The Levi's App: Loyalty Program, Launch &
UX Copy
The Name
Levi's Red Tab
Levi's launched its first loyalty program and its first content-driven app experience, and I led the copy with my team. This launch had three parts to it: naming the program, writing the UX and flows for the MVP, and building mobile-first content for a 150-year-old brand that had never had one. The name, Red Tab, is front and center, but also the smallest part of the work.
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In its first year, Red Tab grew to nearly 4 million members and the app earned a 4.9 App Store rating.
Part 1
The Name
Levi's needed a name for its first loyalty program — one that was authentically Levi's, legible as loyalty, and durable enough to last a decade. Across multiple teams, we wrote hundreds of options. Across levels and specialties, several of us landed on the same name: Red Tab. It works because it's true on two levels at once.
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The first is heritage hiding in plain sight. The Red Tab — what Levi’s calls that small, folded flag of fabric stitched onto the sides of pockets — has been on Levi's jeans since 1936, added specifically so the brand could be recognized from a distance, at a glance, without seeing the label. It's one of the most quietly recognizable pieces of detailing in American clothing. Naming the loyalty program after it makes it recognizable and tied to the product itself.
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The second is the double meaning. Levi Strauss & Co. started in 1853 as a dry goods business in San Francisco. The idea of a loyal patron keeping a tab is baked into the company's actual origins. So "Red Tab" says membership and loyalty in a single phrase, through a detail people may already recognize, and a history that's the brand's own.
But a name is just the tip of the spear for a much larger program. The app needed thousands of words that weren't a wordmark.
Part 2
The UX: Writing the MVP
Most of the actual work on the Levi's app was UX writing for the MVP: the copy and flows that make an app usable and as frictionless as possible. Signing up. Logging in. Where you find your messages. What the app says while it loads.
Looking back at the screens now, what stands out is how much of the brand lives in the small words. Some key choices we made:
Member, not loyalty
The program is the Red Tab Member Program. Most brands would have called it a loyalty program, but loyalty describes what the brand wants from you. Membership describes what you get: a place in something. For a brand with fans who already feel that sense of belonging, it's the more honest word.
Tailored, not personalized
The benefits screen offers the best of Levi's "tailored just for you." The loading screen says "Tailoring your experience." In tech, personalized would have been the default. Tailored is a garment word, so the app's language comes from the same place the product does. The loading screen is where that pays off most: a moment that's pure function — waiting — gets a line that's unmistakably Levi's. That language choice still carries over to the app today.
Drops, not new arrivals
"Exclusive drops" was written for a younger audience. And that audience showed up: in the app's first year, 70% of its engaged users were Gen Z or millennials.
Stories, not content
"Stories" makes it editorial rather than marketing. "DIY" points to repair and customization — the idea that Levi's are meant to be worn, altered, and kept.
Benefits, not rewards or points
Points and rewards are transactional: earn, spend, repeat. Benefits are what membership simply gives you.
Join, not sign up
Signing up is transactional. Joining invites to an in-group of people in the know.
Where UX Meets Brand Language
Tailoring your experience
This is the one I'm proudest of, because it's where UX and brand meet. A loading screen is pure function, meant to cover a moment of waiting. But "Tailoring your experience" turns that dead moment into a brand voice moment: tailoring is a garment word, it fits a clothing brand exactly, and it reframes the wait as the app doing something for you. It's a small piece of copy doing two jobs — filling time and staying on-brand — and it's still in the app today.
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We grounded each of our decisions in principles. When the logic is sound, the decisions defend themselves.
Part 3
Mobile-First Content
Levi's had no mobile-first content voice before this, and building it was the largest continual piece of the job.
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A 150-year-old brand has a deep archive of heritage, product knowledge, and story — but very little of it was written for a phone, for a scroll, for a customer flicking through an app in line at a coffee shop. My job was to steer my team toward writing that was native to mobile: short, scannable, visual-led, and built to work on a small screen without losing the substance that makes Levi's, Levi's.
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Take the Levi’s Authorized Vintage feature. A few decisions shaped it.
1. "All one-of-a-kind"
The selling point went in the headline: “Levi’s Authorized Vintage: All One-of-a-kind” "One-of-a-kind" is the entire reason to care — every piece is the only one of one — so we put it up top instead of saving it for the body. On mobile, the headline may be the only thing someone reads. We trusted people to read a longer headline to get a more complete story above the fold.
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2. "Handpicked Trucker Jackets...from the '80s and '90s"
The next section named the product and the era. Handpicked Trucker Jackets from the '80s and '90s are exactly what a younger shopper hunts for in vintage. Naming them outright made an immediate connection with the audience the app was built for.
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3. "Lovingly retooled"
One word did the emotional work: "lovingly." Vintage can read as used. "Lovingly retooled" reframes it as cared for: someone restored this, by hand, on purpose. It's the difference between secondhand and a second life. It's also the most Levi's word on the page, because repair, durability and wearing something for decades are what the brand is actually built on.​​
4. A large, persistent CTA
The button never leaves. The "Shop now" CTA stays pinned to the screen the whole time someone reads. The story gets the space, but the sell is always one tap away.​​
Part 4
The Content System
The app ran on seven content formats, from discover cards to push notifications. I edited the team's copy to keep it on strategy.
Discover Cards
The app's front door, where you grab attention.​​
Scrolling Editorials
Long-form stories adapted from the blog.
Paged Editorials
Stories told one screen at a time.
Rich Product Listing Pages
Storytelling elements for special product collections.
Rich Product Description Pages
The story behind a single product, and why it's worth it.
Inbox Messages
Shorter updates for Red Tab members.
Push Notifications
The biggest moments in the fewest words.
The Results
~4M
Red Tab members
4.9
App Store Rating
70%
Gen Z & millennials
All within a year of launching.