Finding New Wings for Angels of Victoria's Secret
This is not another article to discuss fall of Victoria’s Secret. This is a tribute to all the lessons that the brand has taught marketers in its years of success
The whole world is talking about the fall of the great empire of Victoria’s Secret as the shares of its parent company, L Brands, fell by 50% over last 3 years in February 2020. The collapse of a $525 million controlling stake deal with Sycamore Partners in May, coupled with loss of revenues from its offline stores due to worldwide lockdowns, brought the company to its knees and it became a spectacle of angel beheading for the netizens! But do you know that even after seeing a negative trend in revenues in 12 of 13 last quarters, Victoria’s Secret was still the market leader in its category? The 43-year old company must have done something fabulous over the decades to make it happen, right?
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Almost every success story has chapters conveying the power of good leadership. Victoria’s Secret is no different! A few people know that the brand was initially launched for men – wait what? Yes! The brand was positioned to make lingerie shopping easier and comfortable for men. Within 5 years of inception, the brand was making $4 million in sales & in 1982, when Leslie Wexner (founder of L Brands) acquired Victoria's Secret's six stores and its catalog for $1 million, he turned the initial positioning 180 degrees by creating stores targetted on women rather than men. He visioned Victoria’s Secret as more affordable version of European upscale brand "La Perla". This strategy worked wonders as in next 3 years, Victoria's Secret had become the largest lingerie retailer in US with an annual sales topping $1 billion! Wexner wasn’t the only one making leadership strides. The famous annual fashion show of Victoria’s Secret was brainchild of Ed Razek (CMO, L Brands) in 1995 and it became an iconic part of brand’s image. Barely dressed tall models with 6-inch heels, stone studded bras & angel wings took the brand image to new heights, while also making it a launchpad for careers in modelling.
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Another reason of the quick success of the brand line was its in-store experience. At a time when stigma prevailed around underwear shopping, Victoria’s Secret created stores of women’s underwear shopping with interior design choices – lighting, fixtures, décor, and music – to promote a feel of feminine luxury. In a decade, the brand had already gained enough traction to increase its number of stores from 6 to 350! The pink wallpapers, the spacious and sexy fitting rooms, the expert and courteous staff and the high appetite for innovation completed the in-store experience.
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Did we just mention Innovation? In a lingerie brand? Well, as we also talked about the importance of innovation in our last article about ITC, Victoria’s Secret’s Body by Victoria was one such innovation that turned to a “blockbuster success”, followed by Miracle Bras and Fantasy Bras (also famous as show-stopper bras in Victoria’s Secret Fashion Shows). The product line Pink was introduced to attract a younger, college-aged woman. Efforts were made to turn the hooker “Playboy looks” to aesthetic “Vogue looks”. By 2006, the sales numbers had expanded by 70% to $7.7 billion with 1100 stores in just US. Due to nature of the products, Victoria’s Secret carefully advertised through glossy fashion magazines and brand placements in movies, which helped the brand get into the minds of women audience.
Angelic Strengths morphing to Demonic Chains
Though we consider good leadership & innovations as prime factors of success of Victoria’s Secret, sadly, these strengths turned to weaknesses over the years. A close friend of Wexner, Jeffrey Epstein, was charged as a sex offender as he lured models to spend time with him in return for a place in the elite Victoria’s Secret model list. The brand took more than 15 years to spot this red flag named Epstein, which, we know today, was a step “too little, too late”. The brand also got caught into controversial clouds when Razek made an anti-trans comment in a Vogue interview, leaving the country into a frenzy and invited unwanted backlash for the brand. Though the brand later went on to hire transgender models, but the blemish on the brand image was irreversible by then.
Additionally, the experiential value provided by its stores soon became outdated in the era of digital shopping. The rise of “athleisure” and sports bras along with the #metoo campaigns all over the world proposed an opposing view to the core mantra of Victoria’s Secret – male desire & sex appeal. Victoria’s Secret bra collections like “Very Sexy,” “Dream Angels” and “Sexy Illusions,” could not match up the competition provided by “comfort is the new sexy” bra collections.
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To conclude, we believe that Victoria’s Secret was off to a good start with all the strong feathers in its hat (or rather wings!) aligned properly. However, a non-inclusive attitude, in a world going through a wave of diversity & inclusion, signified lack of vision. Time and again, brands keep reminding us that customer is the king and key to success – some through the active campaigns they launch and others through the obvious campaigns that were not (but should have) launched.
A brand that defined “sexy” in the modern way, we would love to see Victoria’s Secret emerge as a phoenix (with brighter and larger wings of course!) from the heaven’s fall. If you believe that we did justice to the story of Victoria’s secret, subscribe to our newsletter for more such exciting stories.
By: Anmol Gupta | Isha Garg
Interesting story!