Marketing Mix

They are clever with what they display and when, changing displays based on season and current events much like all high street stores, however speaking to store employees, in the Rugby store, it was found that they will change the window and instore displays based on the weather, this means the displays could change twice in a week, if it has been sunny but then rains for a few days they will move outerwear and raincoats to the window displays, they focus on the needs of the customers at certain times to try upsell and increase profit. As well as changing the products displayed the store will take images from current campaigns and display them alongside the items in store, effective in creating an impact for the clothes and showing how they can be styled. 

Topshop adverts appear on most forms of social media; facebook, instagram, youtube and various others, they use both images and video clips in their ads, all usually following the same style outline at a time however like their social media, this style changes constantly. They will show ads before youtube videos, pop ups on social media and cookies based ads, however from a poll conducted on social media it was found that not everyone sees advertising for Topshop on their social media 38% said they do not see advertising for the brand. The brand relies a lot on cookies and promotes themselves to people who already shop there or follow them rather than people who don’t follow or search the brand at all which is a downfall of advertising, however instead of promoting themselves to a new audience they are attracting their current consumers to new ranges and products, if this is the way the brand would rather promote themselves more consistency needs to be shown through ads as you could put two of the styles used next to each other and think they were from two different brands, for example a campaign in November 2018 for party season looked as if it was shot on a portrait camera, a bit more of an edgy look to it, however their most recent campaign for jeans is shot in a very basic way.

Although they are two separate campaigns for different products there is no correlation, you would not look at them and think they were from the same brand, there is no consistency between promotions and posts on any of their social medias. Only posted less then three months apart and having such a big change again shows how Topshop has no clear online aesthetic.

As well as the usual forms of advertising brands use, such as billboards and street ads, Topshop has tried its hand in Virtual Reality Advertising, basing these advertising experiments in the flagship Oxford Street store they first tried this out in 2014 when they gave shoppers the chance to experience their London Fashion Week show through VR in store, giving shoppers the opportunity to view the show and backstage in a 360 view. The VR idea was later brought back in 2017 in an attempt to promote the start of summer they created a VR waterslide experience through Oxford Street for shoppers which included ‘Exclusive Topshop surprises along the way’ alongside this successful interactive advertising which was available for eleven days they also had pop up ice cream concessions and allegedly the smell of sun cream was pumped into the store. This was a successful campaign and brought a lot of attention to the brand online with social media going crazy over virtual reality on the high street.

These two VR marketing stunts created a great gain in popularity and media attention for the brand, posts about a high street retailer using virtual reality in their stores went viral bringing attention to not only the promotions but the brand, it would be business smart to bring back similar ideas for new campaigns or big promotions they have coming up, as a way to bring attention back to the brand where it has lost out, also bringing this to more than just their London flagship store would bring in people form all areas rather than just those on the higher end income of their demographic.