Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Victoria’s Secret’s Focus Shift
Jenna Bartak
COMM121: Introduction to Mass Communications
Ted Gournelos
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Abstract
Victoria’s Secret, globally known for their sexy catalog and well-anticipated fashion
shows- full of nothing but women in nothing but fancy lingerie- has been a fashion and
controversial icon in America since the early 1970’s. Victoria’s Secret was founded by Ray
Raymond, who’s original vision was to create an inviting atmosphere for both men and women
to purchase their intimates for themselves and/or for their significant others. In fact, Victoria’s
Secret primary target marketing audience was the male population, surprising for a womenoriented line of products. Victoria’s Secret made a big name for them self when they hosted a
fashion show with their Angel collection, using well-known super models to display their newest
line. Focusing mainly on middle-aged women with their merchandise, one can now find a much
younger audience within Victoria’s Secret scope of target marketing—teenagers and college
students. Introducing the PINK and PINK colligate collection in 2004 and 2008, respectively.
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Victoria’s Secret Background
For years Victoria’s Secret has set the bar of how women should dress—underneath their
clothes. Known for their classic, yet sultry lingerie, Victoria’s Secret most known advertising
strategy was done with supermodels strutting down the runway in angel wings—the Angel
Across America campaign. Now, Victoria’s Secret has turned to a collegiate campaign- mainly
the Pink collection. Even with the economy crisis, Victoria’s Secret has been the victor of
reaping in dollars worth over $2.8 billion (Monget, K., 2004). This paper will execute a
contextual analysis of Victoria’s Secret campaigns from Angel to Collegiate, focusing on the
Pink advertising, in which Victoria’s Secret gears its focus to a younger audience than their
traditional audience of women in thirties and forties. The Pink audience is composed of collegeaged women from 18- 22 years of age, creating a life-style image for young women to pursue
through Victoria’s Secret products. It argues that Victoria’s Secret target audience is shifting
from older women to young women in order to catch them earlier and keep them.
Victoria’s Secret Story
Victoria’s Secret legend began in 1982 when The Limited Brands bought out their store
and catalog for $1 million (Limited Brands History, 2009). By 1986 Victoria’s Secret was a
franchise of 167 stores across America with an annual sales volume of $112 million dollars
(Workman, N., 1996). These stores specialized in lingerie which integrated the style of old
English and the 19th Century into their products and store design. The original store design was
a “turn-of-the-century San Francisco bordello” style. Since then the stores’ layout has been
transformed into a lighter, bedroom type style to create a more personal, intimate atmosphere.
This bedroom-style look is created through the use of bedroom type furniture, like dresser
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
drawers with merchandise inside (Workman, N., 1996). In 2002 Victoria’s Secret decided to
change their look to match the supermodels who were promoting their Angel Across America
campaign: Tyra Banks, Gisles Buchchen,, Heidi Klum, Adriana Lima, and Alssandra Ambroso
(See figure 1).
Figure 1
The Victorian era look would be transformed into a more racy style to recreate the feel of the
store. Instead of shoppers feeling as if they had stepped back in time, they would feel as if they
had stepped onto the runway. Kathleen Baldwin, Vice President for store design, said,
“Traditionally, our stores have had soft, feminine environments, but the ad campaigns were
sexier. Those ads and the Victoria’s Secret fashion show are an enormous part of our image, and
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
the new design is more aligned with that” (Khamsurov, M., 2004, 54) (See figure 2).
Figure 2
A large portion of Victoria’s Secret sales are due to their two main advertising
strategies—catalogs and live fashion shows. 90% of Victoria’s Secret catalogs and retail
customers are women, so it was surprising to industry observes that Victoria’s Secret target
audience was predominatley men. This is because Victoria’s secret theory is that if men do not
buy lingerie for the women in their life, then women will but it with the men in mind. In fact,
Victoria’s Secret mails their catalog to 350 million people annually (Cobb, C., 1999) increasing
sales.
In 1999, for the Super Bowl XXXIII, Victoria’s Secret spent $5.5 million in pitching
their sexy lingereie ads and spent $1.5 million to show one 30-second ad during the Super Bowl
commericals (Cobb, C., 1999). In Feburary of the same year Victoria’s Secret was to air its
fashion show over the internet, allowing people to log in and see what was new in stores. To
promote this event $4 million was spent on a full page newspaper ad (Cobb, C., 1999). Though
Victoria’s Secret planned for an audience of over a million people, the serves could not handle
the 1.5 million who logged on, jamming the site. Visuals were dark and choppy and the sound
was disappointing. This mishap hindered the sales that Victoria’s Secret was expecting
(Hanover, D., 1999). Learning from mistakes Victoria’s Secret then went on to air their fashion
shows via television through ABC and then on to CBS (Monget, K., 2005).
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Contextual Anaylsis of Victoria’s Secret
In regards to the Angels (figure 3)
Figure 3
walking down the runway,
Anthony Hebron, the spokesperson for Limted Brands Inc. claims that Victoria’s Secret fashion
shows drive more people into the store—making the $10 million production worthwhile
(Prashad, n.d.). He claims that the fashion show sends a message and this is what women who
buy Victoria’s Secret products think, “when I put that push-up padded bra on, I’ll look just like
Naomi (Campbell) or Heidi Klum and it will give me the support I need” (Prashad, n.d.). To
encourage the viewing of the already anticipated event, CBS held a sweepstakes for viewers to a
win a trip to New York to watch Gisele Bundchen and Tyra Banks on and off stage (Advertising
Mascots, n.d.).
Victoria’s Angels inspired Victoria’s Secret product line of perfumes and lotions called
“Dream Angels”. To promote these products the Angels were posed naked with only their
wings, creating a pure and innocent look in the advertisments (see figure 4).
