The PR and Marketing Effort Behind Chinese Laundry’s Taylor Swift Effect

Chinese Laundry CMO Sarah Zurell is on a mission to make the fashion footwear brand cool again—as it was in the '80s.

When she joined parent company CELS Enterprises in 2022, her goal was to revitalize all four of its brands. But for Chinese Laundry in particular, her "stretch goal" was to get Taylor Swift to wear their shoes—a pie-in-the-sky wish if there ever was one.

But then, it did happen. The singer was spotted wearing the brand’s butter yellow Tai Dress Sandal in an Instagram photo posted by Brittany Mahomes, wife of NFL Super Bowl star Patrick Mahomes, alongside Swift and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs' Travis Kelce. The pop star had been gifted the shoes, but there was no guarantee she’d wear them and post a photo, much less tag the brand.

What occurred next was a coordinated PR effort on the part of Zurell’s PR agency CLD, some creative marketing tactics and a symbiotic relationship between marketing and PR that led to a 1,200% sales spike and a complete sell-out of the butter yellow sandal. We caught up with Zurell to discuss the PR-marketing partnership that made her pie-in-the-sky dream a reality.

PRNEWS: How did the Taylor Swift sandal sighting come about? Was it completely coincidental? And if so, how did you leverage that type of mega celebrity?

Sarah Zurell, CMO at CELS Brands, Parent Company of Chinese Laundry: It was such a coordinated effort with a lot of moving pieces… In some ways, I set it as this stretch goal. And CLD then worked their magic in, gifting and getting the shoes to her stylist and getting the product over to her. And then I just kept saying it over and over and over again, and then finally it hit. We were all so shocked that she actually did go ahead and wear our shoes.

But on the back end of how we then leveraged it: We tried to get as much earned media as we possibly could from it. When you have that moment as a marketer that comes and is organic(ish)… You’ve gifted, but whenever you’re gifting, you never know if they’re actually going to wear the product or if they’re going to post it or if it’s going to get tagged—or if it’s going to get picked up. So then, it’s a matter of, if they do wear it, then how can you tie back to it? Because they often don’t tag. In this case, the shoes were not tagged. Taylor didn’t tag them, Brittany didn’t tag them… nobody tagged them.

Then, how do you work with your PR agency to try to get as much press about it and to get somebody to organically call out that it’s your product? There, I went really deep, even putting ads out. You have to be so careful with how you’re doing ad strategy because you can’t use the likeness and image. But I could say, “Chinese Laundry is in our butter yellow era.” And then with Google, if you use the right keywords on the backend and get really nerdy with it, then you can target Swifties. So, it’s this mix of manifestation, a total fluke and a highly coordinated effort. [For more on the marketing story, head to PRNEWS sister brand Chief Marketer.]

PRNEWS: What were your strategies for media placement?

Sarah Zurell: CLD is amazing and they actually did a lot of the strategy on it. First, when you have celebrity placements... we're a fashion brand, so you go after the fashion press and you go after some of that pop press. And then you flip it into the business press to follow the news cycle and to take it as far as you can. I feel so lucky to have such an experienced team with deep-rooted relationships that have been able to push this forward.

PRNEWS: Did you hit any roadblocks or challenges?

Sarah Zurell: I reached out to the editors that I know specifically. We'd had some pickup and the information wasn't inaccurate around price, and it was pointing to Amazon. So that was kind of a triage moment that we had to address in real time. It was then coordinated with CLD and myself where I reached out directly to the folks over at Penske Media and called up some of them and asked for a favor. I said, Hey, I need a story that says the correct price, and to point to our website instead of to Amazon--as fast as possible. And by the end of the day, we had a story on Women's Wear Daily and Footwear News. And that was strictly relationship. That was just me calling in a favor. And CLD did the same thing, calling in favors to try to re-steer the press into the direction to point to our website instead of Amazon.

PRNEWS: How do marketing and public relations work together at your brands? Are there any blurred lines between the disciplines?

SZ: First of all, I think having a PR firm and a team that you trust, work well with and have good chemistry with is one of the most important things you can do as a marketer. As a CMO, I would be remiss if I thought that I was going to be able to do all of the PR and comms by myself—or internally for that matter. When I started at Chinese Laundry, we were actually with a different agency and I ended up letting them go because I felt like we just weren't aligned in our goals. And we moved over to CLD. It's been such an incredible experience because I feel they're an extension of our team and there is a lot of partnership in that.

The lines between our internal marketing department and CLD as our PR firm are somewhat blurred. It was so lovely that in our Taylor Swift moment that we were in constant communication. [We could] say, Hey, this just came up. Hey, I saw this. Can we fix this?... [What's important is] having a good relationship with your comms team, your PR team, and making sure that those goals are aligned, that you understand each other's strengths—and your PR agency understands the brand and the audience that you're trying to reach.

We spent so much time going over that when we were onboarding so that they really understood our goals and then could run with it and be an extension of our team—to help me as a marketer reach my vision. As a marketer, you have to make sure that the goals are aligned. What are those specific goals? What are the immediate goals? What are the stretch goals? And be clear about the audience.

PRNEWS: What was your vision specifically?

SZ: My goal when joining CELS Brands was to come revitalize this company, all four of these brands, specifically Chinese Laundry. Because it used to be really cool (I wore the shoes to prom), and now nobody knows what's happening or what happened to the brand. How can I shift the conversation from, "Oh what happened to them? They're still around?" to "Oh, these are cool" and "Taylor's wearing them." We have all these influencers wearing them and people wanting to buy them. Getting on the other side of all of those things is not something I could do alone.

PRNEWS: What do you look for in a PR agency? What was your process to find the right fit?

SZ: I looked at the other brands that agency is repping, because I wanted to get specific about what brands I wanted to my brands to sit next to. That's one easy way to start to look at it. Let's look at the clients. Two would be: interview more than one. I interviewed at several agencies before we decided on CLD. And then it comes down to energy and relationship. Are these people you want to talk to every day? At least that's how I work.

But on a more strategic side, review the client base and make sure that the clients that they have match the audience that you're trying to reach. Because if the brands that they're repping have a similar audience to yours, then you know they're going to have the relationships to be able to move the needle for you.

Kaylee Hultgren is Content Director for PRNEWS.