expansion, menswear, and adjacent categories. It’s the Tim Cook school of innovation: sell the same thing, over and over and over, with just enough evolution to keep people buying.

As for competition, that doesn’t come from chasing the latest thing on Instagram, it comes from private label and knock-offs. Lululemon is even suing Costco and, in a knowing wink to dupe culture, has just trademarked Lululemon Dupes.

Net, I’m not too worried about Chip nor Lululemon. Worst case, he’s worth $3 billion instead of ten. He probably knows his ad does Lululemon more good than harm. He’s bringing a little rage and founder energy to shake things up...while staying safely at arm’s length.

The real shame is for the marketers who cheered him on. In doing so, they fed the trope that marketers are only interested in shiny new things. Sure, brand building needs a little poetry, a sense of “soul.” But casting the stewardship of a public company as the enemy only makes marketing look naive and allergic to scale.

And that’s a problem, because its seat at the top table is as fragile as it’s ever been.

Let’s rise together with every issue. ♡

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Market Moves

How to kick-start the UK economy | Financial Times

Gold and iPhones drive surprise UK retail growth | The Times

US inflation hits 3% | BBC

Brand Beat

Lululemon registers trademark “Lululemon Dupe” | Fashion United

Why shoppers wait hours for The Row’s sample sale | Business of Fashion

Oreo maker Mondelez plans AI-powered TV ads next year | The Verge

“Another half baked idea”: Aldi’s jacket potato jacket | Dezeen

Why marketers must escape the productivity paradox of busyness | The Drum

Sober celebrities flock to nonalcoholic beer brands | Food Dive

British Airways showcases flying scenes in new outdoor campaign | Marketing Beat

Amazon’s cloud infrastructure emerges as next advertising frontier | Digiday

Brands spend more on ads that deliver fewer results | Adweek

Bryan Cranston channels ‘Cranpus’ in Ocean Spray holiday ad | The Drum

Inside Nike’s plan to reboot swoosh-driven sales | The Guardian

AI advertising’s ‘universal language’ reignites power and openness debates | Digiday

How consumers expect brands to address social issues | Harvard Business Review

What’s going wrong at WPP? | The Guardian

Porsche posts near €1 billion loss amid EV pullback and tariffs | Bloomberg

HelloFresh announces Paramount+ movies partnership | Retail Gazette

Nike’s Project Amplify gives your feet e-bike power | Fast Company

How digital experiences reshape fashion and beauty’s future | Business of Fashion

Why Gen Z can’t resist tuning into bad takes | Vox

Modern brands sell anxiety relief, not product features | Reddit

Disney+ cancellations spike after Jimmy Kimmel suspension | The New York Times

Starting Up

Goodrays new functional drinks range | FMCG CEO

Teens run restaurant amid town’s gun violence crisis | The New York Times

Why investors are gooey-eyed over Straberry Browser | Sifted

Oura lands $900M funding, now valued at $11B | CNBC

a16z-backed Codi launches AI office manager | TechCrunch

Tech Tidbits

Sora effortlessly fools human deepfake detectors as well | Fast Company

11 AI-powered pitch decks reshaping advertising and marketing | Business Insider

EU accuses Meta and TikTok of transparency breaches | The Independent

Big Tech and crypto firms bankroll Trump’s White House ballroom | The Verge

How to design a successful agentic AI system | Harvard Business Review

Venture Vibes

Silicon Valley’s envy of China reveals cracks in America | The New York Times

Travis Kelce and investor launch Six Flags activist campaign | Reuters

Jamie Dimon urges return to office with $3 billion building | The Wall Street Journal

Marc Benioff has torched his do-good image | Bloomberg

Design Driven

Inside the career of Jennie Baptiste | It’s Nice That

Takashi Murakami brings signature art to Dom Pérignon champagne | Design Milk

50 Cent and Lalique redefine luxury with the 505 Edition | Cool Hunting

Happiness

Why your best ideas come after your worst | Big Think

6-year project finds simple solution to happiness | Washington Post

What true wealth looks like | The Atlantic

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