Fortune 500 Corporate Blog Review: Limited Brands, Inc. #246
What do Victoria's Secret, Bath & Body Works, Henri Bendel, Express and C.O. Bigelow all have in common? Other than a target audience skewed highly female, they are all owned by Limited Brands, Inc.
Limited Brands, Inc. is publicly traded under the stock symbol LTD. The corporation's Chairman and Chief Executive officer is it's founder, Leslie H. Wexner. The headquarters for Limited Brands is in Columbus, Ohio and boasts a work force of over 100,000. Other brands that fall under the Limited Brands, Inc. umbrella are The Limited and White Barn Candle Company.
No Corporate Blogs
As seems to be a theme running with all the corporations I've chosen to review, Limited Brands, Inc. has no corporate blogs. The more famous brands do not have blogs either. A search for a blog written by Mr. Wexner came up with nothing as well.
I found plenty of posts about Mr. Wexner, most recently a lot about a fund raiser he held in which he and his wife hosted President Bush at their estate. Like the other corporations I researched (Target, and Toys R Us) plenty of people are blogging about the things they buy or see at the Limited Brands stores. The main two brands being Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works having the most "buzz" around them. As displayed in the charts below you'll see that Limited Brands has very low "buzz" compared to Bath & Body Works and then to Victoria's Secret, according to Technorati (clicking the images will give you a larger view of the charts).
The Top Brands Need A Blog
Like Toys R Us, the brands that Limited Brands has need some sort of marketing blog to help capture some of that word of mouth marketing going on right now in the blogosphere. Limited Brands, Inc. really doesn't need a blog, as its site really does explain a lot about the company and its press section also is pretty extensive.
But here's a perfect reason why the bigger brands need a blog. Victoria's Secret has a line of sleepwear they are heavily promoting right now, the line is called "Pink". They are promoting the give away of this cute little stuffed "Pink" dog when you purchase so much "Pink" sleepwear. After just wrapping up Breast Cancer Awareness month in October, and knowing that there was a whole "Pink" push in relation to the Awareness month, my first impression was that this promotion might benefit that cause. It doesn't, as far as I can tell - and if it does, it doesn't display it prominently enough - see the confusion?
In conclusion, both of the bigger brands under the Limited Brands, Inc. umbrella could utilize blogs to help market their products and really capture that current on-line buzz around their products. It can also help them better promote their new lines of clothing or scents (in Bath & Body Works case).
Victoria's Secret doesn't have a blog, but the Pink brand has a myspace account and a facebook group to itself, with friends/group memebers numbering up in the thousands.
Posted by: Mfassetta | January 25, 2007 at 10:30 AM