In this article I’m going to look at how Missguided made the most of the Love Island app, product placement in the show, and social media activity.

The Love Island App

The Love Island app brought us all the latest updates and Island news, had voting functionality, its own ecommerce function, and a style section where the brand showcased its partnership with Missguided.

That’s a lot of content. But how many people used the app and how engaged were they?

ITV’s half year report for the London Stock exchange, showed total Love Island app downloads of two million, with 10 million votes cast.

Research by Ogury found that the Love Island app had a higher percentage of active users (76.2%) than big brands like Uber, BBC News and ASOS. More surprisingly, the average users spent more time (8 mins, 9 seconds) on the app than Facebook, Twitter and even WhatsApp.

If my maths serves me correctly, that’s around 1.52 million active users. That’s a lot of users and a lot of potential Missguided customers.

Now, I wasn’t engaged enough last year to download the app, but in 2018 I was a changed man and I threw caution to the wind to see how Missguided and the Love Island teams are providing value to viewers and customers alike.

Having established the partnership with the hit ITV show, and providing the Islanders with clothes for the programme, the fast fashion retailer curated the Style section of the app, using scenes from the show to showcase its range of garments, ‘islandstyle’. Product cards are layered liberally underneath the show footage.

By presenting the clothes in this way in their own style tab, prioritising super-easy navigation, and giving users clear calls to action, Missguided’s placement on the app feels fairly frictionless.

Image via the Love Island app

The app was updated daily with the Islanders’ outfits from the night before, giving viewers plenty of reason to open the app again.

Product Placement

It can be difficult to discover entire outfits via live TV and then shop for them in real-time.

Publishers like The Daily Mail and the Sun have traditionally acted as affiliates and highlighted clothes to their readers that TV stars have worn recently, but this has never been immediate and is somewhat fragmented.

Missguided’s partnership with Love Island provided immediacy. The brand’s presence on every episode of Love Island gave fans the opportunity to shop what they saw through the Love Island app and the retailer’s Love Island Hub immediately after the show.

Similar real-time shopping was pioneered in luxury by Burberry who tried an innovative way of giving attendees of its show at London Fashion Week the chance to buy clothes from the runway, in-store and online straight away – “see now, buy now”.

Missguided show a similar level of innovation by showcasing its latest products in front of a highly engaged audience, with the tools to browse and make purchases in real-time.

Social support

Missguided did a great job of keeping Love Island at the forefront of their organic social.

With a style on social reminiscent of a friend that’s watching the show at the same time as you, even though you’re not in the same place (we can all relate).

A blend of sales messaging (Get the look)…

…and more comical posts like this…

Of course, Instagram, not Twitter, is Missguided’s main social channel – the retailer has an impressive 3 million followers.

The brand’s chief customer office, Kenyatte Nelson, recently spoke to Marketing Week about the “massive” levels of engagement and conversation the brand gets on social media and mobile, especially on Instagram.

A great way Missguided does this is through Instagram Stories.

It’s been well documented that Stories are the new feed, with Tech Crunch reporting in May that the feed would soon be surpassed by Stories in terms of popularity and the retailer is keen to make the most of this.

The example above is one of the ways Missguided was engaging Love Island fans, by using this year’s contestants to do Q&As about the show (as well as dish some insider islander gossip).

Missguided also gave its followers the opportunity to ‘GET THE LOOK’, much like in the app. They don’t seem to have implemented shoppable stories but nonetheless it’s another demonstration of the multi-channel approach the brand took.

What was most refreshing about Missguided’s social media activity is that it all felt natural and not forced.

Samira Mighty, one of the contestants, was used as a social influencer to sell some of Missguided’s products, for example.

Missguided’s multichannel approach to marketing means it served followers across various touchpoints and had the potential to pique the interest of people unfamiliar with the brand.

With social commerce on the rise – particularly within the 18-34 age group – rather than consumers making direct purchases through social platforms, they’re discovering products on social and often going on to complete the purchase elsewhere. Missguided’s Love Island hub, and the Love Island app provide ample opportunity to do so.

Mary Meeker’s 2018 Internet Trends report revealed that in a survey of 1,000 US consumers, 78% of 18-34-year-olds said they had discovered products on Facebook within the last three months that they were interested in buying. Fifty-nine percent had dones so via Instagram and Pinterest. Social is now about retail discovery.

Conclusion

So how successful was all of this effort?

A YouGov study to measure how successful Missguided has been in raising its profile showed that their Ad Awareness Score increased from 13% to 20% (among its target demographic, women aged 18-34) in just the first few weeks of programming – with the retailers Word of Mouth Exposure score and Buzz Score improving also. This is supported by Marketing Week, who reported Missguided has seen sales spike by around 40% when the show airs.

Whatever your opinion on the programme, the team behind Missguided’s marketing, social media and the Love Island mobile app have done a great job of keeping viewers engaged, and getting eyes on products, especially amongst its target demographic.