This post was created in partnership with Zappi

To keep up with today’s consumers, brands need abundant data and a willingness to adapt.

During a Brandweek 2026 fireside chat co-hosted with Zappi, Rebecca Stewart, brand editor of ADWEEK, sat down with Aubrie Corey, global VP of brand marketing at Carter’s, and Nataly Kelly, CMO of Zappi, to discuss how a heritage brand can stay fresh and relevant.

Over its 161 years, Carter’s has learned the importance of connecting with successive generations of customers. That’s the impulse behind its recent brand evolution—a reintroduction to today’s parents.

“Gen Z isn’t necessarily picking brands because they were their parents’ brands, but because they’re choosing those brands,” Corey explained. “With each generation, you have to ensure that the way you’re expressing yourself really resonates.”

The strategy is rooted in data showing that parenting itself has transformed. Whereas millennials adopted a “mini me” approach to styling their children, as Corey put it, Gen Z parents are more interested in brands that encourage their kids’ self-expression.

“Children come into this world with a light entirely their own,” Corey said. “They come in with such a unique individuality, and it’s not for us to create that uniqueness. It’s for us to recognize that and to protect and encourage it.”

It’s exactly why brands need a steady stream of customer data. “Striking that balance between consistency and adaptability—and evolving to where the consumer is headed—really requires a constant pulse of consumer insights to feed how you evolve the brand,” Kelly observed.

Sometimes, this generational connection is less about modernizing the brand than harkening back to the good old days. When consumer insights and conversations revealed a strong interest in vintage clothing, Carter’s brand OshKosh B’gosh launched the OshKosh Reissued Collection, reviving customer favorites from the 1980s and 1990s.

“It’s print-for-print some of our vintage products that are so resonant with someone who’s a Gen X or millennial, who remembers when they were wearing that product,” Corey said. “But it also feels new and fresh for this generation as well.”

Whether looking to the present or the nostalgic past, Carter’s is focused on what Corey described as “the business of memory making.” The idea is to be present with customers at emotional moments in their lives and give them something to look back at.

A recent partnership with Umbro, for instance, embraced the cross-generational passion for the World Cup with a line of soccer-themed clothing. “We know that our multicultural consumer is more important than ever,” Corey reflected. “How do we show up in this moment where the world’s going to be watching?”

For brands looking to turn their customer signals into winning strategies, Kelly advised breaking down the silos. “A lot of those signals appear in different systems and different silos throughout large organizations,” she said. “Centralizing data enables you to leverage that data over time, see what the trends are, and understand where the consumer is going.”

This is the approach that allows Carter’s to stay modern without losing sight of its past. “We’re not a heritage brand,” Corey concluded. “We’re a brand with heritage.”