CURRENT SOCIAL MEDIA / INFLUENCER MARKETING

Victoria's Secret promote themselves to be a desirable, luxurious and sexy lingerie brand and they do this through their Instagram, website and fashion shows. By using slim 'perfect' models, they are building an image that many girls use as a 'goal' which makes their products more desirable as the consumers what to look like the women they see modelling the garments. Their social media consists of many photos of the angels, and their website follows their classy sexy aesthetic, with a simple white webpage with large photos from campaigns from different collections and new releases. Victoria's Secret is religiously supported by some of the biggest supermodels; Kendall Jenner, The Hadids, whom are consistently promoting their lingerie on their Instagram pages to their millions of followers.

CURRENT CONSUMER DEMOGRAPHICS

In this mood board I wanted to paint a picture of the typical Victoria's Secret customer, I included images of their models because they are the image that the consumers aim to look like. Victoria's Secret is seen as a luxury item to have, so people buy the items for the label. The main demographic for their consumers is women between the ages of 16-25, often of middle class. As many of the items are quite expensive in comparison to underwear you find in stores like M&S, girls buy from them to feel good, so they are usually girls that care about their appearance a lot. I included some screenshots of Youtube videos of girls displaying their 'hauls' from Victoria's Secret. As you can see, the girls all have a similar look, perfect teeth, hair, skin and of a slim figure, around the ages of 18-21. 

CURRENT BRAND MARKET POSITION AND COMPETITORS

I created two mood boards to display the competitors, one for the US and one for the UK, as these countries are were Victoria's Secret is most popular. In the US competitors moodpboard, I included three main lingerie brands like Chromat, Arie by American Eagle and Savage X Fenty, which are the biggest competitors of Victoria's Secret in the US. These competitors use diverse models in their marketing and catwalk performances. Then in the second moodboard of UK competitors, I displayed two huge high street underwear stores, Boux Avenue and Ann Summers with images of their Instagram, website, store layouts and images of models wearing the garments. They are the biggest competitors in the UK because they are on every high street and shopping centre in the UK, with Ann Summers having 140, and VS only having 24 stores. They also have very similar designs in their lingerie garments, but for a lower price with offers of discounts and frequent sales. 

VICTORIA'S SECRET SWOT ANALYSIS

Here is a SWOT Analysis I created so I could highlight the things going well for the brand, but also what is potentially going to negatively impact the brand. Then I also considered what Victoria's Secret could do in order to try and compete with the threats, such as becoming a more diverse brand and to expand into other markets.

BRAND POSITIONING MAP

Here I made a brand positioning map so that I could get a good idea of who's Victoria's Secret's strongest competitors are. I found that the biggest competitors are Arie by American Eagle, Asos, Topshop and Savage X Fenty. These are the biggest competitors because they have decent quality and are being sold at a decent price. These stores are also either online or on the high street, which also means they are easily accessible, as well as this Asos, Ann Summers and Topshop all offer student discount, which could mean students (whom are a large part of their market), would prefer to buy from these stores instead of Victoria's Secret as its just as nice design and good quality but for a cheaper price.

VICTORIA'S SECRET'S SWEATSHOP SCANDALS

Victoria's Secret's brands claim to be fair-trade as manage to get away with it by finding a loop hole in the regulations. Although the brand uses fair-trade organic cotton, their garments are still being made in sweatshops and have even been caught for child labour by employing girls as young as 13 years old. Many of these sweatshops are in Jordan, and the National Labour Committee have recently released some of the conditions of these. They have been exposed for not giving the workers they necessary residency permits and they work routinely for up to 105 hours a week. They only get paid as little as $18.48 a week, and these wages amount to less that 3/10ths of the retail price of the bra they are given only 3.3 minutes to sew are costing. After some strikes by the workers, the management of these factories are threatening to deport all their workers, and Victoria's Secret is doing nothing to help. After these strikes, the large majority of workers had no choice but to go back to work as they cannot afford to live without it.

VICTORIA'S SECRET'S CURRENT SALE DEMOGRAPHICS

• Victoria's secret is still no1 lingerie store in the us, although according to Forbes; The No. 1 U.S. lingerie label, extending a string of comparable-sales declines since 2016, reported another 2% dip in comparable sales, led by a 6% drop at its physical stores, in the quarter that ended Nov. 3.

• Rayder’s website conducted a consumer study in September 2017, and found that of 48% of customers who had shopped at Victoria’s Secret in the past year, 58% said prices were too high.

• According to Forbes, Victoria's Secret saw its fiscal third-quarter operating income tumble 89%, or a whopping $120 million, to $14.2 million.