Thinking about Old Navy in the '90s, as the last attempt I can remember to build a mass brand.
Which, ironically, should have been a warning about the impending collapse of the mall, because that would have been department store territory a generation earlier.
Department stores got big by gathering a complete selection of consumer goods under one roof, then served as the "anchors" that allowed the mall form of non-urban retail, which was replicable enough to allow national chains, then with '90s-level supply chains (computerized tracking and third-world production) they could poach consumer staples from the department anchors
Also the fun, flip, later 90s suburban cool branding was exactly the angle non-mall big box stores were pitching themselves – you can get the benefits of Wal-Mart without the non-cosmopolitan stigma now! You can pronounce it "Tar-JHAY"!
Yeeeeah, old Old Navy was my main source of new clothes for my teen years, mostly because my fashionable and rich Aunt who had a surprisingly good understanding of the needs of teens gave me and my siblings $100 Old Navy gift cards for Christmas for several years. There was an Old Navy outlet store near us, and $100 spent carefully lasted us the whole year. I even bought Old Navy notebooks and trash cans, and I'm actually wearing one of the sports bras I bought back then right now, so the clothing lasted pretty good too!
That aunt was pretty much my entire fashion inspiration as a youth, and she was the one who taught me "Tar-JHAY". The impact of Target's Design for All program in softlines cannot be underestimated; they brought people who would never set foot in a Walmart ("do they sell like wall stuff?") rushing to Target to buy limited edition designer pieces, and made aspirational fashionistas eager to pay out more for Target softlines. It gave the whole store a kind of classy halo, and they've leaned into it.
This NYT article attributes the "Tar-JHAY" pronunciation to the Design for All program. “If you’re a big box store selling groceries and diapers, and you can bring people in for designer goods at low prices in a limited-edition environment, that’s a coup.”
Also, Walmart softlines shat themselves for years. They'd had cheap and not super fashionable but decent "school teacher" type basics down fine, but their hamfisted attempts to ape Target were plagued by designs nobody actually wanted and horrifying quality control. I remember helping recall this whole shipment of Miley Cyrus branded long sleeve knit shirts that had horizontal sheer bands knit in, in bright colors. They were obviously intended for teens. The problem was they had apparently used an orangutan as a fit model, as the sleeves were very very long and thin, far longer and thinner than any human's arms. All of them. Just bushels of these shirts pulled for being manufactured completely physically unwearable, and it wasn't even unusual for that to happen in that era in Walmart softlines.
remember the “come see the softer side of Sears” branding in the early 90s when their advantage in hardware and appliances wasn’t enough
(While cars were still consumer-serviced and until Pep Boys, O'Reilly, Auto Zone muscled in they had a huge angle there - remember DieHard batteries and Craftsman power tools?)
and in response trying to push into, uh, “softlines”, at the time we would have said “housewares and linens” or even “white goods”