It's a commercial, but it's a show. It's a show, but it's actually a commercial. However you want to categorize it, one thing is for sure: the annual televised Victoria's Secret Fashion Show is about as big a branding success as can be hoped for.
An angelic display of commerce (un)dressed up as entertainment, this year's show airs tonight on CBS as a one-hour special, and it's bigger than ever. What once cost $120,000 to pull off now runs closer to $12 million to produce.
The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show has been around for far longer than most probably realize. First held in August 1995 in New York's Plaza Hotel, the show was originally a inner-industry PR thing. But then, along came the Internet.
In 1999, Victoria's Secret webcast the show during the Super Bowl, promoting it with a 30-second commercial during the game. Over 2 million pant-ing viewers logged on to check it out. That's still a large number, but in 1999 they were almost unheard of, server-crashing numbers. This despite the bad quality of the webcast, which one New York Times critic likened to "watching a striptease through a keyhole."
By 2001, the show landed a network TV partner and moved its broadcast to NBC. In 2010, the show switched to CBS. After ten years, the broadcast has never regained the 12.4 million who watched the show in 2001. Although, the program did climb back to 9 million viewers in 2010 from a low of 6.8 million in 2006. It has over 35,000 fans on Facebook.
To paraphrase Scarface: In this branding environment, you gotta get the models first. Then when you get the models, you get the audience. Then when you get the audience, you get the free on-air commercial time.
All of which is to say, the reason CBS falls over itself to televise (in prime time) the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show and charges Playtex for every of its 30-second spots is because the lingerie brand delivers stars like Adiana Lima, Erin Heatherton and Mrs. Tom Brady (aka, Gisele Bündchen).
With the high profile models come the high profile musical acts. Taking the event from "commercial" to "program" are musical acts Maroon 5 and Jay-Z and Kanye West, amongst others.
CBS of course is milking its partnership. As the show isn't live (it was taped earlier this month), the CBS website has an 83-photo behind the scenes gallery and videos and a whole lot more of the "Angels."
And that's fine with Victoria's Secret. CBS pays just $1 million to broadcast the show, which is a piddling amount. But, again, CBS is basically paying a brand to air a commercial in what is one of the most-watched pieces of branded entertainment in America today.
Indeed, the show broadcast was shifted from pre-Valentine's Day to pre-Christmas December, maximizing the brand's exposure for the holiday shopping season. With consumer spending up, the VS brand is looking to rebound as well after several years of retail drudgery. Victoria's parent Limited Brands reported Q3 profits above estimates, thanks in large part to the string sales at the lingerie brand.
Victoria's Secret took in over $5 billion in sales last year; how much of that was thanks to its $12 million extravaganza it hasn't revealed.
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