The climax of the famous speech by Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep) in the 2006 fim, The Devil Wears Prada, is that the sweater Anne Hathaway's character is wearing has slowly trickled down over the years from high-end runway to "some tragic Casual Corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin." The implication here is also that the quality and design has declined in those iterations. But these days, Miranda Priestly's premise would be totally irrelevant.
Enter Fast Fashion. Fast Fashion includes brands like H&M and Zara, which bring runway looks to affordable retail stores quickly: no need to wait for trickle down as magazines select the best looks and publish them in glossies, or as retailers measure customer response. Now runway looks are live-streamed or Snapped or Instagrammed or live-tweeted by bloggers and influencers, and retail interpretations of those looks are available in your local Forever 21 within mere weeks.
The success of these fast fashion retailers depends in large part on their social media success: Are bloggers wearing your clothes in posts? Are digital influencers bringing in customers through in-store events? Are those customers sharing their own photos of your designs on social?
Thanks to Sprinklr's new Benchmarking tool, which gives brands access to competitive analytics and insights, which are arguably the most crucial insights in any brand trying to scale, we can now look at the state of fast fashion on social. Sprinklr compared the top four fast fashion retailers-H&M, Zara, Topshop, and Forever 21-in terms of their social following, engagement, and brand perception.
A few takeaways from the infographic below:
-Instagram is the top platform for all four brands, though Facebook is far from dead for Zara. Twitter isn't a major player for any of these brands.
-Topshop has the lowest amount of followers, but the highest engagement ratio and the best customer experience score. Perhaps this is part of a scarcity model, as Topshop's stores in the U.S are few and far between, or that their price point is a bit higher and designs a little more cutting edge. In any case, their small but active audience is working for them.
-Brand perception scores for Zara, H&M, and Forever 21 are fairly equal despite their varied price points and similar product quality scores, leading me to believe that fast fashion is simply popular in the social sphere. It makes sense that consumers of fast digital would be naturally drawn to fast fashion.
Also: check out the Sprinkler Benchmarking tool here if you think it could be useful for seeing where your business falls among the competition.