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Figure 4
. The saying at the bottom of the ad stated: “Scent from above.
A celestial blend of soft florals and earthy warmth creates sheer heaven on earth for the wear.
Your skin will be fabulously fragrant and blissfully cared for. Chosen among the full Dream
Angels Heavenly Collection” (Advertising Mascot, n.d.) Ironically, the sexy, naked models use
their bodies to create a pure and innocent look, persuading women to buy their products.
On Valentine’s Day of 2004 Victoria’s Secret introduced a new line of products: Pink
Products. This line includes bikinis, thongs, boy shorts, hipsters, short-shorts and pajamas. This
line was meant to target 18- 22 year old women (Zmuda, N., 2008). This new line proved
popular, but in the last quarter of 2007, Victoria’s Secret lingerie sales decrease by 7%, so the
Pink line was used to create the Collegiate Collection, consisting of license T-shirts, sweats,
totes, and underwear designed specifically for 33 universities across America (see figure 5).
Figure 5
These universities included University of Michigan to Texas
A&M to Harvard (Zumda, N., 2008). Sara Tervo, Victoria’s Secret Vice President of Public
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Relations and Event Marketing, argues that by incorporating Pink into the college scene will help
foster relationships with students, schools, and communities (Zmuda, N., 2008). Filandroa, an
analyst with Susquehanna Finical Group argues ‘Pink has been a tremendous growth vehicle for
[Victoria’s Secret] and gives them an opportunity to capture that customer at a much younger
age than Victoria’s Secret was able to do previously. The earlier that can get her, the more likely
it is they keep her” (Zmuda, N., 2008, 29).
In order to establish this collegiate collection, Victoria’s Secret hired brand ambassadors
to promote their products, using what is called a grass-roots approach. Filandro claims that this
approach is “brilliant… a powerful way to connect with the core customer that they are
targeting” (Zmuda, N., 2008, 29). For each campus there were two to three ambassadors hired to
ensure maximum visibility. Their responsibilities as ambassadors included handling the Recycle
Your Sweats Program by placing bins on campuses for used-clothing donations, promoting
Pink’s pop-up store on the internet, and traveling to six college football games to promote
various games-day events for the brand (Zmuda, N., 2008). Harvard’s newspaper discusses how
the Pink Ambassadors on their campus and on other campuses were interested in fashion,
marketing or retailing as a post-college career. The article posted that Rob Walker from the New
York Times believes that Victoria’s Secret real target is actually preteens and teenagers with Pink
being used as an entry brand (College Women Join ‘Team Pink’, 2005). This reiterates
Filandro’s belief that Victoria’s Secret is trying to get girls at an early age in hopes of keeping
them.
To continue and revamp the Pink collection, Victoria’s Secret is adding a Green
Collection to the Pink, along with a new fragrance line made up of organic and vegan ingredients
to appeal to the same college-aged market (Naighton, J., 2009). The company plans to use an
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
intensive sampling campaign for the fragrances and utilize viral marketing via Facebook,
MySpace and YouTube (Naughton, J., 2009). In fact, girls can now receive text messages about
Pink as well, informing them of the newest products.
Textual Analysis of Pink Ads
In Figure 6, an image derived from Victoria’s Secret Pink website, is evidence that
Victoria’s Secret is encouraging young girls to purchase their products.
In Figure 7, one can see four models used to advertise Victoria’
Secret’s Pink bra collection. Performing a textual analysis
of these selected items, one can first observe that the
models used are quite younger than the models usually
used for Victoria’s Secret advertising. One can also
clearly see that the bras have titles which attach an identity
to the product. This creates an idea that when a girl wears
a certain bra, she is empowered to be the most popular, the
biggest flirt, or the most likely to succeed. Pink’s image
of power is created by wearing a simple bra, degrading
women’s success to their bra size and style.
Figure 6
“Most Popular”
T-shirt bra
All girls are posed in seductive stances with
flirtatious looks, quite similar to the stances and looks of
their counterparts in Victoria’s Secret Angel collection.
“Most Comfy”
padded wireless
bra
“Biggest Flirt”
scoop neck bra
Figure 7
“Most Likely
t o Succeed”
push-up Bra
with gel
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
Analyzing the styles present, it can been seen that the “Most Popular” T-shirt bra
reappropriates a hippie look with their model, recreating a 60’s type hairstyle, head band and
colorful bra. It can be seen that Victoria’s Secret Pink also incorporates diversity in their models
in order to appeal to a broader scope of girls. They also create a sense of exoticism by using
multiracial models and background settings.
All of these models are skinny and fit, just like the models used to showcase other
Victoria’s Secret products. This is to ensure a look that says that the Victoria’s Secret way is the
best way—only the top models with the top body types display their bras, creating a belief that
when women buy these products, they too will achieve this Victoria’s Secret lifestyle.
Interestingly, found on the Victoria’s Secret Pink webpage is a tab that reads “Pink is Life” and
when rolled over switches to “Life is Pink”, insinuating that the life a teenage girl should have is
one that includes Victoria’s Secret Pink products.
As stated before, the earlier Victoria’s Secret can get a girl, the more likely they are to
keep her. Pink is a sales maneuver to appeal to a younger generation in a way that their previous
ads would not have. In an industry that sells a bra in the price range of $40- $60, teenagers are
not the main target. However, Victoria’s Secret knows that if they can entice teenage and
college students with a more appealing price range, they are more likely to invest in more
expensive products as they advance in life.
In conclusion, Victoria’s Secret is becoming the victor of women of all ages. Through
their effective marketing, they have expanded their target marketing from women in their thirties
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
and forties to teenage girls and college students; all done strategically through the power of sex
appeal and desirability.
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Victoria’s Secret Focus Shift
References
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