Victoria’s Secret Cuts the Woke Out of Its Latest Marketing Campaign
It appears the woke “body positivity” approach was thinning out profits. BONUS: New drugs may mean a lot more thinner customers wanting to wear their products.
I slammed the “body positivity” movement in a number of posts, as obesity is the driver of many chronic health problems and exacerbates illnesses (e.g., covid).
I have also chided companies that promote the idea an obese body is a healthy choice for anyone. Until recently, lingerie company Victoria’s Secret has been at the forefront of this woke marketing strategy.
That is until the numbers showed the firm was heading toward broke.
Victoria’s Secret is returning to its hyper-sexualized roots after attempting to rebrand as a more inclusive retailer, reports state.
The lingerie empire has seen a drop in sales since overhauling its image by replacing its traditional ‘Angel’ supermodels with more diverse models including soccer player Megan Rapinoe and transgender model Valentina Sampaio.
Business of Fashion reporter Cathleen Chen noted that the move gained ‘favorable reviews online but never translated into sales.’
Bosses are now looking to bring back the brand’s ‘sexiness,’ according to a report by CNN on Tuesday. Victoria’s Secret insisted its new direction has nothing to do with its inclusivity efforts, as one exec said ‘sexiness can be inclusive.’
Victoria’s Secret is going back to hot models after sales tanked on fat chicks, Megan Rapinoe and dudes pretending to be chicks in lingerie. Woke business fails. Again: pic.twitter.com/aPHZV9y503
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 18, 2023
Personally, I used to be a regular customer…until the woke marketing became unbearable. This is a step in the right direction for the company…and one I hope indicates a trend away from woke.
The company has lost over $1 billion in the course of a few, short years.
According to the numbers, the lingerie brand’s projected revenue for 2023 is $6.2 billion, which is 5% lower than it was last year, and even lower than 2020, when the brand’s revenue was $7.5 billion.
The drop in Victoria’s Secret’s sales also followed the company’s move to make its board of directors mostly female.
In 2021, Rapinoe called out what the brand had been before the revamp, claiming it had sent out a “really harmful” message that was “patriarchal, sexist, viewing not just what it meant to be sexy but what the clothes were trying to accomplish through a male lens and through what men desired.”
“And it was very much marketed toward younger women,” the U.S. Women’s soccer star added at the time.
There is no shame in wanting to be attractive and appealing to those around you.
There is one added bonus for Victoria’s Secret. The new weight-loss drugs could deal a much-needed blow to the “body positivity” inanity.
New research from Goldman Sachs projects 15 million adults in the US will be on anti-obesity medications by 2030, representing 13% penetration in the US adult population — not including diabetic patients.
Globally, Goldman Sachs sees sales for chronic weight management reaching $100 billion by 2030, up from a $6 billion annualized estimate earlier this year.
“The chronic weight management market is undergoing an inflection, in our view, with potential for solid growth ahead and a peak opportunity that, by our estimates, could ultimately yield some of the highest grossing drugs of all time,” a team of Goldman Sachs analysts led by Chris Shibutani wrote in a research note on Monday.
Victoria’s secret may actually be that their marketing team is dropping the woke in anticipation that they will have a new, thinner, and happier customer base soon.
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Comments
I hope they learned something because Budweiser is none the wiser after hiring an influencer to influence beer drinkers not to drink their beer.
“Victoria’s Secret is returning to its hyper-sexualized roots…”
I, for one, applaud this decision.
What?!? You mean that most people don’t want to see men and fat chicks in lingerie? 🤔
Not to mention little boy looking girls like Megan Rapinoe.
Rapinoe is getting too old to look like a little boy. Soon she’ll look like a stunted middle-aged man.
But in any case, the only sexy underwear she could ever have modeled well would be the padded type.
It has been observed that VS sales are predominantly to husbands as gifts to their wives, for obvious reasons.
For years VS have totally missed the point that most husbands don’t want their wives, or their mistresses for that matter, to be fat as whales or have Y chromosomes.
Lesson: Don’t hire Ivy League marketing “experts”.
“It has been observed that VS sales are predominantly to husbands as gifts to their wives, for obvious reasons.”
That’s weird.
Observed by who?
VS is always crawling with women. Seeing a man in VS is like spotting a toad in a pond full of frogs
VS biggest customers are women..
In the retail shops… but not online.
They should still be boycotted. It’s just marketing, they are still woke. Weren’t they selling lingerie for kids a while back?
They also charge more per cup than Starbucks…
It is a good sign. But it is just a sign. Assuming that we still have a somewhat free market [which in part depends on if we do have elections in 2024, they are not stolen, and the Left does not win], I will believe that they might be serious in about a year and a half.
