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My Favorite Word Is “No”

On the TV show Inside the Actors Studio, the interviewer James Lipton is famous for asking people, “What is your favorite word?” My favorite word is “no” because it opens every door. It makes you think and find new ways of looking at a situation and develop other possible solutions to a problem. As far as I’m concerned, when people say no to me, that forces me to be creative. That’s the most exciting challenge in the world: to come up with new ways of doing things and think about how to overcome seemingly insurmountable issues. I’ve often said, “Behind anyone with vision, there are 50 well-intentioned people undermining that vision.”

Here’s an example that resulted in revolutionary advertising and marketing of the DKNY brand. Several years ago I was flipping through channels on TV, and I got to the Yankees station. I stopped for a minute to watch, and I noticed there was an orange billboard with Japanese characters behind Hideki Matsui, who was playing right field. At that moment, the batter hit a home run into the stands, over Matsui’s head. The camera zoomed in, and the entire TV screen was filled with the Japanese characters. That’s all I saw: the billboard with the logo of the company that had advertised there. I thought to myself, What an amazing piece of advertising!

That image stayed with me because I had been looking for a dramatic place to advertise ever since we lost space on our Soho wall, one of the last painted billboards in Manhattan. It was two stories high and was painted with a giant DKNY logo that featured the Statue of Liberty and New York City skyscrapers inside the letters. It was our very famous visual for the brand. There was no mention of our products, no address, no other information: just the letters, which made a huge statement. In fact, it became such an iconic billboard that many TV shows and movies that filmed in New York flashed by it because it epitomized the city.

Then, after 16 years (and not long after I started at DKI), the building was sold. We never owned the building; we had simply been leasing space for this wonderful billboard. The company that bought the building was Hollister, owned by Abercrombie & Fitch, and naturally they wanted to paint their own advertisements on it, and they told us ours would be painted over. We tried to negotiate, but there was no way.

Then New York City had something to say: it didn’t want to give approval to Abercrombie & Fitch to take down the DKNY sign because some people argued that it was a city landmark. After a year of negotiations on that point, it was decided that the building’s owners had the right to do what they wanted with the building, and our letters came down. Our Soho wall was gone.

Since then I had been looking for iconic places to put our logo and different ways to get it out there. When I saw this huge logo at Yankee stadium fill my entire TV screen, I thought, That’s it. An iconic brand like the New York Yankees and an iconic brand like DKNY: that’s a perfect match! A start to graffitiing our logo in New York City.

Back in the office, I met with our advertising and marketing team to broach this idea. I didn’t know how many women go to Yankee Stadium or watch the Yankees on TV, and I knew I would need to justify the idea. Even without women fans, I still believed this idea was worthwhile, because we also had a men’s business. I decided that if we had to overspend to get this billboard in Yankee Stadium, I would do that on the basis of the men’s business. I’ve never forgotten a needlework sampler I saw behind one CEO’s desk: “Building a brand without advertising is like kissing a girl in the dark: you know what you’re doing, but no one else does.”

I knew what I was doing by suggesting that we put our logo in Yankee Stadium, but as soon as I brought up the idea, everyone in marketing was opposed to it: “We don’t have enough money.” “If we’re going to spend money, we should be spending it on our women’s wear, not in Yankee Stadium.” “There’s no connection for us with the Yankees.” “This is not the brand we should be aligning with.” “There aren’t enough women fans.” I heard a million reasons why we shouldn’t do it.

Nevertheless, I still thought advertising in Yankee Stadium was good for the brand, and I believed we would find out that women did go to Yankees games. Then I realized that if I couldn’t build consensus with the marketing team, maybe I could build consensus with the operating division, namely, DKNY, DKNY International, and others. But they also fought me on this idea.

Finally, I decided this was one of those times when I just had to be the CEO. I decided, regardless of the cost or their opinions, that we were going to do it. This is what I told the marketing team: “We’re going to do this, and I want you to call the Yankees.” They reluctantly agreed. When I made that decision, I thought of another needlework sampler, one that was behind the desk of Robert Solomon, one of my early mentors from Van Heusen, which said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because I’m the meanest son of a b*tch in the valley.” That was his way of saying “I have to make tough decisions, and I will.”

A week went by, and nobody had called the Yankees. I told them, “Call the New York Yankees or I will.” Shortly thereafter, we met with Michael Tusiani, senior vice president, marketing, and Bryan Calka, sales VP, from the Yankees to talk about putting up a billboard in center field at Yankee Stadium. During the course of that conversation, we learned several interesting things: first, we were the only apparel or luxury brand to be in Yankee Stadium. Second, more than 40 percent of the people visiting the stadium were women. Third, a significant portion of their audience consisted of international tourists, who are extremely important to DKNY. My position was supported—although it didn’t matter, as I had already decided to advertise in Yankee Stadium. We negotiated to have the DKNY brand shown in an exclusive spot in center field.

Interestingly, since we started the Yankee campaign, the people who argued the most against our sign have been the most fanatical supporters. We’ve received a lot of goodwill and media attention because the Yankees made the playoffs and won the World Series in 2009, which obviously increased our advertising exposure as well both in the stadium and on TV. In addition, the New York Yankees organization is one of the classiest professional organizations we’ve ever met. We’ve participated in charity events, which made us feel good, and shopping events that drove sales and made us feel clever. And 81 nights or days per year, you can turn on the TV and see our iconic brand in iconic Yankee Stadium. And 81 times per season, 50,000-plus fans see our brand in a wonderful light. The idea of bringing two New York icons together is one of those simple decisions that everyone fought against but that turned out to be one of the great marketing moves we’ve made for the brand.

Please tell me no: it motivates me!

