ANALYSIS
Sentiment analysis of each brand indicates general viewer perception of the brand's videos. For each brand, I created word clouds to understand brand associations. Finally, discontinuity analysis indicated whether scandals and other company events changed consumer perception of their fashion shows.
SENTIMENT ANALYSIS
How do people generally feel about the brand?
01
BURBERRY
From this sentiment analysis, it seems that Burberry saw a decline in popularity post-2016. Since then, while viewer comments are still positive overall, it seems that fans are not nearly as strong of advocates as they once were. This may be linked to the company's logo change and the public backlash it received over burning its leftover inventory. However, sentiment seems to be recently trending upward again as Burberry makes conscious decisions about its brand messaging.
02
louis vuitton
Louis Vuitton has consistently built a stronger fan base over the past decade. It seems that now more than ever, Louis Vuitton is a popular and relevant brand. With new collaborations and a lack of major controversy, LV is becoming even more prestigious.
03
dolce & gabbana
Once a highly loved brand, D&G has since declined in popularity amongst its fans. Following a stream of controversies in the past decade over homosexuality and racism, viewer sentiment steadily declined. Only recently have people started to favor D&G again.
WORD CLOUDS
What are people saying about each brand?
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*All based on the most recent 2021 Fall/Winter Show for each brand
01
BURBERRY
The most popular words on Burberry's women collection video are "love" and "Burberry," indicating a strong passion for the brand. Interestingly, Burberry's word cloud also lists the names of many of its models and partners, including Cara Delevingne and Kris Wu. Many people are commenting about the people involved with the brand. We also see words like "aesthetic."
The most positive words (left) include timeless, classic, beauty, and breathtaking. For the most negative words (right), we actually don't see anything stand out. Many of the words are simply names or foreign words indicating a wide reach.
02
louis vuitton
Louis Vuitton's Fall/Winter Men's 2021 collection garnered over 105 million views. This was largely due to their partnership with K-pop band BTS in a promotional teaser. We see that this was extremely effective, with the most frequent word being "BTS" and "army," which is what the BTS fanbase is called. We also see words like art, love, fashion, and beautiful, but BTS comes far in first. Clearly, LV knows how to modernize its brand and take advantage of cultural trends.
It seems people are fairly divided on this particular collection for LV. On the one hand, the most positive words (left) include fashion, art, and peace. However, no one word strongly stands out from the others indicating a lack of extreme passion. On the other hand, the most negative word (right) was pretentious. It's interesting to see that despite the growing popularity of the brand as a whole, this fashion show was seen as pretentious.
03
dolce & gabbana
For D&G's womenswear show, people heavily focused on the collection being displayed, with "collection" and "show" being the most frequent words. We also see words like love and amazing. Interestingly, we also see the names of other brands like Chanel and Prada. Given that D&G is a relatively new brand (founded only in the late 1900s), viewers may be comparing it with other brands.
It seems people are fairly ambivalent about the collection, with no exceptionally strong positive words (left). People admire the show's production and design. For the negative words (right), most are still mild. However, we do see words like terribly, racist, and problematic which may be tied with the company's numerous scandals.
DISCONTINUITY ANALYSIS
How have company scandals and recent events affected the perception of the brands?
01
BURBERRY
I looked at 3 major recent events for Burberry: the burn scandal in July 2018, the logo change in August 2018, and the noose scandal in 2019.
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In 2018, it was widely publicized that Burberry burned excess inventory. Rather than selling it at a discounted price or give it to shareholders, the company decided to burn the clothes to maintain the supply and prestige of the company. However, there was much public backlash as people disapproved of the practice for environmental reasons. Coincidentally in August of the same year, Burberry decided to change its logo shifting from a more traditional font to a modernized one. It abandoned its knight and horse logo, and there were mixed feelings about this. The discontinuity analysis for these two events indicates some sort of discontinuity. While the burn scandal was a large issue, people likely didn't take to YouTube to comment but rather Twitter. More notably, in the second graph for the logo change, we see sentiment toward Burberry had been steadily declining. This may signify that perhaps it was time for Burberry to change, which is why it modernized its logo.
In 2019, at London fashion week, Burberry showcased a hoodie that featured a noose around the neck. The collection was inspired by a marine theme, but appeared as a noose and was deemed highly insensitive. While there does not seem to be a discontinuity before and after the event, it is clear that Burberry did see another declined post the noose controversy.
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02
LOUIS VUITTON
I looked at 2 major recent events for Louis Vuitton: the Supreme Collaboration from June 2017, and the Michael Jackson scandal from January 2019.
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In 2017, Louis Vuitton partnered with street-wear brand Supreme to create the first luxury street-wear collaboration. This innovative new collection introduced Louis Vuitton to a new generation of millennials and ensured its prestige for years to come. Moreover, the new collection sported both the Supreme box logo and the Louis Vuitton LV monogram, again bringing cultural relevancy to a traditional brand. In the discontinuity analysis, we see a large discontinuity between before and after the Supreme collaboration. Sentiment toward the brand jumped significantly, likely due to a new younger audience populating the comments.
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In 2019, the company revealed a new men's collection inspired by Michael Jackson. While the collection received great reviews from critics, a week later a documentary was released recounting accusations of being sexual abuse by Jackson. As the documentary aired, this sparked controversy with LV's new collection. As a result, LV pulled all Michael Jackson-inspired items from its Fall/Winter collection. It seems that there is not a large continuity before and after the event. LV was proactive in pulling pieces of its collection from stores and managed risk well. Given LV's sentiment record from the initial analysis, it is likely that LV plays a careful game of protecting its brand.
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03
DOLCE & GABBANA
I looked at 3 major recent events for D&G: the 2015 controversy regarding gay adoption, the 2017 boycott scandal, and the 2018 racist advertising campaign.
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In 2015, headlines broke as D&G founders stated in an interview that they oppose gay families adopting children, citing "The only family is the traditional one." Especially since the two are homosexual themselves, there was much backlash across social media with the hashtag #BoycottDolceGabbana on Twitter. In my analysis in the first graph, we can see that there was a steady decline in customer attitude after the event. This event did indeed affect viewer attitude.
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In 2017, the company mocked those who wanted to boycott the band for its support of first lady Melania Trump. D&G launched a line of $245 T-shirts with #BoycottDolce&Gabbana written across the chest. This was a bold move of the company that indicated its firm stance on its beliefs. While there was no significant discontinuity, we see in the graph that perception continues to decrease.
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One of the company's largest scandals occurred in 2018, when the company released a series of racist promotional videos targeted toward the Chinese market. The videos showed a Chinese model attempting to use chopsticks to eat Italian food and were meant to promote "The Great Show" which was a catwalk to be held in Shanghai. However, the show never happened. D&G canceled the show as it faced widespread backlash for the racism in its campaign. In the discontinuity analysis, we see how for the next few months D&G did not post anything to its YouTube account until the following year. Interestingly, the sentiments are lowest right before the event. Recall that sentiment is based on comments, but does not consider the date comments are written. It is likely that upon the racism controversy, while D&G did not post to YouTube, viewers commented on previous videos in order to communicate their frustration and anger toward the brand, yielding the lowest sentiment ratings before the event period. The large discontinuity may be due to the public apology the company released shortly after coupled with the lack of any content for a couple months.
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