Victoria’s secret is the largest American retailer of women’s lingerie, who is owned by the L,Brands. Its brand image is “Sexy.Iconic.Powerful”. The company features supermodels and held a world famous iconic runway show every year, show casting the collections of their products, ranging from women’s lingerie, body care, fragrance, accessories, lounge wear and athletic wear. The brand is actually founded with the idea to make lingerie shopping a more “personalized” experience and to make men feel comfortable to shop for their partner without feeling embarrassed.
Adore me is a e-commerce company that provides “subscription box” services and delivers designer lingerie set directly to the members’ each month. It is founded in the year on 2012 and since then it has been on the rise. It is one of the fastest growing company in fact it is No.9 on the Crain’s list of fastest growing companies according to Forbes. The company manufactures and sells women’s lingerie, swimsuits and sleepwear, lounge wear, accessories and active wear. The company’s value is “Great fit, amazing quality and stylish designs for every body, al at wallet friendly place.” One of the main goals of the company is to dominate the lingerie industry and takes over Victoria’s secret in the future.
Target audience
As a company it is important to have a target audience. Target audience is the demographic of people that is most likely to be interested in the product or services that provided.
Victoria’s secret has a targeted age group of females that ages between 25-40. Victoria’s secret offers premium quality of product as compare to other lingerie company. Consumer need to have a higher purchasing power in order to be able to afford the products manufactured and sold by Victoria’s secret. Which in fact brings up the age of the target audience.
As for Adore me, the targeted age group of females are from the age of 18-25, due to the fact that it is an e-commerce company. Adore me offers beautiful high quality and perfectly fitting lingerie at a more affordable price. This is due to the fact that being an e-commerce company, the cost of operating a retail store is skipped hence allowing them to be able to proved high quality product at a more affordable price, allowing younger audience to purchase the product as well.
Approaches, Expenditures & Effectiveness
The “blueprint” that guides and help to sell a given product can be the definition of advertising approach. Due to the difference in target audience, both Victoria’s secret and Adore me have very different advertising approach to sell their product.
Victoria’s secret is an international well known brand that goes 40 years back. It has more than a thousand retail stores in world wide as well as an online store that allows consumer to purchase online. Victoria’s secret advertisements can be seen in many places for example, the magazine, the television, the billboard. The most unique approach that is used by Victoria’s secret has to be the world famous “Victoria’s secret fashion show” that features many supermodels on the runway and is held annually in different places of the world.
According to glamour.com, the 2016 Victoria’s secret fashion show cost the company $20 million. It cost a fortune but the revenue of Victoria’s secret for 2016 is $7.6 billions. Besides that, Victoria’s secret hires supermodels as the image of the company which in a way brings up the company’s social status. The models pose with confident in the advertisements giving the consumer an image that if they bought the product they will look as amazing as the models.
The brand image of the Victoria’s secret sometimes brings problem to the company itself. In the year 2014, Victoria’s secret released a new advertisement that features a series of their models posing in sexy lingerie with the slogan saying “the perfect body” which causes some controversial saying that it contains body shaming of plus size women. Size offering is a major disadvantage Victoria’s secret has as compared to other lingerie company. Victoria’s secret only offers sizes range from 0-16 which is XS to XL. But for plus size clothing it is range from 12-24, which means the company is losing a huge portion of bra shopping population to other competitors that offers plus size lingerie.
Victoria’s secret is too dependent on the physical store. According to Forbes, 80% of the revenue comes from physical store which means only 20% is coming from direct channel. This is causing them to falling behind in capturing the attention of online lingerie customers, which creates the perfect opportunity for online lingerie store like Adore Me to dominate the internal market.
Adore me is an e-commerce company that is founded in the year of 2012. Most of their advertisement can be found in the internet due to the fact that they’re an e-commerce company. This allows them to dominate the Millennial customer that primarily shops online. Since the main goals of the company is to dominate the lingerie industry it is aimed to slay Victoria’s secret. In order to show Victoria’s secret that Adore Me is in for the long run, they hired the former Victoria’s secret’s chief of creative to be the chief of creative for the company.
Instead of having supermodels or celebrities as the face of the brand, the company uses social media influences. Social media influences are people that have a huge amount of followers on social media and they inspired people online with their style and life style.By using this method, it allows the company be the talk of the internet and gained popularity quickly among the young people in the states. One downside of online shopping is that consumer couldn’t try on the lingerie or feel the material which is a huge reason why consumer prefers going to retail store. But to counter that, Adore me offers free shipping, return or exchange ensuring the consumer will get to have lingerie that fits perfectly.
The company ran a marketing test to ensure that the company is using the right approach in advertising. The result shows that a curvy brunette model can sell more lingerie as comparing to a blonde, skinny model. To accommodate more consumer, the company offers a huge variety of sized ranging from 30A to 44G. Unlike Victoria’s secret, the company hires not just normal model, but also plus size model, to promote the plus size lingerie and also to encourage people to embrace their own body type and be confident with your own body.
The tremendous growth of the company shows that the approach of the company used is working for them. The revenue of the company has grown from $1 million in 2012, which is the starting year up to $43 millions in 2016. Although it is very little compare to Victoria’s secret’s $7.6 billions revenue but the company believes that in the near future they will be dominating the lingerie industry.
Conclusion
Both advertising approaches that is used of by both the company is equally and works well for both companies. Victoria’s secret might want to pick up the social media advertising way because it is the most effective way and it will allow the company to reach more people. The trend that’s going on right now is to be confident in your own skin and body and not to let lingerie company to tell you what is the perception of beautiful, perfect and sexy. If Victoria’s secret doesn’t fix the limitation in size offering of their product, they will lose more and more customer that believes in the trend and begins to discriminate Victoria’s secret. As for Adore me, their next approach should be having pop up store or bring it to other retailers. Consumer that’s older generation prefer to shop in store instead of buying online to ensure the quality of the product, this way the brand could get more exposure.