Victoria’s Secret Nixes TV Special
By Karyn Monget
NEW YORK — Is modesty the new strategy at Victoria’s Secret?
The $3.8 billion lingerie specialist has decided to can its $10 million fashion extravaganza — billed as TV’s “Sexiest Night” — and has also canceled its annual catwalk show for the fashion press.
The show — which began here in 1995 at the Plaza Hotel, moved to Wall Street in 1998, the Cannes Film Festival in 2000, Bryant Park in 2001 and the New York State Armory in 2002 and 2003 — had turned into a media feeding frenzy with scalpers reportedly selling tickets at up to $10,000 a clip.
In 1999, Victoria’s Secret staged its first live Web cast of the fashion show, with a reported audience of a billion people in over 100 countries, and in 2001, began broadcasting the show on TV, with an audience of over 12 million people.
A division of Limited Brands, Victoria’s Secret offered no-holds-barred sexuality for a mass TV audience (the show aired at 10 p.m.), even before Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera brazenly rollicked in music videos, and TV shows such as “Sex and the City” showed full-frontal nudity.
A Victoria’s Secret spokesman would not address the question of whether the company received pressure from the Federal Communications Commission, or whether women’s activist groups were instrumental in the decision to drop the show. He did say, however, that 25 percent of the decision was due to the “environment,” beginning in early January with the now infamous “wardrobe malfunction” during Janet Jackson’s breast-baring incident at the Super Bowl that was televised on CBS. The controversy was later fueled by federal regulators this month, who proposed fining Clear Channel Communications $495,000 for sexually explicit materials on the Howard Stern Show.
The Victoria’s Secret show habitually generated scores of complaints by viewers to the FCC, which three years ago investigated the brand for some of its on-air antics but later ruled they weren’t indecent.
Victoria’s Secret, whose sexy lingerie brand is well known from Boston to Baghdad, has plans to respin and market the brand into “something bigger, bolder and better in terms of bolstering the brand for holiday sales,” said the Victoria’s Secret spokesman. He would not elaborate other than to say, “At the end of the day, it’s about generating sales for holiday.” He said the company has its current TV commercial with Bob Dylan and is evaluating other opportunities to market the brand.
Ed Razek, Victoria’s Secret chief creative officer, was in leadership meetings Monday and could not be reached. However, in a statement he said: “The Victoria’s Secret show has served as a powerful marketing tool for the brand and our products. We’ve broken Internet viewing records and been the first network televised fashion show. Major achievements.”
Razek noted that in order to continue to grow the brand, “We constantly challenge our gift-giving through a new holiday campaign.”
Last year, Victoria’s Secret upped the ante for a second season on CBS, which presented the show like a Broadway musical with a cabaret-style vignette, laced with live performances by Sting, Mary J. Blige and Eve.
