Schuh’s brand had ‘slipped into the void.’ Can marketing reinject some personality?

Schuh has been performing well in the post-Covid years with its UK turnover rising from £354m in 2023 to £381m. In-store footfall rose 3.8% and online sales surged 10% during the same period. Bolstered by its strong performance Schuh has gone on a recruitment drive creating 400 new jobs.

But there is a disconnect between Schuh’s sales figures and how the brand is perceived by consumers. According to YouGov, Schuh is popular with 50% of the UK population but 30% have completely neutral feelings.

Legg joined Schuh in January as part of a wider business plan to “reaffirm” the retailer’s place on the high street. “The business knew that it needed a new vision but it didn’t know what that vision was,” she says. With 10 years of experience in marketing at the Arcadia group under her belt, Legg was given a lot of freedom to write its new brief.

Now, 10 months on from Legg’s appointment, Schuh has returned to TV advertising after a 15-year hiatus with its ‘Same, But Different’ campaign. The 30-second spot, created by Schuh’s recently appointed creative agency Zak, showcases a range of different personalities and aesthetics all sporting different footwear styles.

The campaign is a result of 10 months of research by youth marketing agency Nerds into where Schuh sits within the marketplace and current customer perceptions. Despite being a 40-year-old business, Legg says: “I felt like we had lost that connectivity, that actually as a business and a brand we’ve had for so many years.”

Schuh has to cater for a lot of different tastes and styles, covering everything from sports to leisure to fashion and even school shoes. Legg says this has left the brand feeling “too commercial.”

“I guess we’ve become a high-performing but functional business, but there is so much richness to what we do.” She lists activities such as the Single Schuh Initiative, which allows people with one foot to buy only one shoe for half the price, quiet hours in its stores and a project with Liverpool City Council to employ neurodivergent staff. “There’s so much that it does, but at a high level, brand awareness piece, it is dumbing itself down to the direct detriment of really connecting with customers.”

‘Same, But Different’ platform

Off the back of the market research, Schuh identified three customer profiles all within the 16-40 demographic, which account for the lion’s share of its target audience. While Legg didn’t want to disclose what these profiles looked like she shared that all of her strategy work was then based on those profiles and how to “be laser-focused and culturally connect with those people.”

Along with bringing these personalities into its brand communications and targeting them through its media plan, Schuh will also be hiring staff who fall within its ideal customer profile. “It’s really important for the Gen Z audience to come in and connect with those who are serving them. It’s called mirroring. If you recognize a style, aesthetic or someone that kind of sits in your world, it’s easy to connect with them.”

Legg tells The Drum that the company debated whether the ‘Same, But Different’ should constitute a rebrand. But without a new logo or assets, the brand platform is thought of as more of a “statement.” “It’s a reminder of who we are and what we do on the high street.”

Looking at Schuh’s competitors, Legg says: “There’s a real uniformity to the stylistic expression and some competitors are boxing people in and Schuh is the antithesis of that.” Schuh wants to be known for being inclusive, diverse and representative, Legg shares, but also for not taking itself too seriously. “We’re selling shoes; we’re not saving lives. Fashion can be quite serious in a good way, but Schuh just wants to connect in a really fun, confident, aspirational, but quite a relatable way.”

The TV spot is the first piece of marketing to come out of the new brand platform. In the new year, Schuh will be working with its creative partner Zak and its media agency PHD Manchester to roll it out into other touchpoints of the business, including in-store and to its brand partners Nike, Birkenstock and Vans.

Legg has intentionally staggered the project to give each element the best chance of landing well with the consumer. “This is not about flooding the calendar with lots of different things to make us feel good about ourselves. It’s about doing things big well and doing things with conviction.”

Next year is set to be a big one for Schuh with its 400 new recruits joining and the second phase of its brand marketing push. “So, we’re on a journey. We haven’t got it all figured out, but that’s kind of the beauty of it. Naturally, we’re analyzing how this will land and then planning on from there how to evolve it.”

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