Millennials to Fashion Brands; Sex Doesn't Sell

What if I told you the abs on the bags that held your Abercrombie and Hollister purchases in middle and high school didn't belong to the arms or faces on that exact same bag? What I mean by this, is that these companies would crop their favorite parts of each model and paste it all together onto one, perfect body. The same goes for a lot of other brands, and then come the touch ups and so on. 

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, and the awesomely aggressive push for gender equality, the term "sex sells" is starting to become a little outdated among the target market of most fashion brands who, until now, have relied on painting the perfect, unattainable picture of beauty for women and men. 

And some of the big power players in the industry have had to learn their lesson the hard way. For example, Jimmy Choo put out a promotional video of supermodel Cara Delevingne in a little red dress strutting around NYC, eating a hot dog, catching the attention of solely men which was commented on as "sexist and tone-deaf". This might seem a little extreme at first, but the model herself is known for openly supporting sexual fluidity and veganism, so not only does the video seem hyper sexualized, but its also pretty hypocritical. Same thing happened with Victoria's Secret, famously known for their sex kitten vibe. In the midst of the Harvey Weinstein scandals, they are now viewed as, "more hopelessly out of date than ever." Banana Republic got some fire too for calling their pants "slimming" and Victoria Beckham's line caught some negative attention for featuring a model that looked super, let's say, underfed. The list goes on...

So in response to this, Alexander Wang, took the women out of his newest campaign and tried to just embody their spirit. That's right, just the clothes are pictured in the campaign. CVS also jumped on the bandwagon announcing that starting January they are banning excessive retouching and other altering of beauty images to "promote female empowerment and combat the unhealthy pursuit of physical perfection." ""Nobody wants to look at a giant zit on a woman’s face in an ad, but when the image is overly retouched to the point of human unachievability, that’s when it becomes a problem." In 2016 Ms. Badger said her agency wouldn’t create ads that use women as props or objectify them.""

From a marketing standpoint, its interesting because none of the brands I mentioned above that got in trouble commented or took action to remove their campaigns. Of course they didn't continue to push them out to the public, but they just let the attention quietly dissipate and I'm assuming are beginning to re-strategize. As for the people speaking out on this open platform of social justice, they are getting a lot more attention from the people they are trying to impress which are millennials and Generation Z. Besides the just morality behind this movement, utilizing social movements for branding is genius. CVS who's known for its convenience in staple items, can now be seen as far more progressive than direct competitor Walgreens - a very attractive quality. Or Alexander Wang, who had the potential of being viewed as a direct culprit in the fashion industry, is now seen as conscientious by promoting individualization - talk about a pioneer in re-branding. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-fashion-and-beauty-ads-less-skin-and-more-empowerment-1520258949