Instagram Launched A New Policy, The Exposure Of Sexy Underwear Brands Dropped Sharply

According to the fashion business newsletter, since April, Instagram has launched a new policy, which has reduced the exposure of inappropriate content such as pictures that are considered too sexy on the user ’s Explore tab, which is the recommendation page. This means that potential followers are less likely to access these accounts. Explore tab is a page where Instagram recommends the most popular content in accounts that have not been followed by users based on each user's attention and likes.

The implementation of this policy directly led to a significant reduction in the exposure of underwear and swimwear brand posts, and some small brands that rely on social media to increase brand awareness have been severely affected. British underwear brand Playful Promises had a user engagement of 0.84% on Instagram, but within two weeks after the new policy was released, its user engagement dropped sharply to 0.4%.

Eva Pascoe, director of e-commerce at Bluebella, a British high-end lingerie brand, emphasized that the new policy formulated by Instagram is not only not conducive to the promotion of the brand, but also actually hurts Instagram itself, reducing Instagram's advertising revenue, and the brand will turn to Amazon or other platforms advertising.

Emma Parker, founder and CEO of British underwear and swimwear brand Every Day, said that social media is the main channel for brands to communicate with consumers, and even the followers of their accounts have been unable to see their posted posts in the past two months. Article, the interaction rate is halved. "Sports Illustrated" model Tara Lynn, who has more than 600,000 followers, also said that since April, the number of likes on its posts has dropped by 50%.

However, Instagram does not publish specific criteria for determining whether the post is inappropriate. Some analysts estimate that Instagram may detect the nakedness of the skin through an algorithm, and post photos exceeding a certain percentage will be deleted from the recommendation page.

Some people doubt that the algorithm is unfair to underwear brands that spend a lot of advertising costs.

Underwear blogger The Lingerie Addict and Cora Harrington, founder and editor-in-chief of the Instagram account of the same name, pointed out that although she has followed a lot of underwear brands, she has not seen more similar brands on her recommendation page since the new policy was implemented. These ads from Victoria Secret and ThirdLove are invested in larger brands. She emphasized that although the photos of ThirdLove's posts are indeed relatively unexposed, the posts similar to other brands she has seen have not been blocked. Emma Parker also said that even the brand's bikini advertising posts were considered unsuitable for recommendation by Instagram.

As of now, both ThirdLove and Victoria Secret have refused to respond to questions about advertising investment. Wei Mi currently has 66.2 million followers on Instagram. As a startup that can compete with Wei Mi, ThirdLove has only 272,000 followers on Instagram, but in November last year, the company published a full page in the New York Times ad. It is reported that "New York Times" advertising costs usually reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Some analysts pointed out that in the process of Instagram's gradual transformation from a platform where users are looking for fashion inspiration to a social e-commerce, for retailers, brands and KOLs, the implementation of the new policy will not only cause a decline in user participation and lose Instagram, a powerful promotion and sales channel, has cut their profits.

Instagram went live in October 2010, and was acquired by Facebook for $ 1 billion in 2012. Its user number reached 100 million for the first time in February 2013, and the number of users basically stabilized at 100 million every 9 months. As a popular mobile terminal platform, users can share ideas and tell stories with pictures. In 2017, brand accounts on the platform quadrupled in two years, accounting for soaring from 32% to 71%. By 2018, the monthly number of Instagram users reached 1 billion.

According to a report released by market research agency L2 in 2018, 84% of apparel brands choose to cooperate with KOL on Instagram, while the proportion of beauty brands and KOL is 83%, 80% of Gen Z and 74% of millennium One generation said it would make a purchase decision based on what they saw on Instagram.

In March of this year, Instagram tried to launch payment functions for more than 20 brands such as Michael Kors, Burberry, Zara, and H & M. Consumers will click on the product to enter the purchase page in the post of the above brand. The first time users only need to fill in the bound bank card or credit card. However, although Playful Promises has signed with Instagram, it has not been approved to use this feature.

In order to enhance the transparency, credibility and authenticity of the emerging influencer marketing “Instagram Marketing”, Instagram upgrades the functions and tools on its platform, and brands can promote and locate the blog posts of sponsored bloggers, even if they follow the blog The main users can also see this information, so that the brand can get first-hand information about the promotion effect. Instagram estimates that influencer marketing in 2019 will generate $ 1.7 billion in revenue.

In April this year, Vishal Shah, who was responsible for Instagram's commercial products, was promoted to product owner and launched an internal shopping function on Instagram. Currently, luxury fashion brands such as ASOS, H & M, Burberry, and Balmain have joined.

On May 9th, Instagram opened an official shopping account shop, which mainly released a variety of fashion items selected by its team, covering ready-to-wear, accessories and beauty, etc., and attached a purchase link. Vishal Shah believes that e-commerce has the potential to become another major revenue pillar of Instagram after advertising. Instagram fashion director Eva Chen said that 80% of brands currently have partnerships with KOL, and the launch of this new feature is just the first step in Instagram's exploration of the shopping business.

The emergence of social media such as Instagram has changed the fashion industry's long tradition of magazine-based advertising. AMM's annual report stated that the magazine advertising revenue of the 50 largest advertisers in 2017 fell from US $ 6.5 billion in 2016 to US $ 6.1 billion, which means that the magazine industry lost at least US $ 400 million in revenue in 2017. There are also reports that the market share of luxury online sales will double to 12% in 2020 and triple to 18% in 2025. E-commerce will become the world's third largest luxury market after China and the United States.

IMG Fashion Digital Director Dan Porter said that consumers no longer have to wait for fashion editors or buyers to tell them what to buy each season. Through social media, consumers can choose the live fashion show they want to watch. Every consumer You can instantly see the desired product online, and you can even place an order immediately.

Obviously, the development trend of the fashion industry and the right to speak are gradually being handed over to consumers, and this also means that social media has become the best way for brands and consumers to communicate and understand each other.

Keywords: Instagram underwear brand