Love Island UK boosted demand for Crocs by 1300%

Crocs have always been shoes capable of polarizing public opinion: there are those who would never wear them, and those who can't live without them. The contestants of Love Island UK, a reality show followed by over three million people in the UK, seem to love them and also wear them in some of the scenes of the series. Their latest appearance, at the feet of two of the contestants Chuggs Wallis and Faye Winter, created a global increase in searches for the shoe by 1300%. Specifically, according to the data provided by The Sole Supplier, searches for lilac-coloured Crocs have increased by 950% while those for the white colourway by 324%. 

This leap in research has highlighted the ability of reality tv to launch and popularize products and trends, for example by raising a small but funny controversy about men with white pants that obviously made sales blow up. On a commercial level, however, it's interesting to note how the network that broadcasts the program, ITV, has introduced a "television shopping" format with advertising for the individual pieces worn by the protagonists that appear on the screen, giving viewers the opportunity to go directly from the program to the website of the brand that sells the product. According to Business of Fashion, Missguided, which along with other fast fashion brands provides outfits to the contestants, has seen sales of specific products rise by 500% after their appearance on screen. The program's ability to popularly market apparel products is so high that, as Bloomberg reports, the average price of a thirty-second ad is £50,000. 

Product placement in Love Island is perhaps one of the first fully functioning cases of a new marketing strategy for clothing brands – but which for now has mainly applied to fast fashion brands such as the aforementioned Missguided, I Saw It First and Boohoo. As for fashion brands, the real possibilities could lie in high-profile TV series, such as the new HBO reboots of Sex &The City and Gossip Girl, but also in Emily in Paris or Elite where, curiously, Lidl fruit juices coexist with Saint Laurent handbags, and in Halston, a strange case in which a TV series revives a brand that just before was almost completely ignored.