The fast-fashion sector is cluttered and competitive. Brands are quick to imitate trends and update products. For UK online fast-fashion women’s retailer, Missguided, staying front of mind is key to maintaining success. However, as an online retailer, Missguided has few physical outlets. Driving spontaneous awareness was tied to driving real cultural impact.

Enter Love Island: a TV reality show. It's also a UK cultural behemoth, especially among the brand’s target demographic of 16-34-year-old women. While running, it’s all the UK tunes into or talks about. Airing on ITV (the UK’s second-biggest TV channel), the 2018 series experienced more conversation on Twitter than Brexit, the Royal Wedding and World Cup.

From sponsorship to branded ad spots, product placement to eCommerce apps, we planned a TV partnership which would make Missguided looks instantly available for purchase, collapse the gap between onscreen inspiration and check-out, and drive Missguided’s summer sales.

Audiences always want the clothes from their favourite TV shows. Hit reality show ‘Love Island’ represented the chance for Missguided to stand out. The 2017 finale drew 2.9 million viewers, with the overall season capturing a 56% share of Missguided’s target demographic (16-34 year-old women).

Airing daily for eight weeks, the show features beautiful Brits competing to find love in a villa in Mallorca, Spain (a top holiday destination for British people). With every cast member appearing in the hottest trends, product placement in Love Island would highlight Missguided products to its ideal audience.

Crucially, however, while retailers have allowed product placement, or purchase on branded micro-sites, never before has there been integration across every touch-point, or real-time connection between show and purchase (not even by Missguided’s rival ASOS – despite standing for ‘As Seen On Screen’). A Love Island partnership offered the opportunity to totally transform how eCommerce works.

To allow customers to truly shop the screen, we partnered with Love Island. The first step was for the Islanders (and de facto influencers) to wear Missguided clothes, as well as featuring Missguided clothes in other show partners’ ads (e.g. Jet2, Lucozade), driving purchase intent and cross-fertilisation.

To close the gap between the point of on-screen inspiration and check-out, our secret weapon was the accompanying Love Island app – which lets viewers vote for favourite Islanders. 89.4% of 16-29-year-old women use phones whilst watching TV and are 22% more likely to use phones during this time than others. The app has 3.5m users, more active users than Uber or Deliveroo, and viewers browse it more than Facebook when watching the show. By adapting the app to include ecommerce, we could provide regular cast clothing updates, let viewers buy in-app – and tap into the immediacy youth audiences crave when fashion-shopping.

Before filming began, cast-members browsed a Missguided pop-up, choosing clothes to wear during filming. To allow viewers to buy the outfits, we created a section on the Love Island app named ‘Island Style’. Each morning, client, agency and broadcaster discussed what worked the previous night, using real-time data on app visits, Missguided website visits and purchases.

At lunchtime, show producers confirmed outfits appearing in that evening’s episode. We had the afternoon to create new designs across the Love Island app and paid and owned channels, including: website, digital ads, and Missguided and ITV social carousels e.g. Instagram. So, whenever viewers opened the app, they saw the exact outfits appearing on that night’s episode available for purchase – complete with time-sensitive discount codes to encourage purchase. We secured wardrobe and editorial rights, planning in-show events to showcase products. This was supported by an AV plan shot in the Love Island villa.

• Every night the show aired, sales spiked by 40%

• Some featured items increased sales by over 9,000%

• The app’s ‘Island Style’ section attracted 11.2m visitors across the series

• Of the 449 products featured on ‘Island Style’, most sold out overnight

• The app drove nearly 1m direct visits to the Missguided website

• Love Island looks accounted for 18% of Missguided’s summer sales

• Missguided products appeared on screen for 16.2 hours

• Spontaneous awareness increased from 12% to 25%

• According to Tribe Dynamics, earned media value from Love Island accounted for $1.2m – and a bigger percentage uplift than either Nike or Adidas saw during the World Cup