How Victoria's Secret lets its Fashion Show build the audience and keeps its ads for sales and scent

Category introduction

American intimates is a category with one household name and two kinds of challenger. Victoria's Secret is the incumbent: its parent reported net sales of $6.553 billion for fiscal 2025, up 5%. Savage X Fenty, founded by Rihanna in 2018, competes with inclusive sizing, a membership model and steady discounting. Aerie, American Eagle's intimates brand, competes with ordinary-looking women and a soft, everyday tone.

All three sell bras and underwear. The real contest is who a woman thinks of first, and that is built outside the ad library.

Brand introduction

Victoria's Secret & Co. sells lingerie, sleepwear, beauty and fragrance under two labels, Victoria's Secret and Pink, and runs about 1,420 stores. Hillary Super is its chief executive. The 2025 Fashion Show was streamed more than 61 million times, according to Glossy, which also reported nearly 9 million new social followers and 15% more new customers afterwards. The 2026 show is on 18 October at Sony Pictures Studios, free on YouTube.

Summary

Victoria's Secret treats its audience and its advertising as two jobs. The audience is built by events and models posted on its own channels. The ads are for selling what is on the shelf this season. That is why a brand with 76.8 million followers can run fewer ads than a brand with a fraction of them.

The ad library itself reads like a calendar: a fall sale, new fragrance, a $11 body-care deal, a Halloween shop. It is useful for short-term sales and has little brand storytelling. The brand story sits on the grid.

Problem statement and objective

This is our reading of the ads, not a brief the brand has published. The problem looks like this. The brand's audience is huge, but it looks to be known for an older idea of glamour, and a younger shopper has more choices. Each season it still has to move product.

The objective that follows: renew the brand's meaning through events and people, and use paid ads to turn that attention into purchases of high-margin extras such as fragrance and body care.

Execution: what the ads actually do

We read 91 of Victoria's Secret's 104 live ads on 30 September 2026 and decoded 156 creatives. This is most of the library, not all of it.

A library that reads as a sales calendar

81 of the 91 ads started in September, 8 in August and 2 in July. Live ads skew recent, but this is clearly a fall push. We searched the ad words for themes. The counts overlap, because one ad can use several.

Source: Meta Ad Library, United States, read 30 September 2026. 91 of 104 live ads. Our keyword sort of titles and body text.

Show the product, then say what it is

117 of 156 creatives (75%) open on the product itself. 151 (97%) are a straight pitch. 145 (93%) look studio-made, and 83 (53%) show no person at all. Hooks lean on who the shopper wants to be: 86 creatives (55%) appeal to identity. 88 (56%) frame the benefit as a feeling rather than a function.

Discounts are present, not dominant

121 creatives (78%) carry no incentive, 20 (13%) a discount and 15 (10%) a bundle. The sale ads are loud: “Up to 50% Off”, “5 for $19.99”. But they sit among many that only show a bra, a bottle or a robe. Every ad we read carries a “Shop now” button and a tracked link, so we cannot see where the clicks land.

The grid does the brand work

The brand posted 200 times between 5 June and 29 September 2026: 114 reels, 82 carousels and 4 images, drawing 11.7 million likes. The top post, a model in a vintage piece, has about 1.49 million. Posts announcing the 2026 Fashion Show draw 415,000 and 243,000. Only 16 creator posts mention the brand in our window, so creators play a small part here.

Huge comment volume, little buying talk

We classified 67,712 public comments on 149 posts. 92.6% carry no product signal, 2.6% show buying intent and 2.1% speak well of the product. People comment on the spectacle, not the shop.

What the competition is doing

Source: Meta Ad Library and Instagram, read 30 September 2026. Organic windows: Victoria's Secret 5 June to 29 September, Savage X Fenty 19 June to 29 September, Aerie 20 August to 29 September.

Savage X Fenty: the offer is the pitch

184 of Savage X Fenty's 243 decoded creatives carry a discount, and 113 play on urgency. The ads are price-led: “2 bras for $29”, “$19 sets”. The brand offers a paid membership, and the ads often point to member prices. It is the opposite of Victoria's Secret's mix.

Aerie: ordinary days, no discounts

None of Aerie's 90 decoded creatives carries a discount. 28 tell a day-in-the-life story, 48 open on a visual action, and 66 of 90 feature a lifestyle presenter. Its ads feel like a friend's photos. Our read is that it sells a mood, not a promotion.

What other brands can take from this

• Give the audience and the sale different jobs. Events build the brand. Ads clear the season.
• Do not read ad volume as audience. A brand with 76.8 million followers runs a third of its rivals' volume.
• Use extras as the paid product. Fragrance and body care fill many of the ads, because they are easy to gift and easy to ship.
• Pick one lane, not all three. Savage X Fenty chose price, Aerie chose mood, Victoria's Secret chose the calendar.
• Know that comments are not demand. 67,712 comments, and 2.6% show buying intent.