YouGov BrandIndex and leaderboard scores indicate low-cost high-street store Primark’s image is recovering well four weeks after the fashion retailer was accused of sexualising children by selling padded bikini tops aimed at pre-teens.
Primark was hit by a barrage of negative publicity on April 14th when it was revealed that it was targeting padded bikini tops at girls as young as seven, prompting concern and condemnation from parents and child welfare groups. Occurring in the midst of a general election campaign, it did not go unnoticed by the main party leaders, with Conservative leader David Cameron branding Primark’s actions ‘disgraceful’.
The controversy over the £4 bikini sets clearly had an impact on Primark’s BrandIndex performance, with its ‘buzz’ and ‘recommend’ scores taking a hit. A brand’s ‘buzz’ score is determined by asking people if they have heard anything positive or negative in the last fortnight about any given brands. A net score is then calculated by subtracting the negative mentions from the positive. As can be seen from the graph below, Primark’s ‘buzz’ score fell dramatically from +7.4 on April 14th to a low of -4.2 on April 28th, reflecting the prevailing outrage surrounding the shop. Its BrandIndex ‘recommend’ score, which is gauged by asking whether respondents would recommend the brand to others, also saw a significant drop (see the graph below), falling from +5.8 on April 14th to +0.9 on April 30th.
Primark’s actions also provoked heavy criticism from many of TellYouGov’s users, or ‘tyggers’. One described the stores actions as ‘wrong, wrong, wrong’, while another commented that ‘even thinking about selling padded bikini tops to seven year-olds is reprehensible’. One particularly offended tygger wrote, ‘how horrific [to be] selling clothes that effectively sexualise children’.
However, recent weeks have seen Primark’s image begin to recover on both BrandIndex and the TellYouGov leaderboard, indicating that such a level of feeling towards the brand has dissipated quickly. As the graphs below show, its ‘buzz’ score has risen significantly from -4.2 on April 28th to +6 on May 11th, which suggests that the bad taste left in the public’s mouth did not last long – the majority are no longer equating Primark with negative sentiments. Similarly, the ‘recommend’ score reached +3.5 on the same day, up 2.6 points from April 30th.
It also seems that TellYouGov tyggers are concentrating on the more positive aspects of the clothing store, with many praising it for providing ‘fashion for people on a budget that actually looks great’. One happy tygger related how they had bought their ‘whole work wardrobe for £40’, exclaiming ‘who can argue with that?!’. Another simply described the store as ‘a godsend [for] my purse strings’. This increase in positive sentiment towards Primark has seen its sentiment score rise from -2 to +2 in the past two weeks, a further indication that Primark may be successfully putting the padded bikini top scandal behind them.
