The high-street fashion landscape has become an increasingly competitive place for brands to strive in. With questions regarding consumer fatigue becoming more prominent in the Fashion, Luxury, and Beauty industry, high-street fashion brands need to leverage the right data and analyze the right insights to stay competitive. Let's dive deeper into how high-street fashion began and which brands perform successfully today.
In this article you’ll learn…
About High-Street Fashion
Referred to for buying food and necessities, high-street shopping began to also encompass clothes in the late 1800s due to urbanization. High-street fashion's meaning nowadays is more extensive. In terms of clothes, high-street stores produce apparel based on what's most sought-after at an affordable price. Observing the market, the popular high-street brands take inspiration from the latest tendencies.
The significant global market value of high-street fashion illustrates its popularity. According to the report Fast Fashion Global Market Opportunities and Strategies to 2030, the market reached a value of $68.6B in 2020. Additionally, the report forecasts that the sector will exceed the value of $163.4B over the next five years to get as far as $211.9B in 2030.
For high-street fashion brands to maintain their positions in the global fashion market, they need to be aware of their wins and losses and the performance of their concurrence. In addition, brands need to know what results their competitors attain to polish their strategies and tactics. That being the case, data analysis acquires those essential insights.
Therefore, we benchmarked the performance of 10 notable brands in the high-street fashion sector. Thanks to our proprietary algorithm, Media Impact Value™ (MIV®), we could measure and benchmark the impact of all media placements and mentions across different Voices during a selected period.
What are the 10 High-Street Fashion Brands we Selected?
For this competitive benchmarking report, we analyzed the MIV® data in September 2022, for the following 10 high-street fashion brands:
- Zara
- Uniqlo
- Mango
- COS
- Urban Outfitters
- & Other Stories
- J. Crew
- Monki
- Aritzia
- Club Monaco
The infographic below displays the overall rankings of the selected high-street fashion brands by Media Impact Value™ in September 2022. It also displays the number of placements each of the ten brands had within the time frame. These placements factor in social media posts, articles pertaining to specific search queries (e.g. the brand, products, or even events). Additionally, it takes into account interactions consumers made with the posts such as tags and comments.
The second bar chart below demonstrates the breakdown of the Voice Mix Benchmark.
The chart above represents the Voice Mix metric which provides the percentage of each of the five Voices: Media, Influencers, Celebrities, Partners, and Owned Media. These Voices are the source, such as people or texts, which speak about the brand. Moreover, the percentage in the benchmark constitutes the total MIV® that each Voice generated for the brands.
Crucial data points to take away from this chart would be the popularity of Media and Influencers. On the one hand, almost every brand uses Media as the center of their Voice strategy, especially Zara, & Other Stories, and Mango. On the other hand, COS and Aritzia have leveraged the Influencers' Voice — dominating over Media. Singularly, Uniqlo and Urban Outfitters have also tapped a lot into their Owned Media Voice.
These insights are intriguing, but what placements in each Voice found themselves most engaging to the consumer audience? What dominating trends and strategies can you apply to your brand? Why are Zara, Uniqlo, Mango, COS, and Urban Outfitters at the forefront of the rankings in terms of MIV®?
Read on to learn more about the benchmarking and analysis of these ten high-street fashion brands.
High-Street Fashion Brands Ranking
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Zara
In terms of ranking, Zara is at the forefront. With $163M in Media Impact Value™ just in September 2022 — Zara is one of the world's largest international high-street fashion brands.
The Media Voice, in terms of Zara's strategy, accounts for $109M MIV® of the overall generated Media Impact Value™. That's 67% of the total MIV® the brand accumulated. This percentage by no means undermines the $41.8M MIV® that the Influencers Voice garnered for Zara. If anything, those two Voices are the constants of the brand's Online and Social Media channel coverage.
Multiple Media Voices have presented a lot of successful returns for Zara, such as Mujer Hoy with $5.3M in MIV® and ELLE with $1.7M in MIV® in Spain, TRILL with $3.6M in MIV® in Japan, or even Who What Wear with $3.0M in MIV® in the US. However, Zara's worldwide Owned Media strategy campaigns are still very notable. The brand's Owned Media Voice garnered $6.16M in MIV®. Recently, the brand released a promotional video for its collection with Studio Nicholson. The footage made $150K in MIV® for Zara.
As can be noted from the promotional video's success, YouTube is the most leveraged Channel. Globally, that Channel generated $52.6M in MIV® across 1.1K placements for Zara. Coming in second, the Online Channel accumulated $47.5M across 15.6K placements. Lastly, Instagram also gathered a lot of MIV® with $38.7M across 9.3K placements.
UNIQLO
UNIQLO’s prominent performance comes in close second after Zara. In September 2022, the brand garnered $61.1M in MIV® across 18,546 placements. Though its reach is all-encompassing, the demographic it reaches is most prominent in the APAC region. For example, $23.2M in MIV® came from Japan, and $18.0M in MIV® came from Mainland China.
