• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer, Yesterday

Duluth Trading has built a loyal following on the strength of its quirky Midwestern humor and no-nonsense workwear — and its underwear, which has long served as the brand's gateway product. Now, as the Mount Horeb, Wisconsin-based retailer navigates sales declines and a broader softness in apparel spending, it's betting that a butt-shaped animated mascot named Max Gluteus can remind shoppers why they shouldn't settle for whatever's on the rack at Walmart. The campaign, created with long-running agency partner Planet Propaganda, launched during March Madness and runs through Father's Day. Garth Weber, senior vice president of brand and marketing, explains the strategy — and what it took to get a cartoon keister approved for network television.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Retail Insider: The campaign centers on an animated butt. Where did that idea come from?

Garth Weber: We look at underwear as workwear — it's the first layer. So the tagline, "For Folks Who Work Their Butts Off," is very literal, with Max rolling around on his journey, but it's also what we've always done at Duluth: a product spot that's really a brand spot in disguise. We've already begun using this tagline beyond underwear, and that was part of the strategic starting point. We can very easily move it into other categories, and we will. 

Retail Insider: Duluth has been doing illustrated, cartoon-style advertising since 2009. In a world of connected TV and digital, does that still work?

Weber: When I joined two and a half years ago, I had the exact same question. As the marketplace moved from linear TV to connected TV and digital, I wasn't sure it would continue to work as hard for us. We spent a lot of time testing it, and what we learned that line art and illustration still does work for us: ad recall, brand awareness, all the things we needed it to do. So we're leaning into it. The other thing we have a lot of equity in is the voice. You can hear a Duluth ad and know it's us before you even turn to look at the screen.

Retail Insider: How hard was it to get the butt approved for network TV?

Weber: It was pretty much as you'd imagine. Originally, Max wasn't wearing underwear — he was looking for underwear. That was too far for the networks. So we put him in old underwear. And then there was a lot of back-and-forth about the proportion of butt surface area to crack. We had some funny email exchanges. We got there eventually.

Retail Insider: Underwear seems like an unlikely hero product for a workwear brand. Why does it work as a customer acquisition tool?

Weber: It's low risk for the customer, the price point is right, and the advertising is fun and disruptive in a way that cuts through. But once someone falls in love with the product, they come back again and again. We have tens of thousands of five-star reviews — people talk about the fit, the function, the longevity. We've been in this category for well over a decade and in many ways helped drive the performance workwear underwear category. We don't take ourselves seriously, but we take the product very seriously.

Retail Insider: The competitive set has gotten crowded — Lululemon, direct-to-consumer brands, MeUndies. How do you stand out?

Weber: We tell a good butt joke. That's something we thrive in, and it gives us our own space. But beyond that, when you frame underwear as workwear — as part of the same value system as our work pants and shirts — it creates a real point of differentiation. Put our product side by side with the competition and we'll stand by it.

Retail Insider: It always seems like the jokiness of your ads have a Midwestern dad edge — something you’d hear a guy say while he was grilling brats in Sheboygan. Is that right, and is he your target audience?

Weber:  That is pretty much our gauge for humor for our men's products. We tried crossing the line to risqué, and it doesn’t work. Sometimes, being edgier is just lazy. Humor works for our women's apparel, too, but it's got a different tone. And as for our target audience, right now, that’s about 51.

It's actually come down about 10 years since I joined, which is meaningful progress. We're not trying to age-gate the brand — we want to invite people in. Max Gluteus is part of that. The funniest thing I hear from people when they find out what I do is that their dad loves those ads, which tells me I've got some work to do.