Alina Gorbatch, Market Research Manager at Awario (social media monitoring platform) is reasoning about Victoria's Secret social media buzz in this case study.
Victoria's Secret is a famous brand of women underwear. Victoria's secret attracted a lot of attention from media. Taylor Swift secretly wishes to be model of this brand, so every Victoria's Secret model wishes to be Taylor Swift.
But all buzz from social media about the brand since 2018 is very negative. This famous US brand of affordable luxurious lingerie, which controls 1/3 American market, is sinking.
The cloud of news around the company includes sexual harassment and assault topics after it became publically known that convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was linked to COO Leslie Wexner, the owner of Victoria's Secret. Also there are talks about how the brand is falling «in the #metoo era» in which body positivity, diversity, and acceptance are what the public expects from brands as opposed to sexualized shows, size 4 models, and the CEO of the company openly refusing to hire transgender people.
In this case study we review what social media thinks about it. We searched through Victoria's Secret mentions to find out and analyzed the most popular tweets and posts. As we know, the 2019 show was canceled. When asked why, CFO Stuart Burgdoerfer explained that the show didn't have any short-term sales impact.
No matter what people think about Victoria's Secret, they obviously care about Kendell Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, and other TV and pop stars that take part in the show. Check out this 5 million likes single post:
Victoria's Secret always was calloborated with social media/mass media celebrities. This is associative cloud of Victoria's Secret, the brand has been always good at. The show basically says that wearing Victoria's Secret takes you to the luxurious world, makes you look like a celebrity, changes your lifestyle to a bohemian one. All for $39.99.
Monitoring Victoria's Secret CEO Leslie Wexner brought some understanding to the sinking popularity of the brand.
Talking about body image
Body image user posts start mentioning Victoria's Secret's competitors and favor the latter.
Conclusion
Seems like Victoria's Secret has problems on all fronts: marketing, PR, product. But the good news is that all of them also seem fixable and, while still holding on to a large piece of the market, the company has a solid chance to get back on track. Or maybe, the current trend: selling sex and insecurity finally doesn't work anymore, and even brands as established as Victoria's Secret don't have a chance until they change their perspective on beauty.
