Brooks Brothers on Wednesday launched “Make It Yours,” a campaign that looks to reposition the brand for a new era of consumers, per details shared with Marketing Dive. Founded in 1818, Brooks Brothers is the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in the U.S., and has been part of Catalyst Brands for over a year.
“The history is unbelievable,” said Marisa Thalberg, chief customer and marketing officer at Catalyst Brands, of Brooks Brothers. “[It has] an unbelievable sense of heritage… It’s truly a part of, pun intended, the fabric of American fashion and culture.”
“Make It Yours” highlights how individuality brings new life to familiar fashion like tailored suits and button-down collar Oxford shirts — the latter of which Brooks Brothers invented 125 years ago. The campaign lands as the style that has long been championed by the brand has returned to the zeitgeist in the form of quiet luxury and new preppy trends.
“We realized you could easily get caught in the trap of thinking the traditionalism appeals to an older customer and we want to make it younger… The big epiphany is that’s actually not right: there is this heritage of the brand that we absolutely want to honor,” Thalberg said. “There are a lot of people that have perhaps a more narrow perception of what the brand is than actually exists in reality.”
The campaign features a cast of talent that spans generations and industries, including actor Leslie Bibb, comedian Alex Edelman and fashion figures Nick Wooster, TyLynn Nguyen, Nick Arrington and Bethann Hardison, who model Brooks Brothers and detail what the brand means to them in 15- and 30-second videos.
“The insight that this campaign represents is an opening up of the aperture of who Brooks Brothers can be for, and it’s not an age thing. It’s a sensibility thing,” Thalberg said. “This is not a transformation of the brand. This is a storytelling transformation.”
Individualized strategies
Photographed by Coliena Rentmeester, the campaign spans social, digital, online video and out-of-home channels. It was led by Catalyst Brands executives including Thalberg, Senior Vice President of Creative Services Carl Byrd and Brooks Brothers Creative Director Michael Bastian, with PR support by FleishmanHillard and H&S Communications.
With the new positioning, Brooks Brothers also looks to tap into growing demand from affluent women, who currently represent only about 30% of the brand’s customer base but have very high purchase intent. Brooks Brothers’ women’s business has seen five consecutive years of growth.
Parent company Catalyst Brands was formed in January 2025 as a joint venture between Sparc Group and J.C. Penney. Along with Brooks Brothers, the company includes other brands Aéropostale, Eddie Bauer, Lucky Brand and Nautica, plus J.C. Penney private labels.
In her role as chief customer and marketing officer for the entire portfolio, Thalberg is focused on building capabilities that span insights, analytics, best practices and vendor partnerships while keeping the portfolio brand strategies individualized. For example, JCPenney’s marketing under her leadership has focused on a “Yes, JCPenney” platform that looks to subvert consumer expectations of the longstanding department store brand.
“[CEO Ken Ohashi] and I share this philosophy that Brooks Brothers sits in a little bit of a different place in our portfolio than some of our other brands, so I think we’re appropriately protective of that,” Thalberg explained. “We feel absolutely adamantly that Brooks Brothers is Brooks Brothers, and we’re going to do right by that. If I were talking about Aéropostale or Lucky, we’d be having the same conversation.”
