It’s no secret that Victoria’s Secret’s fashion show has been under revision over the past few years. The brand took a break from the show from 2019 - 2022, returning with its “Victoria's Secret World Tour” on Amazon Prime in 2023.
Fast forward to now (2024), and the brand has returned to its original fashion show formula. Hosted in New York, streamed on Victoria’s Secret’s YouTube channel and Amazon Prime, and star studded with the usual winged models, alongside some new, more diverse faces.
There were certainly some notable changes to the show, like the inclusion of more diverse models like Devyn Garcia, Alex Consani, Ashley Graham, Paloma Elsesser, Valentina Sampaio, and more. But Victoria’s Secret also did some very different things when it came to the promotion and guest list of the show (spoiler: they leaned in hard to an influencer strategy).
Below we analyze the data behind Victoria’s Secret’s October fashion show, and provide some insights on why its influencer strategy played such a big role.
The Data Behind Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
First, let’s start with a look at some data. It’s important to start here so we can get a sense of what Victoria’s Secret was able to achieve, before we start diving into their influencer strategy.
As a reminder, Traackr is an influencer marketing platform that enables some of the biggest, and most innovative brands to run their influencer marketing programs. One of Traackr’s features is a targeted social listening tool that helps brands stay on top of which influencers are talking about them and what’s trending. This feature (and the smarts of our influencer marketing consultant teams) is how we’ve come up with this data and analysis.
Now, back to Victoria’s Secret. This year, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show took place on October 15, 2024. Leading up to the show, during the show, and immediately after the show, the brand saw a lift in mentions, engagements, and video views.
Content Mentioning Victoria’s Secret, Oct 13 - Oct 16, 2024
- 2,096 activated influencers
- 5,542 mentions
- 66M engagements
- 414M video views
The brand certainly saw a lift in awareness and engagement on social media during the fashion show week. This in itself isn’t all that surprising — it’s a big campaign, so of course there will be some online buzz.
However it gets more interesting when we compare this data with previous months and years.
Month-Over-Month Comparison, Sept 13 - Sep 16 vs Oct 13 - Oct 16
- +2811% activated influencers
- +5229% mentions
- +57873% engagements
- +23717% video views
When comparing the week of the fashion show with a similar week in the month prior, we can see that Victoria’s Secret saw a big increase in buzz on social media amongst influencers and their audiences. Again, it makes sense. It’s a big campaign that is designed to spike awareness.
However, when we look at the data from the 2023 fashion show, it’s clear that the brand saw more lift this year on social media. The data below compares social chatter seen before, during, and after the 2023 show (show release date was Sept 26, 2023) to the social chatter seen before, during and after the 2024 show. Comparatively, this year’s show blew the 2023 show out of the water in terms of social buzz.
Year-Over-Year Comparison, Sept 24 - Sep 27 2023 vs Oct 13 - Oct 16, 2024
- +1550% activated influencers
- +2603% mentions
- +4869% engagements
- +3288% video views
So what did Victoria’s Secret do differently in its promotion, guest list invites, and influencer strategy this year?
The Influencer Strategy Behind Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show
To spark awareness and excitement for the 2024 fashion show, Victoria’s Secret turned to Gen-Z influencers. The brand’s influencer strategy involved a diverse range of beauty, fashion, and lifestyle influencers, spanning many regions. These influencers flew out to NYC to join the Victoria's Secret show as attendees.
Some of the stars of the Victoria’s Secret influencer strategy? There were many, but here are some who stood out as making significant contributions when looking at their activity and metrics:
- UK beauty influencer Olivia Yang, who posted about the event 20 times driving 3.6M engagements. This was more than most of the Victoria’s Secret Angels themselves, with only BLACKPINK’s Lisa and Gigi Hadid driving more engagements on content mentioning the event.
- UK influencer and founder of popular fashion blog INTHEFROW, Victoria MaGrath, who was also invited by Victoria’s Secret to the show. She garnered significant awareness for the event across social, earning 2.7M engagements across 34 posts.
- Professional athletes Angel Reese and Toni Breidinger
- Fashion and lifestyle influencers Remi Bader and Cyrus Veyssi
- Creator-turned-founders Chriselle Lim and Patrick Ta
- Gen-Z beauty and lifestyle influencers Monet McMicahel, Maddie Bailey, and Kate Bartlett
- Non-US influencers Priscilla Escoto and Tammy Para from Mexico, Luana Barron Yabar from Peru, and Martaa Diiaz De Grefg from Spain
In case you didn’t catch on yet — a clear tenet of Victoria’s Secret’s influencer strategy for the 2024 fashion show was diversity. The brand invited creators from different walks of life, and different industries/categories, and it worked. Through this influencer strategy, Victoria’s Secret managed to drive significantly more awareness to its fashion show and brand this year (remember the data shows year-over-year growth in key metrics in the thousands).
A prediction for next year? Victoria’s Secret will double down on this type of influencer strategy. Maybe we’ll even see some influencers on the runway. 👀