Turning heads with Love Island trends: 5 tips for using pop culture in your social strategy

Whether it’s your type on paper or not, Love Island is indisputably huge. Since its first (non-celebrity) iteration in 2015, it has snowballed in popularity to become the behemoth it is today. The most commercialised show on British television, Love Island is a show about coupling up, turning heads and getting dumped. Millions of British and Irish people will tune in six nights a week for an hour or more, with the ferocity and enthusiasm of any sports fan. Crucially for sponsors, this means there’s plenty of air time to get their products front and centre.

This year, Love Island earned its broadcasting channel ITV £12m in advertising fees before the first episode even aired. Superdrug sponsored the show in 2017 and reported 200,000 more website visits after each episode and a 900% increase in Superdrug brand search terms. In 2018, Missguided boasted a 40% sales increase every night the show was on. And even beyond the official sponsors, many brands are jumping on the proverbial bandwagon to tap into the hype.

Interested in leveraging some of the hype for your business’ social strategy, but not sure how? Jo Booth is the Owner and Managing Director of Social Media Makes Sense, the only UK agency specialising solely in TV and film. Her agency has led major campaigns for a wide variety of programmes, including: BBC One’s Poldark, ITV’s Endeavour, BBC One’s Line of Duty, BBC Two’s Hospital and Sky’s Portrait Artist of the Year. We caught up with her to discuss five learnings we’ve seen from the brands who have chosen to couple up with Love Island.

1. Understand if the audience is your type on paper

Understanding the audience is a universal key to successful campaigns. Especially with interacting with pop culture, it’s important to have a good grasp of who you’re talking to. You need to consider not only how they will relate to your business, but also how they will reflect on your business.

“If you try and make a square peg fit a round hole, it just won’t work,” says Jo. “If your brand values and those of your audience aren’t compatible with the message you’re portraying, not only will it not land well, it can actually be very damaging. If you don’t deliver a conversation your audience can relate to, they will find a brand that can. No audience, no customers, no business.”

This holds particularly true with Love Island. The most watched television show in the UK, Love Island boasts alluringly attractive viewing figures, but dig into some data and this huge audience becomes a bit more specific.

First of all, Love Island viewers are almost exclusively Millennials and Gen Z. Publicly available data has also shown that this particular audience cares proportionally more about physical appearance, celebrity and social media than the general British public.

With this information, it’s clear to see why typically “young” retail, fashion and beauty brands like Look Fantastic, I Saw It First, Missguided and Superdrug have all been official partners of the show.

2. Pull them for a chat: Joining the conversation online

Love Island is absolutely synonymous with social media (indeed, many of its contestants are famously sourced from it) and with that, represents a new way of interacting with audiences.

Love Island viewers prolifically use social media to express opinions, comment on results and engage with memes. Using Sprout Social’s Advanced Listening, we’ve recorded a whopping 2.49 million messages mentioning Love Island, with 96.83 million engagements, and a potential of 10.94 billion impressions since the show’s seventh season began.

Social media is where trends are created, shared and evolved; therefore to not have a social media strategy when engaging with pop culture is naive. Indeed, social is where brands can take part in the Love Island hype without the luxury (or expense) of an official partnership or sponsorship.

Jo agrees that brands without a sponsorship deal shouldn’t shy away from joining the conversation. “Let’s face it, not many businesses can afford to sponsor Love Island. But it’s the perfect fit for your brand then why not join the conversation? Be relatable, be interesting, be interested. People don’t talk about ‘safe’ brands, they talk about ‘bold’ brands.”

Missguided, which sponsored the show in 2018, has used social media to remain part of the Love Island conversation (despite no longer being an official partner). Not being formally linked to the show has allowed them to get involved in conversations and sound more like a fan than a sponsor. Of course this natural tone of voice within the online conversation is all while still peppering their feed with products, sales and offers.

Send in new men for Liberty and Kaz RN #LoveIsland pic.twitter.com/Z5QhbBMQ6p

— Missguided (@Missguided) July 8, 2021