Missguided sales boom following Love Island partnership

Missguided says it has seen sales increase by around 40% during the evenings Love Island is on TV, with the trajectory “ratcheting up” as the weeks go on.

Speaking to Marketing Week, Missguided’s new chief customer officer, Kenyatte Nelson – who joined the business six weeks ago from Shop Direct – says aside from Instagram, nothing allows it to reach its core 16- to 29-year-old female audience with the same efficiency as Love Island.

“There’s nothing that exists outside of the Instagram platform that touches on a daily basis, for 10 weeks, our core customer – particularly those under the age of 25 – with the depth, frequency and level of engagement like Love Island,” Nelson explains.

“From a commercial standpoint it’s worked brilliantly. Even on the first day the show aired, our trade – particularly from around the hours of 7pm to midnight – saw an increase of around 40% week on week and its trajectory has been ratcheting up ever since, it hasn’t slowed.”

The women’s fashion retailer partnered with the ITV hit reality show this year in an effort to drive awareness of the brand – and to show that it is more than just party dresses and occasion wear.

Nelson says it was a “no-brainer” to use the platform as a “springboard to engage”, but that Missguided needed to figure out how to amplify and drive commercial value beyond the media buy.

This has involved sending “bucket loads” of Missguided clothes to the Island, with the outfits the contestants wear featuring on the Love Island app, alongside an option to purchase.

Nelson says the Missguided and ITV teams have a conversation every day about what’s happening on the show, who’s wearing what, and how they can leverage and use that to communicate with people in the right place and at the right time.

This is often on mobile and social media where Nelson says engagement is “massive”. This is especially true on Instagram, where the brand has more than 3 million followers.

As such, Nelson says it is unlikely Missguided would look to buy broad-sweeping media campaigns. Not because of cost – “TV for what you get is relatively cost-efficient”, he says – but simply because it’s not where the majority of its audience is.

“Our view is that the vast majority of money should be spent where [the customer] spends most of her time. Right now that’s on a mobile phone,” Nelson says.

“In TV, if you do a buy for 16-29 females they’re probably going to put you on X Factor. The reality is you’re only going to pay for that audience and get everyone else for free. The digital guys would call that wastage, but when you’re getting millions of eyeballs for free I’m not sure how much is wasted. That’s quite good.

“The issue for me is the specificity of the audience in the context of a really fragmented media environment and our desire to be as efficient as humanly possible.”