Instagram Launch Policy, Sexy Underwear Brand Exposure Sharply Reduced

No one imagined that the emergence of social media such as Instagram, Facebook and micro-blog would one day overturn the traditional fashion industry. Instagram, which has launched its social media platform for nearly ten years, seems to have greater ambitions to further control its influence in the fashion industry and consumption.

According to the fashion business express, since April, Instagram has launched a new policy. It has reduced the exposure of inappropriate content such as too sexy pictures on the user's Explore tab recommendation page. This means reducing the probability that potential stakeholders will be exposed to these accounts. Explore tab is Instagram based on each user's attention and content, recommends to users the most popular content page in their unpaid account.

The implementation of the policy has led to a significant reduction in the exposure rate of underwear and swimwear brand stickers. Some small brands that rely on social media to enhance brand awareness have been seriously affected. British underwear brand Playful Promises had a 0.84% user participation on Instagram, but its user participation dropped sharply to 0.4% in the two week after the new policy was released.

Eva Pascoe, director of e-commerce at Bluebella, a high-end underwear brand in the United Kingdom, emphasizes that the new policy formulated by Instagram is not only bad for brand promotion, but also has hurt the Instagram itself, reduced the advertising revenue of Instagram, and the brand will turn to Amazon or other platforms to advertise.

Emma Parker, founder and chief executive officer of Each Day, a lingerie and swimsuit brand in Britain, says social media is the main channel for brands to communicate with consumers. Even in the past two months, even the attention of their accounts has not been able to see the stickers posted by them, and the interaction rate has been halved. Tara Lynn, a sports illustrated model with about 600000 fans, also said that since April, the number of Posts posted has dropped by 50%.

However, Instagram did not publish specific criteria for judging whether the article was inappropriate. In terms of analysis and estimation, Instagram may detect the degree of skin exposure by means of algorithm, and over a certain percentage of postage photos will be deleted from the recommended page.

It is questioned that the algorithm is unfair to underwear brands that spend a lot of advertising costs.

The Lingerie Addict, the founder and chief editor of Cora Instagram, said that despite her concern about many lingerie brands, she has never seen more similar brands in her recommended pages since the new policy has been implemented, but still has a larger brand of advertising investment from ThirdLove and ThirdLove. She emphasized that although ThirdLove's postage photos were not exposed too much, the similar brands of other brands she had seen were not shielded. Emma Parker also said that even the brand's Bikini ad stickers were considered inappropriate by Instagram.

So far, ThirdLove and the company have refused to respond to the issue of advertising investment. At present, there are 66 million 200 thousand fans on Instagram, and ThirdLove is a start-up company that can compete with Wei. Although there are only 272 thousand fans on Instagram, in November last year, the company published a full page advertisement in the New York Times. It is reported that the advertising cost of New York Times usually reaches hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Some analysts pointed out that in the process that Instagram has gradually spanformed from user searching platform for fashion inspiration to social business, for retailers, brands and KOL, the implementation of the new policy will not only cause the decline of user participation, but also lose the Instagram's strong promotion and sales channels, and even reduce their profits.

Instagram was launched in October 2010, and it was bought by Facebook for $1 billion in 2012. Its user volume for the first time reached 100 million in February 2013. The number of users was basically stable and increased by 100 million in every 9 months. As a popular mobile terminal platform, users can share creativity and tell stories with pictures. In 2017, the number of brand accounts on the platform doubled two times in two years, accounting for 71% from 32% to 71%. By 2018, the number of Instagram users reached 1 billion per month.

According to a report released by L2, a market research firm, in 2018, 84% of the clothing brands chose to cooperate with KOL on Instagram, while the proportion of cosmetic brands to KOL was 83%, 80% of the Z generation and 74% of the millennials said they would make purchase decisions based on what they saw in Instagram.

In March this year, Instagram launched a trial payment function for more than 20 brands such as Michael Kors, Burberry, Zara and H&M. When consumers click the product in the above brand's entry, they will click on the button purchased through Instagram, and the first user will only need to complete the binding bank card or credit card. However, Playful Promises has not been authorized to use this function even though it has signed a contract with Instagram.

To enhance the spanparency, credibility and authenticity of the new influence marketing "Instagram Marketing", Instagram can upgrade its functions and tools on the platform. The brand can promote and locate the posters of the sponsored bloggers. Even those who are concerned about the bloggers can see this information, so that the brand can get first-hand information about the promotion effect. Instagram estimates that the 2019 impact marketing will generate 1 billion 700 million dollars in revenue.

In April of this year, Vishal Shah, who was in charge of Instagram commercial products, was promoted to be the product leader and launched the internal shopping function in Instagram. At present, there are luxury fashion brands such as ASOS, H&M, Burberry and Balmain.

In May 9th, Instagram also opened an official shopping account shop, which mainly published various fashion items selected by its team, including clothing, accessories and beauty makeup, and attached a purchase link. Vishal Shah believes that the electricity supplier has the potential to become another major pillar of Instagram after advertising. Instagram fashion director Eva Chen said that 80% of the brands reached a partnership with KOL. The launch of the new feature is only the first step in Instagram's exploratory shopping business.

The emergence of social media such as Instagram has changed the long tradition of magazine based advertising in the fashion industry. AMM's annual report said that magazine advertising revenue of the 50 largest advertisers in 2017 dropped from $6 billion 500 million in 2016 to $6 billion 100 million, which meant that the magazine industry lost at least 400 million dollars in 2017. There are also reports that luxury online sales will double to 12% in 2020, and three times to 18% in 2025. E-commerce will become the third largest luxury market in the world after China and the United States.

Dan Porter, IMG fashion digital director, said consumers no longer need to wait for fashion editors or buyers to tell them what to buy every season. Through social media consumers can choose the live fashion show that they want to watch. Every consumer can instantly see the desired items on the Internet, or even order immediately.

Obviously, the development trend and discourse power of the fashion industry are gradually being handed over to consumers, which means that social media has become the best way to communicate and understand each other between brands and consumers. Author: Yohanna