Subotai Bahadur
I don’t know the breakdown but I’ll bet most of the stuff bought at V’s was by men and not women. If that’s the case then we know why their sales were down. Men want to adorn their special someone and make her even more sexy and beautiful. To see fat chicks wearing what you wanted to buy for your lady is not a big promotion and certainly doesn’t create any sexy mental images.
Victoria’s Secret doesn’t sell lingerie.
They sell a fantasy. Their customers are predominantly men trying to buy that fantasy, or women trying to exploit it. And I’d argue since pretty much ALL of the liberal anti-beauty Karens are on the left, their actual customer base leans towards the conservative side.
Nobody (well, ALMOST nobody) has a fantasy of ugly fat women or men pretending to be women.
Victoria’s Secret doesn’t have any kind of actual quality to fall back on, they have a dozen competitors that produce functionally the same product.
The fantasy is gone, and it ain’t coming back.
Yeah, but that’s where Rachael Levine buys her lingerie,
Down vote for imagery of The Admiral in lingerie
His lingerie. He’s a cross dresser taking advantage of the nation’s mental illness.
Sorry, that was for Peabody, not MarkS. For MarkS – yes and now we’ll be on the hook for an 07 retirement check every month for the rest of his life. Not sure how that will work out since he was a state employee before being made Rear Admiral (Lower Half) by Quid Pro Joe.
I did not need that image, now I need eye bleach
+1, funny
No, that’s Bass Pro Shops.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWAKtYGJZSM
That’s HIS lingerie, peabody.
— Sherman
“The new weight-loss drugs could deal a much-needed blow to the “body positivity” inanity.”
Have we learned nothing from the last four years?
About 10 years ago I was at the Teterboro Airport re-calibrating so of the equipment. A 737 was there to pick up the Victoria Secret models for a shoot down in the Bahama’s. It was early where the models were in bath robes/pajamas/sweat suits without any makeup on. All were tall and thin where most were homely.
Makeup and airbrushing and photoshop are powerful tools.
Who is looking at their faces?
Once upon a time, VS sold “sweet sexy,” such as the cotton Canterbury nightgown. How I miss it.
Maybe the truth is no one, even the fat transvestites, can afford to waste money on overpriced lingerie in Biden’s America?
That is also a big factor.
Yeah, good point as lots of ‘luxury’ brands are experiencing sales declines. As the Student debt payments restart that’s supposed to be about $90 billion per month out of the household budget. Consumer debt defaults are rising along with rising delinquency in paying cars loan and mortgages. Gonna be rough for folks who lived on the high of conspicuous consumption especially if they get downsized in the many announced layoffs. 2024 gonna be tough for many people economically.
Well as DJT once said “everything woke turns to shit.”
We will see if there are enough Dude Wipes to clean up the mess.
I would suggest to Victoria Secret CEO, that when bringing people on whether be in a career or Board of Directors, I would ask for a search of all enrollments and/or donations to any affiliations or organizations to verify whether they subscribe to supporting practices of policies promoted by DEI groups. The down fall of larger companies than is V. S. as we have seen after the Bud Light fiasco.
BTW: Stock share at closing 2021 $52. & change YE
” ” ” ” 2023 $15. & change (current)
Being gay and masculine (yeah, we exist), I don’t give a shit about Victoria’s Secret. Same for gender-switchers and gender-neutrals, and surgery and Dylan Budlight. Beef, it’s what’s for dinner. Kill me now. LOL
What frightens me is that we are breeding wilfully stupid people.
No one of any previous generation would have taken what is such a blatantly stupid marketing approach and actually run with it.
You overestimate the power of advertising.
And henrybowman also underestimates the power of human stupidity
Gee, who the thought that people would rather look at really look good looking chicks compared to some fat ugly b****?
If looking at attractive women is wrong then I don’t want to be right
The new CEO Diversity chick they put in place that ok’d this nonsense thinks Americans and especially men want to see Lizzo in a thong. Let that sink in for the detached from reality mindset.
Imagine that, changing your marketing strategy after sales tank by $1 billion!!! I don’t know why they changed, nothing says sexy like an obese, transgender chick.
So are they going to sell the pill too? I my younger days when I shopped there for a girl friend all there stuff was like a cheaply made costume than quality stuff. When money gets tight economics kicks in. It might be a quality issue with value than branding. If the product is poor, oh well you can’t fix a bad product with lip stick or woke gimmick.
Not sure they’re back to their roots. Their Instagram is full of deformed women in wheelchairs, and nary a white woman in sight.
More good news, the former CEO of VS has contributed millions to Harvard. He very recently cut ties with this communist cesspool. Also, a good number of job offers by heavy hitter firms have been cancelled.