Fashion's Content Challenge: Lessons from Coach, Thom Browne, and Michael Kors

FSW breaks down the IWT Content Effectiveness Index rankings for three major fashion brands and examines the current content opportunities and challenges for each brand.

“What makes content effective?” is a question with wide-ranging implications for consumer-facing brands, particularly luxury brands, for which content and storytelling are among the primary drivers of brand differentiation. The idea of content effectiveness is worth its weight in gold from a marketing and sales perspective. Measuring—and understanding—how content connects with consumers, meets and anticipates their needs, and guides their behavior is the key to closing the intention-behavior gap in e-commerce and creating truly value-driven content.

Take American luxury giant Ralph Lauren. The brand recently posted a TikTok video of its new Roblox Polo Beach digital experience, which has received over 33K views. The post before this digital ad was a video of model and musician Lucky Blue Smith interviewing children as part of the brand’s Spring 2025 campaign, which garnered over 68K views. On TikTok, these two videos mix with more cutesy, product-centric videos.

Over on Instagram, the Ralph Lauren social team repeated the Lucky Blue Smith video and most of the product-centric videos as Reels, which collectively sit alongside more traditional photo image posts. However, the Roblox Polo Beach video post has not been repeated.

If you go to the Ralph Lauren website, the content is consistent with its Spring 2025 digital assets, but the visual imagery and dynamic content are appropriately contextualized within the e-commerce experience to make shopping easy and intuitive.

In short, Ralph Lauren feels like Ralph Lauren wherever you encounter the brand. The brand content has a cohesive look and feel yet is attenuated to the channel, audience, and moment, all while making ample use of reusable assets. Not surprisingly, Ralph Lauren ranks at the top of the It’s A Working Title Content Effectiveness Index (CEI), which we unveiled in January as part of our annual Year Ahead report and then updated in our Q1 2025 edition.

The easiest way to explore the idea of content effectiveness is to illustrate it in action through a brief set of structured case studies from three brands within our CEI: Coach, Thom Browne, and Michael Kors. The results of our CEI report and the thesis of our recent work remain the same: the brands winning with content are winning with consumers. These brands stay consistent with approaches that work, but lean into the discomfort of a test-and-learn mindset, bringing originality, narrative, and authenticity where consumers crave it.

What is the IWT Content Effectiveness Index?

The CEI builds on the IWT Selected Luxury Instagram Shoppability Index that we published in November 2024. This Instagram Shoppability Index scored brands on a scale of 1-3 based on the degree to which consumers could directly purchase products from a brand’s Instagram posts. The CEI is a broader assessment of 20 premium fashion and luxury brands. It gauges content effectiveness through our measure of content quality, a combined measure of Instagram shoppability, narrative content attenuation, and audience centricity. We then compared this brand revenue growth and found a positive correlation.

While there are unsurprisingly several outliers, particularly 2024’s rock star, Miu Miu, whose revenue growth was off the charts last year, the CEI showed a positive correlation between content effectiveness and bottom-line revenue for most brands that experienced revenue growth in 2024. Brands like Brunello Cucinelli, Hermès, and Ralph Lauren received high scores for content quality and audience centricity for their high-quality, authentic, and original content and consistent but differentiated content marketing strategies across and within channels.

Most brands on our list that experienced significantly lower revenue growth in 2024 also demonstrate a lack of strategy, consistency, and quality regarding digital and IRL content. Brands in the middle, such as Thom Browne, Maison Margiela, and Zegna, make use of narrative techniques on the runway but struggle with consistency in digital content across channels. At the lower end of the ranking, Gucci, Michael Kors, and Versace have minimally shoppable Instagram accounts and received low scores for narrative content quality and audience centricity, mainly due to a lack of brand differentiation across and within channels.

Coach

Coach received an 8 on the CEI due to several factors that indicate a strong content strategy, though its Instagram account is only partially shoppable.

Narrative Strategy

Coach is the poster child on the power of a cohesive, audience-centric, narrative content strategy backed by tight operational execution to empower brand storytelling and reinvent a brand for a new generation of consumers. The brand’s hyper niche focus on Gen Z and their values of emotional authenticity and self-expression, its recentering of a product—the Tabby bag—into a key brand pillar, and its test-and-learn approach to localization strategies have resulted in truly inspired creative brand decision-making across touchpoints.

There is a harmony yet a clear attenuation of brand messaging to content channel, audience, location, and moment across Coach’s IRL visual merchandising, products, and events and its digital marketing, social media, and e-commerce content efforts. First, an airplane in Myanmar. Then, localized Tabby store takeovers and social media activations. Now a brand Dino Ambassador in its London flagship.