Looking at the Voice Mix, the brand's three essential Voices are Media, Owned Media, and Influencers — Celebrities and Partners' Voice are not very prominent. Remarkably, the brand spreads its weight across multiple Channels. The most successful are Online, with $14.4M in MIV®; Weibo, with $11.6M in MIV®; Instagram, with $8.9M in MIV®; and Youtube, with $8.3M in MIV®.
One valuable strategy to succeed in Asia when it comes to marketing is to leverage influential Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs). Koga Genji, known better as simply Genji, is one of the top fashion YouTubers in Japan. As a KOL, UNIQLO's partnership with him has demonstrated a very successful marketing strategy, with Genji accumulating up to $1.47M in MIV® on Youtube for the brand in September 2022. One of his top placements can be seen below.
High-Street Fashion Market Asia
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Mango
Following UNIQLO, Spanish-brand Mango is another successful player in high-street fashion. In September 2022, the brand garnered $35.3M in MIV® across 11,824 placements.
Similarly to Zara, the Media Voice attributes the most to Mango's significant Media Impact Value™, followed by the Influencer Voice. The Media Voice, on its own, is essential, as it generated $26.7M in MIV® for the brand, while the Influencers Voice generated $5.1M. Even in terms of Channel split, the Online Channel significantly tips the scale in contrast to other Channels.
The success of the Media Voices for Mango is in their sheer numbers, with 9,710 placements in contrast to 1,375 placements for Influencers and 28 placements for Celebrities. It's predominant to take this into account when analysing data. Though Celebrities has the lowest amount of placements and has only generated $374K in MIV®, the top placement for Mango is Antoine Griezmann's reel on Instagram with $184K in MIV®. This emphasizes Celebrities' and Influencers' influence in the West just as much as KOLs' in the east.
COS
Let's jump over to the following remarkable brand in this ranking: COS. This London-based brand has grown tremendously since 2007, and its data emphasize that successful evolution. Across only 3,199 placements, COS generated $13.6M in MIV® overall in September 2022. That's a 34% increase in comparison to August 2022.
COS singularly demonstrates higher leverage of the Influencer Voice compared to all the brands in this ranking, with 54% and $7.4M in MIV®. Its coverage across Influencer channels, most notably Léna Mahfouf and Taek (clorlk), gives COS just as much of a significant presence in the West as in the East. Across six posts on Instagram, Taek generated $631K in MIV® for COS, whereas Léna Mahfouf accumulated $557K in MIV® thanks to her two Instagram placements.
Leveraging the right Voices also takes into account the exposure of your brand. Influencers have such an extensive reach of consumers, which can be worthwhile for your brand to tap into. Not only does it show predominant evidence in China through the popularity of KOLs, but it also proves true in Europe and the US.
Urban Outfitters
Last but not least: Urban Outfitters. The American brand is known for its signature look: brick walls, original designs and rustic features. In September 2022, the brand gathered $12.7M in Media Impact Value™ across 2,685 placements, mainly targeting the US market.
Looking at the Voice mix, Urban Outfitters taps mostly into three. Not surprisingly — Media has accumulated $7.0M in MIV® through 2,018 placements. Closely following, there's Owned Media with $4.1M in MIV® and the Influencers' Voice with $1.3M in MIV®. The data becomes more revealing in the Channel split, with the two main Channels being Online and Instagram.
The brand's Owned Media campaigns successfully portray the brand in its rightful themes and colors. In the Autumn months, when the season matches the colored tones of the brand, Urban Outfitters plays that to its advantage. It follows trends, popular Influencers, and shows of the moment. For example, the brand's top post on Instagram for September 2022 garnered $83.0K in MIV® by promoting a look often displayed in the popular show Gilmore Girls.
How to Benchmark Your High-Street Fashion Brand
This data insight aims to help you gain more awareness about the successful marketing strategies and tactics some of the best high-street fashion brands use to optimize their brand performance.
If you want to learn more about your brand's position and how it compares to your competitors, you need a deeper dive into your brand's performance analytics. This tailored data will help you measure your campaigns' effectiveness by analyzing each Voice and Channel's performance and benchmark your key results against your competitors.
If this insight has sparked your interest, scroll to find out more below.
Benchmark Your High-Street Fashion Brand
Uncover areas to boost your brand performance and increase your industry ranking.
By Charlotte Gillet. Business Marketing Coordinator
Based in London, Charlotte is a Marketing Coordinator at Launchmetrics. Passionate about creating inspiring content, she recently graduated from UCL with a MA in Publishing. Invested in learning more about the businesses of Fashion, Luxury, and Beauty worldwide; she is excited to explore the ever-changing landscape of these industries.