Veteran marketing executive Marisa Thalberg has her work cut out for her as EVP, chief customer and marketing officer of Catalyst Brands.
Formed by the merger of SPARC Group and JCPenney in January 2025, Catalyst Brands has a diverse portfolio of brands including: JCPenney, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer, Aeropostale, Lucky and Nautica – legacy retailers with loyal customers that are being refreshed for the current times.
“It’s a hard assignment because we have an incredible base of loyal customers who have loved and appreciated these brands for many years and get it, but there’s a whole new world of non-customers who maybe have dated assumptions about what is behind those big walls that you see when you’re driving around a mall,” says Thalberg.
JCPenney, for instance, has been on a mission to dust off any preexisting ideas about what it stands for. In May, the retailer ran the “Yes, JCPenney” ad as a spot, showing off modern looks and contemporary brands, promoting price value. The company has also done in-store partnerships with Jessica Simpson and Shaquille O’neal, as well as partnerships with influencers. For the holidays, JCPenney partnered with iHeart Radio to create a fashion collection for the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball. These efforts appear to be working, the company was voted “America’s Best Department Store” by USA Today.
“For me the interesting opportunity is realizing that what we really stand for is not just style –everyone says they have style – but we really have fashion,” explains Thalberg. “That’s quite an exciting revelation, especially when you combine that with incredible deals on national brands and quality private labels.”
“We’ve got an incredible range of products, we have them at exceptionally affordable prices. “It’s inclusive in size. Forget going to off-price, this is such a great alternative for people,” Thalberg continued. “It’s just really being able to open up that storytelling in a way that gets people past any preconceived notions that aren’t as favorable.”
Prior to joining Catalyst, Thalberg has held C-Suite marketing roles at Lowe’s. Taco Bell and United Parks & Resorts. Brand Innovators caught up with Thalberg from her office in Charlotte, NC to discuss how she is modernizing these classic brands, working with influencers and creating in-store experiences. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you talk about how you are thinking about brand refreshes across the portfolio of Catalyst brands?
We merged the companies and became Catalyst brands back in January, it’s such an interesting portfolio. We have one big box department store retailer with JCPenney and then these specialty brands. The common denominator across all of them is an opportunity to get new customers appreciating and understanding these brands for today and giving them a different level of saliency, top-of-mind consideration, while honoring the people that have already been there and have gotten it all along.
It’s been really fun thinking that through for Brooks Brothers. We’ve got great momentum on that brand. Aeropostale has had an incredible year. We want to keep that momentum going basically with teens, the combo of Gen Z and Gen Alpha on that brand. Lucky, is a bit more premium, and we had a really big moment earlier this year with an Addison Rae collaboration. It’s about getting those core Lucky lovers to keep coming back and bring their friends. Multi-generational is an opportunity there. We relaunched Eddie Bauer in a really meaningful way this year and we’re doing some really great work on Nautica too. It’s an interesting diverse portfolio. They’re all iconic American retail brands that deserve to be discovered and rediscovered anew.
Can you talk about how you’re modernizing these classic heritage brands to attract a new customer base?
Whenever you have a portfolio, you’re going to have a mixed bag of challenges. In some cases, it’s about continuing the momentum and expanding it. In other cases, it might be a little bit more of turning certain trajectories around. It’s really important to not have a one-size-fits-all approach or strategy. Each one deserves its own. Each one has a different customer opportunity, a different retail distribution. We have a combination of DTC, stores and in some cases strong wholesale businesses with partners. It’s just thinking through all the dimensions of the brand and the business and figuring out what the job is. Is it about continuing momentum? Is it about turning something around? Is it about reaching a different or younger customer? And then building out strategies and plans for that.
Tell me how you are putting these brands into the culture to connect to audiences.
There’s no I in this. It’s a we, and it’s not just a we of marketing. It’s a we of the cross-functional team, especially when you’re dealing in fashion. You’ve got designers and merchants who are creating the product. Our job is to figure out how to make that all tell a story. Sometimes it’s through fun moments like collaborations. A great example of that really took off is a collaboration between Brooks Brothers and Engineered Garments. It made a different customer than perhaps a traditional Brooks Brothers customer stand out and take notice.
What we’re doing on JCPenney with the Jingle Ball this holiday season really excites me. I love doing things differently in ways that have never been done before. iHeart has been a wonderful long-term partner of mine. This isn’t a sponsorship, it’s a partnership. The idea was to create a true collaboration and interpret Jingle Ball from a fashion collection. It’s always about access, especially on JCPenney. Not everyone has access to tickets to an event like the Jingle Ball and now they can win them through an ongoing JCPenney sweepstakes. But whether you go to Jingle Ball or not, you can dress like it. You can dress up for the holiday season and be in your sequins and fur and just feel great and party-ready in a super affordable way.
That message has never meant more during this current season. There’s a lot of economic pressure on customers. Tariffs have created pressure and a ripple effect on pricing. We’ve done a good job holding pricing on the majority of our items. Our job at JCPenney in particular is to make sure that we’re really delivering great values on things people really actually want.
Can you talk about how you’re navigating the in-store experience?
We really try to take an omni-channel approach because we want to drive people to the channel of their choice, whether it’s shopping on our dot com or heading into stores. We want to make sure people understand that both are options. Of course we’re taking an omni-channel approach, but our stores are fundamentally important to us. Whether it’s fun in-store activations that we’re doing, for example. Black Friday is an incredibly big deal for JCPenney. We are the retailer that people still line up for. We started giving prizes away at 5am. We offered drinks and had giveaways. We really want our customers to win by shopping with us. That is a clear call to action to the store. We’ve had some of our incredible celebrity partners doing personal appearances. We just had Shaq in our store in the Bronx recently. It was a madhouse.
This fall, Ashley Graham launched a collection, really bringing not just clothes but high fashion to women who have curves. Ashley did a big in-store personal appearance at Roosevelt Field on Long Island. Jessica Simpson was promoting her fragrance at our store in Glendale, California.
Brooks Brothers has a beautiful new flagship that we opened in Manhattan at 195 Broadway, right across from the Fulton Street train station. It’s magnificent. It makes you just have truly a brand experience.
Then, of course, from a content standpoint, our social across these channels, our digital, in some cases, our upper funnel. We’re doing creative things with audio. JCPenney, we’re doing something really interesting with Univision to reach our Latina population with telenovelas that have original content. We’ve been on podcasts. We’ve been on Reddit. We’re really trying to adapt and customize as you would expect per brand.
How are you working with influencers?
On Aeropostale, we did our favorite thing we’ve done all year. We had a young influencer named Demetra Dias. She just started college. She was our summer intern at Aeropostale and we made a whole series about that – the internship series. Then it culminated in the reveal that there was a collaboration and she created her own line. We call it the Demetra effect. That was incredible. Now we’re bringing her back as part of just the brand’s holiday storytelling along with Cavan Sullivan, another influencer and they’re giving their picks. It is part of the brand storytelling to show what they love from the brand for holidays. It’s different for every brand, but of course, influencers are a big part of extending our storytelling.
How are you thinking about the retail experience going into 2026?
The trick is how can you make your retail destinations feel like experiences that reflect the brand without enormous capital expenditure. That’s honestly the challenge that many of us face and I do believe it’s possible.
At JCPenney, we do something called Kids Zone once a month where we invite kids to do our arts and crafts activities. It’s grassroots and that’s the kind of thing that we can do easily.
