Ah, New Year. The perfect time for self-reflection, empowerment and … fashion! The dawning of a new year should provide fashion companies the perfect opportunity to present original, eye-popping creative material to engage and entertain their Instagram followers.
Except when they don’t.
Check out these four fashion brands that chose generic over genius — and ended up being completely indistinguishable from each other:
This post by Forever 21 is a video of a black background with abstract video of a sparkler and script-y handwriting stating, ‘Happy New Year!’ with brand logo underneath. More than 60,000 people liked it out of Forever 21’s 2 million followers! Nifty, right? But wait, there’s more!
This post by Victoria’s Secret is also a video of a black background with an abstract video of some sort of shimmering light, with ‘Happy New Year! 2014’ and XX Victoria Secret in handwritten script, as well. It received more than 73,000 likes from Victoria Secret’s 3.5 million followers.
This post by Gucci is another video with an abstract black background with little golden dots glowing and falling and a holiday message from the brand. The big difference? No handwriting this time! The post received 15,000 likes out of more than 1 million that follow the brand.
This post by Free People isn’t a video, but it’s an image of a sparkler against a blueish-black background along with a script (shocking!) that reads, ‘Happy New Year!’ More than 43,000 followers liked the post, out of Free People’s 900,000 followers.
Though the posts received a fair amount of likes, perhaps these fashion brands should amend their Instagram strategy resolutions to include, “We will differentiate ourselves as well as we dress our customers.” Written in script, on a black background, with sparklers, naturally.
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