Fashion Marketing Campaign

Fashion is a high-intensity competition industry especially in big cities and urban centers. Fashion designers allocate substantial amounts to marketing campaigns in an effort to attract more customers and to control the wider fashion market. This paper will review the spectacular Victoria's Secret Fashion Show, which is sponsored by Victoria’s Secret. The event is an annual marketing campaign which is aired on national television in the US.

Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977, and it is a well renowned retailer of women’s lingerie, apparel, footwear, and cosmetics. The lingerie collection is the most popular of all its collections, and the store has pumped in colossal amounts of money to make the collection a household brand for those who want to be chic.

The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is one of the most celebrated fashion events because it brings together top celebrities, and it is aired during prime time on ABC and CBS. The show attracts an audience of millions of viewers in the US and other parts of the world. In the 1990s, it was held just before Valentine’s Day to promote Valentine’s sales, but over the years, this tactic has changed and it is now aired some weeks before Christmas because the majority of households tend to spend more on shopping and vacations over Christmas.

The Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show has hit screens for almost two decades now, and there is no doubt that it has been a successful marketing campaign, which started as a display of the retailers’ catalogues. Today, the show has positioned its lingerie as a lifestyle that the fashion consciously seeks to identify with. The retailer recorded sales of about $5.5 billion in 2010, a significant growth from the $2 million in the 1990s (Guthrie 2012).

The fashion show has been used for decades as a television marketing campaign for Victoria’s Secret lingerie collection, and it is specifically organized to be aired on television. The show is packaged to attract both male and female viewers, and records show that over 40% of the 2011 viewers were men. On the one hand, the retailer ensures that the event lures men to watch in order to position its lingerie as the ultimate gift for a woman; on the other hand, it positions the lingerie in minds of women as the ultimate item that a woman must have to entice her man (Guthrie 2012). The campaign also attracts teenagers who form a group of potential customers in their quest to fulfill their fantasies. This is a tactic that has successfully converted many millions of viewers to Victoria’s Secret customers year after year.

Additionally, the show mainly targets the high-end market segment, which explains why it is a glamorous event. However, it showcases designs that meet the tastes of the ordinary people and celebrities too. This tactic has removed the notion that Victoria’s Secret is a celebrity brand name that only stocks up lingerie that only celebrities can afford. 

In conclusion, the show is an example of a marketing campaign that has been in place for almost two decades, and it continues to draw new customers into Victoria’s Secret stores every year. The show is a success because it manages to pull both men and women into the retailer’s store, notwithstanding that it only stocks women’s apparel, footwear, and lingerie. Moreover, the lingerie collection forms a significant proportion of the total revenues, and this can be attributed to the success of the fashion show. Finally, the store has grown its revenue over the years from employing a variety of marketing tools. Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is no doubt one of the store’s effective marketing tools.