’ ongoing revival plan. Featuring actress Chloë Sevigny, musician and rapper Jordan Stephens and comedian Naomi Watanabe, it asks, “What makes your sole bounce?” Chief brand and product officer Carla Murphy joined from Adidas in July 2025 to help lead the revival. She said the campaign reflects Dr. Martens’ renewed “outside in” approach to seeing the market from the consumer’s point of view. That approach is central to the strategy CEO Ije Nwokorie announced in June 2025. “Levers for Growth” aims to shift the business from a channel-first to a consumer-first mindset. Its other priorities are giving people more reasons to buy Dr. Martens products, from its best-selling styles to adjacent categories, and tailoring distribution to each market to extend the brand’s reach and make better use of capital. The company has since returned to profit, although revenue fell 1.4 per cent in fiscal 2026 to £765 million (approximately $1 billion). According to its latest earnings release, the next phase in 2027 will focus on scaling the business and continuing the shift toward consumer-led marketing. Re-establishing Dr. Martens’ relevance Nwokorie sees the distinction between product and brand as increasingly artificial. “What’s evolved is that we no longer treat product and brand as separate jobs, because consumers never did,” he said. For Murphy, the brand’s connection with its communities matters just as much. It has drawn on those connections through collaborations with The Powerpuff Girls and Chopova Lowena, but recognition alone is not enough. “We don’t have a recognition issue at Dr. Martens. You know, we’re very iconic,” she said. “That’s different to being timeless and relevant.” How did Dr. Martens get to this point? Dr. Martens has acknowledged a lack of innovation amid growing competition. Revenue fell 9.8 per cent in fiscal 2024, partly because of weaker US wholesale sales, then another 8.2 per cent in fiscal 2025 to £787.6 million (about $1.1 billion). EBITDA fell 40.8 per cent in 2025 to £117 million (about $157 million). Barney Stacher, CEO of consultancy Retail OCD, sees a gap between the brand’s familiar identity and shoppers’ reasons to buy today. “The boots were still iconic. The business needed better footwork,” he told Inside Retail. For Stacher, that means moving away from heavy discounting and returning to what made a boot originally designed for English laborers a fashion and status symbol for young people and nonconformist creatives. He sees promise in a campaign that lets wearers give the shoes their own meaning, but says the rest of the business must support it. “Carla Murphy’s campaign has a promising idea at its center: let wearers show what the shoes mean in their own lives. But a comeback takes more than a good line and a few famous faces,” said Stacher. “Product, stores and the website all have to deliver on the story, and customers need a reason to pay full price.” There are signs of progress: shoe revenue grew 19 per cent in fiscal 2026, while off-price pairs in US wholesale fell 31 per cent. For Stacher, the measure of success is whether the campaign leads to sales. “My test would be simple: six months from now, are people talking about the campaign, or showing us the Docs they bought because of it?” Can Dr. Martens stage a comeback? Frankie Margotta, strategy director at consulting firm Triptk, believes Dr. Martens has assets few brands can match. “Dr. Martens is an iconic brand with equity, design IP and cultural credibility that most brands dream of but never achieve,” he said. “Doc Martens has a ton of verbal awareness, and the boot with the yellow stitch is instantly recognizable.” Margotta said Dr. Martens has responded over the past year by tightening inventory and reducing discounting. The harder task now, he argues, is defining what the brand will mean beyond this campaign. “The decision now is what Dr. Martens can stand for, not simply as a campaign over the next 12 to 18 months, but for the foreseeable future.” That requires the brand to decide which parts of its heritage, cultural credibility and distinctive design should shape its future, and what it should leave behind. “From where I’m sitting, the watchout is that even an exciting, star-studded campaign like ‘What Makes Your Sole Bounce’ can’t rely on celebrity or a cultural moment to create lasting relevance,” said Margotta. “Those things will fade and none of it will matter for long if consumers don’t understand why Dr. Martens is different, what place it has in their lives and why they should care.” Retail brand strategist and marketing consultant Bethany Paris Ramsay also sees customers as central to the brand’s future. “Dr. Martens became culturally significant because people adopted the boots and gave them meaning,” she said. “The team needs to make space for that kind of participation again, with creative communities and customers shaping how the brand shows up.” Ramsay said the “What makes your sole bounce?” campaign draws on a detail the brand already owns while inviting people to bring their own experiences to it. She considers Chloë Sevigny a natural fit, but said the campaign needs to reach beyond its famous faces. “The product and retail experience have to support the storytelling,” Ramsay said. “That means giving shoppers compelling ways into the brand beyond its most familiar boot, making the quality and design feel tangible, and being disciplined about discounting. A campaign can renew interest certainly. But ultimately, a comeback happens when someone sees the work, walks into a store or opens the site, and finds a pair they genuinely want to wear.” Further reading: How is Macy’s pulling itself out of its spiral of decline?