Nineties and noughties high street fast fashion favourite looks set to face its second financial restructuring in as many years if landlords do not agree to move to turnover rental agreements. While the brand enjoyed somewhat of a popularity resurgence in the early 2010s, its influence over the twenty something market has dwindled. Fuelled by a love of reality show and Instagram influencers, Gen Z opts for new favourites such as Miss Guided, Boohoo, and pureplay powerhouse ASOS, through which New Look incidentally retail. But has New Look lost touch with its core demographic in terms of product, or has it just failed to communicate with them properly?
Where do shoppers turn to when they want a New Look?
by Amy RountreeComparing the social media performance of New Look, ASOS and Boohoo
| Organisation | Followers | Posts | Engagements on posts | Avg posts per day | Avg engagement on each post | Avg engagements per day |
| ASOS | 18M | 129 | 2.7M | 9.21 | 20563 | 189476 |
| Boohoo | 10.2M | 83 | 849.2K | 5.93 | 10231 | 60657 |
| New Look | 6.2M | 128 | 142.4K | 9.14 | 1112 | 10170 |
Engagement at New Look is good, but not good enough
New Look has a decent size social media following of 6.2million. Between June 15 and June 28 2020 it posts to social media the same amount as ASOS. Yet ASOS achieves almost 19 times the amount of engagement per day, and per post. Compared to Boohoo, New Look is averaging six times less engagements per day, and ten times less per post.
To add even further context ASOS achieved twice the amount of total engagements in the last two weeks, as New Look achieved in the last three months.
How to hit the social media high notes
New Look do not struggle to hit the right tone of voice and its product has a fashion forward following. Like ASOS and Boohoo, New Look loves an emoji, a wine reference and a playful, personal way of addressing its followers.
New Look is arguably more editorial in its adherence to a visual style and identity on Instagram than ASOS or Boohoo. New Look is less partial to capitalised captions, nor does it go wild with competition mechanics for easy like. But perhaps this diversion from strict branding, actually creates a more human, spontaneous feel for the latter brands than New Look creates.
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Also notably absent from New Look’s social content is a stream of memes, contoured make up looks, and reality tv influencers. In these areas Boohoo in particular excel. New Look’s product focused social content while well styled, is less fun. Insert sad face emoji.
Key takeaway
Product is not enough for New Look to engage and retain the loyalty of its target demographic, it needs to build a closer relationship around shared interests. New Look already publishes content that reflects the brand. It posts frequently and gets great engagement rates, but it is still losing out to ASOS and Boohoo. There is no reason for it to shed its tone or visual identity in favour of its louder competitors, it can stay authentically New Look. But by increasing the amount of non product content, with a smattering of popular culture references, New Look can make what does work, work harder.
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