Victoria’s Secret Misses the Mark by Pursuing Inclusivity as a Tactic, Not a Culture

The retailer finally advertises to us mere mortals, but the result is bland and performative

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During a week of anxiety for many women in the United States, Victoria’s Secret launched its latest campaign devoid of angels, glamour and wings. Instead, it featured us, mere mortals, with a promise of advocacy and commitment for us “real” women to be the ones defining what beauty is.

Once aspirational and the standard for unattainable beauty, the brand is stripped to reveal the real women who are now everything to them. The endless parade of short sentence platitudes overlaying smiling personifications of inclusivity misses the mark. Instead, it reads as a performative recipe.

“We’ve changed.” Check.
“We see you.” Check.
“Real.” Quadruple check.
Images of women of different sizes, ages, races and abilities. Check.

It has all the right ingredients. All the right messaging that has worked for other brands in the past. What’s so different now?

It’s performative. It’s going through all the carefully determined hoops to foster an unearned sense of trust. We know better, as consumers who have grown up seeing our existence erased from billboards, emails, runways and campaigns adorned with the product we should be buying.

Sales associates follow us throughout the store to ensure we purchase as much as possible for the joy of being allowed to enter. Wearing their product is as close as we get to this beauty standard. Us mortals have to purchase our wings, one bra at a time.

This isn’t the first time they have tried to weigh into inclusivity and have been shown up by brands who don’t use inclusivity as just a tactic.

Why is this a miss? There are a few reasons.

The timing

Given the SCOTUS ruling a few days earlier and over four years since the CEO of ThirdLove wrote an open letter to Victoria’s Secret about its lack of inclusivity and regard for non-sized two women, it makes you wonder. Who is paying attention?

How can you claim to advocate for women when it takes so long to take action? And that action still doesn’t speak to your past and the wrongs you have done.

Timing for campaigns is crucial, especially in an ever-changing 24-hour news cycle, when what is acceptable one day misses the mark the next.

Not addressing its ‘secrets’

In 2019, a petition circulated amongst the modeling world, with many condemning the misogyny and sexual harassment they had witnessed or were victim of while modeling for Victoria’s Secret. They urged leaders to embrace a new code of conduct.

And there are other skeletons too, especially around the connection between billionaire owner Leslie Wexner and Jeffrey Epstein.

All of this is a testament to the harm the brand has caused, mainly behind closed doors.

Either by enabling or allowing predatory behavior, setting the standard for beauty for women of all ages and monetizing that aspirational fantasy is at the heart of a brand that must address the harm they have done to multiple generations.

We’ve seen this before

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty was launched in 2004. I’m going to say that again: 2004. Aerie launched its brand in 2014 with a mission around body positivity and showing models who looked like their customers. It’s 2022, and this ad by Victoria’s Secret looks like a poor attempt to copy the homework of someone who has already aced the assignment.

It doesn’t look like the brand. It seems like pandering. Copying and pasting for the masses.

It felt like the glamorous party had ended, and we were left to be invited once all the fun had ended.

The inclusion of their past runway shows and the glitz and glamour associated with them are stripped to reveal their new purpose. It seems that if Victoria’s Secret is to be inclusive, it can no longer be aspirational. This new target group of women couldn’t possibly want to be on the runway, want to be highlighted and glammed up, or, dare I say it, be sexy.

It seems to never occur to Victoria’s Secret that including larger sizes and more diverse models didn’t have to disrupt the brand’s dream. It felt like the glamorous party had ended, and we were left to be invited once all the fun had ended.

Now that the cool people have left, you can come in. Imagine being stuck behind a VIP rope and being charged for the opportunity to wait for your turn that’s never coming.

You need more than a bandage

Most rebrands are expensive Band-Aids. They are trying to create a campaign that invigorates brand awareness and positive sentiment. Unfortunately, no campaign can compensate for years of scandals and shunning customers.

Without doing the heavy lifting of acknowledging their past and the impact they played in many lives, the campaign is simply that: a slapped-on bandage. It doesn’t have a sense of brand permanence. It’s another tactic in a playbook instead of a cornerstone of the brand’s new culture.

When your target audience is a population that feels under attack, promising them advocacy feels hollow when they’ve needed that advocacy and brand acknowledgment for decades. It will take more than this to regain trust and reestablish what good the brand could do. It will need to be in all of its emails, future campaigns, product roadmap and how it treats customers online and in stores.

Victoria’s Secret, you have shown us you can talk the talk, but we want to see you walk the walk. A good first start is making all your videos with captions in the future. That’s one big step to ensure that even your campaign distribution is truly inclusive.

If you truly want to be inclusive, do it. We’ll be watching and hoping you make good on your word.