I didn’t stop there. I kept looking for ways to brand our company that had never been done before. I was always looking for iconic ways to do it, and I still am. Because we now had sports connections, we were on the radar screen of sports marketing companies. We received a call from Madison Square Garden asking if we would like to advertise at New York Rangers games. We agreed to meet. We found out that the Rangers had lost a key sponsor. Wait until you hear this opportunity: we became the first ever apparel brand to put our name in center ice in a hockey arena, and not just any arena but in New York’s Madison Square Garden! We managed to put our iconic brand with another iconic brand, the New York Rangers.

However, absolutely no one in our marketing department, or the company for that matter, wanted to do such a deal, and this was after the success we’d had with the New York Yankees. Again they argued, “It’s too expensive: we have only so much money to spend, and that’s not the best use of our marketing and advertising budget.” “It doesn’t make sense for us: we don’t know how to appeal to hockey people.” “Our customers are not hockey fans.” “No one will see our logo in the ice.” Naturally, with all those “no”s, I became even more interested.

Again, as the CEO, I simply made the decision that we were going to do this. I personally negotiated the terms for our brand to be in the center ice at Madison Square Garden. We were the first apparel brand to appear there: I negotiated an enviable deal, and we were there for two years, right next to Chase Manhattan Bank. Some people thought I did this because I was a hockey fan, but I had never been to a hockey game, let alone a Rangers game. However, watching our brand being seen on TV a million times during a game made me smile 2 million times. It happened because people told me NO! I knew that when you’re building brands, you have to find your customers where they are.

We issued a press release that we were going to be the first fashion brand on the ice at MSG. We got excellent press. For two seasons, everyone in New York who went to Rangers games, everyone who watched them on TV, and hockey fans all over the country saw our logo when the games were televised. By the way, the Rangers made it into the National League playoffs those years, which gave us even more exposure. Every time the Rangers skated over the ice, people saw the DKNY logo. That created awareness for the brand, put our name in an unexpected place, and built goodwill. Plus, after everyone said no to this idea, many people in the company came out of the woodwork wanting to go to the games, because so many of their husbands, sons, fathers, and grandfathers followed the Rangers, and so this decision built goodwill within the company (managing to different constituents)—after everyone had said no to the idea.

Here’s another example of overcoming NO! We had been working on reenergizing the DKNY logo and looking for exciting new ways to feature it. We were developing new products as well as new marketing and advertising ideas. It was a companywide initiative. About a year ago, our advertising agency came up with a very intriguing concept for the spring advertising campaign. They proposed creating a freestanding pop-up store in a cube that would feature the DKNY logo on all four sides (in other words, completely wrapped in our advertising). We would place these cubes in strategic locations and actually sell products from the cubes. I was fascinated by this combination of advertising and selling, especially in a temporary space that we could move. I thought the idea was incredibly insightful, and so I decided that we should build a series of cubes and install them throughout New York City, especially in places tourists go.

Right away, I got pushback. “There’s nowhere in New York that will let us do that.” “The city will not give you zoning for freestanding advertising.” “There’s no location that would work for us.” I suggested, “Let’s go to a gas station. Let’s go to an outside parking lot. Let’s go to the South Street Seaport. Let’s go to the Water Club, the restaurant on Manhattan’s East River, which has terrific views. Let’s go to the heliport. Let’s go anyplace else outside. Let’s go to Times Square and ask if we can put a cube up there, even if it’s just a cube, not a store. Let’s find out what we can do.”

Again people fought and said we couldn’t do it, and again I refused to take no for an answer. I told them, “Bring in the advertising people: I want to talk directly to whoever is working on this.” Our outside advertising production team explained why there was no way they could get this done, giving me 12 different reasons why the city wouldn’t do it. Again I said to everyone, “This wasn’t my idea, but I don’t care who has the next great idea. I want to do this. Our letters deserve the right to be standing somewhere. What can we do?” The team came back to me and suggested building letters and putting them as backdrops in our advertising. I said, “Now you’re talking. Let’s build the letters and put them on the street. If we can’t do the cube, we should be able to do that.”

Lo and behold, once the team—led by Patti Cohen, Jackie Bouza, and DKNY’s PR expert, Aliza Licht—started to research that idea, they had another idea: to find influential artists and use the DKNY letters and logo as their canvas—in effect, to create new DKNY art. After all, visual artists usually have a cult following, and this would be a nice blend of art and advertising. That was what happened, and there was more. We created a program called DKNY Artworks. Once our creative team got creative, they started to look at the world as our canvas. Then they got excited. The idea blossomed into involving global artists from their respective cities. We first found the funding: this was groundbreaking. Then we selected 10 of the most important cities for our consumers and our business around the world: New York, London, Milan, Paris, Dubai, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, and Tokyo. Each city had an Artworks program with local artists whom we commissioned to design the billboards and letters for charity. The art was on display for six months and was seen by millions and millions of people. It also received critical acclaim, and at the end of the six months the art was auctioned off.

The moral of this story is that you can’t take no for an answer. You have to persevere. There are a dozen reasons why people may say no. It’s human nature to say no. It’s easier to say no than to find a way to make something happen. “No” is about opportunity, and it’s my favorite word. The reason doesn’t matter. What’s important is that you need to have the stamina, willpower, and drive to persuade people and fight for what you know is the right thing to do. In this case, ultimately, our marketing team executed brilliantly to make this campaign happen. It’s important to remember that this was not my idea. The idea came from Laird & Partners, from Trey Laird and particularly Hans Dorsinville, our great collaborators who represent our advertising agency. I refused to let it die or to accept that it couldn’t be done. Our marketing and PR team brilliantly executed a worldwide breakthrough campaign. What I’ll take credit for is “no,” my favorite word, which made this happen. All I can say is how proud we all were of these initiatives.