Retailers like American Eagle are diversifying further beyond capital-I influencers and adjusting their media mixes to be more targeted this season.
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Deals and discounts are common tactics to draw in shoppers during the back-to-school season. But how about a promise that prices won’t rise within the next few weeks?
That’s the premise of JCPenney’s Price Lock guarantee, an offer the department store chain is running through Aug. 27 on select items with help from comedian Zarna Garg, who appears in social posts and even a “leaked” group text where she explains the specifics of the deal to a cohort of other moms. Price locks aren’t unheard of, but the sense that consumers are seeking assurances around cost has been amplified during a period of intense economic shocks stemming from inflation and the Iran war.
“It’s not like [affordability] hasn’t always been important, but there are macroeconomic realities that are making constraints on real American families, I would say, even harder than ever,” said Marisa Thalberg, chief customer and marketing officer at JCPenney’s parent Catalyst Brands.
A fresh spotlight on value comes as the back-to-school window expands, aligning with larger calendar creep for the holidays, while the avenues for reaching consumers continue to splinter, including into new artificial intelligence-powered channels. JCPenney’s partnership with Garg is indicative of the leading role celebrities and content creators are playing in back-to-school marketing this year, but influencers are another area where fragmentation presents challenges, leading more brands to broaden their canvasses.
“For us, it doesn’t always have to be ‘influencer’ with a capital ‘I.’ It can be micro-influencers, too — people who just feel real and authentic and credible and can extend our story,” said Thalberg.
Stretching back-to-school timing — and budgets
The 2026 back-to-school season so far has seen retailers continue to try and kickstart marketing activities earlier, an approach that has led to the jarring effect of messaging popping up almost immediately after classes let out for summer or even when kids still have their heads down for final exams.
Amazon moved its Prime Day deals bonanza to late June for the first time and has been tighter-lipped about the promotion’s performance. Kohl’s began rolling out its back-to-school campaign on July 5 with ads that see Ellie Kemper reprise her bubbly Kohl’s Mom character. Target has also shifted some of its media investment earlier in the season than usual, Marketing Dive understands.
Retailers could be adjusting their calendars to recognize different timetables for when public schools return in the U.S. — JCPenney is bolstering its marketing support based on that rotating timing, Thalberg said — but there is also a sense that these moves appeal to a bigger cohort of bargain hunters. Nearly one-third of parents now qualify as “hyper value-seekers” who employ four or more cost-saving techniques, according to a Deloitte’s latest back-to-school report.
“From a brand and retailer perspective, we still continue to see this season pull forward. This year, a lot of those promotional events that kick off the back-to-school season actually started at the end of June,” said Brian McCarthy, retail strategy leader at the consultancy. “For retailers and brands, the earlier they can start, the higher likelihood they’re going to capture their fair share or more than their fair share of a controlled spend.”
Capturing spend could require a more refined pitch from retailers as consumer pessimism reaches its highest levels since the pandemic, with 57% of respondents surveyed by Deloitte believing the economy will worsen in the next six months. How people pay for goods is changing as well, with 45% of households planning to use buy now, pay later tools, up 6 percentage points from 2025, a separate report from Omnisend found.
“From an overall perspective, what we’re seeing is that consumers are absolutely being cautious,” said Nicole Jones, chief media commercial lead at Kantar.
Deloitte’s McCarthy noted that sour sentiment does not always line up with a material pullback, as other blockbuster marketing occasions like the 2025 holidays have been relatively resilient in the face of headwinds. Still, families are expected to spend 6% less on back to school this season when adjusted for inflation, per Deloitte’s analysis.
“The way you could think about it is: for every $100 that you were spending last year, you’ll get 6% less for that $100 this year,” McCarthy said.
Creator marketing’s canvas expands
Economics are just one piece of the complicated back-to-school puzzle. The moment requires many retailers to do double-duty, making overtures not only to parents purchasing big-ticket essentials, but also students who may be seeking more discretionary items, such as backpack charms or beauty and cosmetic products. Young consumers’ ease of access to platforms like TikTok and YouTube, where get-ready-with-me videos run rampant, is helping to propel new back-to-school entrants in areas like self-care.
“We’re seeing skincare as a new category that’s a part of the essential back-to-school set,” said Chris Konya, chief strategy officer at the strategy and design company Sylvain.
Those digital-first habits are also spurring a rush of creator- and influencer-led activations around back to school. Among global marketers, 61% plan to hike their spending on creators in 2026, per Kantar research published last month.
