For a brand that spent the better part of a decade trying to figure out what, exactly, it was supposed to be selling — lingerie? empowerment? both? neither? — Victoria's Secret has settled on an answer that would have been unthinkable in the Ed Razek era: community.
The company's fashion show, which returns to Los Angeles on Sunday, is being repositioned as what executives are calling a "participatory" event, complete with public ticket drops, a nationwide casting search for a new Angel, and a post-show TikTok Live session that will presumably allow viewers to engage with the brand in ways that do not involve simply watching very thin women walk in very expensive undergarments.
Elizabeth Preis, the chief marketing and customer officer who joined the company in May, told Adweek that the strategy emerged from observing how fans gathered to watch last year's broadcast. "We wanted to make sure this year was much more participatory as a night of fun and friendship," Ms. Preis said.
(One notes that "fun and friendship" is rather a different proposition than the old formula, which might have been described as "aspiration and inadequacy.")
The show will stream globally on YouTube and the brand's social channels, a distribution strategy that reflects both the realities of cord-cutting and the fact that network television is no longer particularly interested in programming that exists primarily to sell push-up bras.
This marks the second fashion show under Ms. Preis's tenure, and the latest chapter in a turnaround effort that has required Victoria's Secret to answer a question that many legacy brands now face: how to remain relevant to consumers who grew up being marketed to in an entirely different way.
Whether a TikTok Live constitutes an answer remains to be seen.
Original story published in adweek.com: "Amid Turnaround, Victoria’s Secret Turns Its Fashion Show Into a Fan Movement"