American Eagle’s back-to-school push, which started ramping up in July, shows the different influencer levers retailers are pulling to connect with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. The apparel marketer’s campaign centers on Lamine Yamal, the pro soccer prodigy who recently helped carry Spain’s national team to World Cup victory and signed on as an ambassador for the company in January. American Eagle is also working with a small army of online personalities to capitalize on more niche interests like #RushTok, the TikTok trend tracking the sorority rush at colleges around the U.S.
“The real need for a brand like American Eagle [is] to work not just with hundreds of creators anymore, but we have to work with thousands of creators in order to cut through the noise,” American Eagle CMO Craig Brommers recently told Marketing Dive of the brand’s back-to-school creator strategy.
Target, which is in the midst of a turnaround plan, is optimizing its media mix to place a bigger emphasis on social, short-form video and creators. Partners include both students and educators who have built online followings, such as Katie Lynn Ward (@Katielynnteaches), Keldric Holmes, Armaan Talreja (@armaant) and Kamryn Hall (@kamrynbhall). The big-box store’s aim is to showcase the stronger influence teens and tweens are wielding over back-to-school decisions while highlighting a back-to-school assortment where half of the items are new this year.
Some retailers are also tying their creator collaborations closer to brick-and-mortar experiences and limited-time collections. Aéropostale, the youth-focused retailer marketed by Catalyst, is iterating on an “Intern Diaries” platform with a social content series starring Déjà Clark and a Y2K-inspired fashion line. An appearance by Clark at Aeropostale’s Manhattan flagship surpassed fan attendance and single-day store sales compared to a similar event last year
“We’re taking, I think, a pretty expansive definition of influencer-creator, but they are both kind of central to our marketing,” said Thalberg.
Garg, for instance, is busy spotlighting JCPenney’s Price Locks, $12 haircuts and the return of a Really Big Deals weekly promotion that typically runs in the fall but this year is being applied to back to school. The department store chain partnered with the former stay-at-home mom turned standup sensation because of her candor, and has had to relinquish some of control over its advertising to make the Garg tie-up feel genuine, Thalberg explained.
“It’s brand advertising, don’t get me wrong, but the way she talks was largely unscripted,” Thalberg said.
What’s overlooked with AI
On the flip side of human-led genuineness is the rise of AI, which is shaking up both consumer habits and retail strategy. Retailers have been fast to strike deals with leading AI developers in 2026 and more brands are launching their own chatbots around back to school. Kohl’s in July debuted an AI assistant powered by Google Gemini technology that offers personalized style inspiration, product comparisons and answers to everyday shopping queries.
Consumers who leverage the full range of channels for shopping, including brick and mortar, search, social and AI, intend to spend about $737 per student on back to school, a figure “significantly higher” than other groups, Deloitte’s McCarthy explained. Nearly half, 46%, of U.S. parents surveyed by Epsilon are turning to AI tools to compare prices, identify deals and conduct research on products, per data shared with Marketing Dive.
“The more opportunity [consumers] have to connect with you, the more likely it is that they’re going to feel a connection that leads to a transaction or a cross sell or an upsell opportunity,” said Deloitte’s McCarthy. “That [generative] AI experience can really help you connect.”
Beyond retailer-operated chatbots, AI still has its growing pains. Figuring out how to stand out and measure performance on platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI Overviews can be an uphill battle compared to traditional search, where a query, results page and click made up a bulk of the customer journey. Brands could also do a better job of tracking metrics like share of mentions against relevant needs and recommendations rates, industry experts said.
“Retailers are overlooking how AI represents them. Very few know whether AI systems recommend them, to whom or what value proposition gets presented on their behalf,” Lauren Taylor, global leader of Boston Consulting Group’s Center for Customer Insight, wrote in emailed comments.
Even as it becomes more amorphous, back to school presents a valuable moment to get a pulse on consumers that could inform marketing for future events like the holidays, where brands will again wrestle with skittish shoppers. While AI and signal-driven marketing may be able to harness more granular insights on fickle consumers, retailers shouldn’t lose sight of qualitative methods rooted in person-to-person conversations.
“Behavior shows what happened. It doesn’t show what a shopper wished they could have done instead, or why, and that gap is where the next wave of growth sits,” said Taylor.
Chris Kelly contributed additional reporting to this story.
Filed Under:Creative,Influencer Marketing,Brand Strategy