Audience Centricity

Even Coach’s celebrity-driven marketing campaigns are spot on for their core Gen Z demographic and take a content-first, narrative approach to product marketing. For example, the brand’s Spring 2025 campaign, "On Your Own Time,” features relevant global ambassadors Elle Fanning, Nazha, Kōki, and Youngji Lee. For this campaign, creative director Stuart Vevers conveys a strong message about rejecting societal pressures and reclaiming control over one’s pace of life through emotive short films and imagery that depict the stars navigating high-pressure, fast-paced environments, ultimately choosing to slow down and move forward with renewed confidence. The Coach Tabby bag functions as the campaign's centerpiece but is woven into the overarching narrative as a trusted companion that symbolizes personal empowerment.

These inventive content experiments (because that is what they are) have paid dividends and are reflected in Coach’s healthy revenue growth and exploding brand loyalty with its target Gen Z demographic over the past few years. Coach has mastered the art of brand differentiation through digital and IRL content and continues to execute with creativity and ease through its audience-centric, smaller-scale approach.

Social Shoppability

Coach’s Instagram account is creative and engaging, but only some posts have shop links to their e-commerce site. While most of the brand’s product posts have “shop now” links, this constitutes less than half of their posts. The rest of the posts are campaign or celebrity-driven content designed to inspire or capture a mood, which is arguably a partially missed opportunity to encourage deeper purchase opportunities. Still, Coach’s Instagram is full of fresh, relevant content so it is hard to argue that their strategy has not been working, though it will be interesting to see how or if they shift given the current state of the economy and the onset of US tariffs.

Strengths

1. Coach creates niche, Gen Z-focused content with a tight narrative strategy designed to connect with this demographic's values and interests.

2. The brand uses consistent digital and IRL narrative strategies that differentiate it but are appropriately tailored to the channel and audience.

Challenges

1. Any brand or content strategy narrowly focused on a single demographic risks a lack of brand differentiation and, thus, potential sales growth with other consumers with more purchasing power.

2. A slowing economy could make highly creative digital and IRL brand activations a more difficult investment.

Thom Browne

Thom Browne received a 5 on the CEI due to its strong narrative quality on the runway but its inconsistency across platforms and limited social shoppability.

Narrative Strategy

Few brands do in-person runway storytelling better than Thom Browne, particularly haute couture. Translating this creative narrative vision into actual sales and content across channels remains challenging for the brand, though recent ready-to-wear (RTW) collections have been encouraging.

For instance, in February 2025, Thom Browne unveiled a narrative yet extremely wearable AW 2025 RTW collection. This bird-inspired collection was full of heritage tweeds and imaginative but classic looks for women and men. This proved the brand can execute when it comes to bringing its imaginative couture aesthetic to the RTW consumer, offering opportunities to target both luxury and wearable fashion consumers.

Audience Centricity

Digitally speaking, Thom Browne’s presence across channels feels at odds with the imaginative narrative of its runway collections. The brand’s e-commerce site is elegant and beautifully designed but is flat and functional compared with the narrative depth of its creative designs. On the Thom Browne e-commerce site, many opportunities for consumer-facing storytelling and a simple lack of guided content make product discovery boring.

Social Shoppability

Similarly, the Thom Browne Instagram account lacks a narrative quality. Product findability and discoverability are an issue since most posts are not shoppable. Even then, products highlighted in posts are not immediately available on its e-commerce site, which can be frustrating for consumers.

Strengths

1. The brand makes deep, creative use of storytelling techniques and brand universe creation on the runways.

2. It has a strong industry loyalty for its creative vision, craftsmanship, and originality of design.

Challenges

1. The lack of engaging storytelling and limited product accessibility on digital platforms hinder the brand’s ability to connect with a broader audience and drive online sales.

2. Striking a balance between avant-garde artistry and commercial scalability remains a key challenge. The brand’s niche positioning limits its reach, making it difficult to grow revenue sustainably.

Michael Kors

Michael Kors received a 4 on the CEI due to inconsistent storytelling and a lack of audience-centric content across and within channels, though it excels in social shoppability.

Narrative Strategy

The status of Michael Kors as a premium fashion brand makes for an interesting comparison with other brands in our survey. Anyone who spent years watching “Project Runway” is well familiar with Michael Kors and his brand’s recognizable, often gold-accented jet-set lifestyle aesthetic. However, while the brand effectively promotes a certain luxury aesthetic in its marketing campaigns, it faces challenges in consistent storytelling across channels, emotional resonance, and brand differentiation in a highly competitive market.

For example, Michael Kors’ recent "Hotel Stories" campaign showcases the brand’s effort to blend fashion storytelling with experiential travel themes. Through integrating boutique hotel activations and travel-inspired product photography, this campaign represents a solid attempt to connect with global audiences through aspirational experiences.

Yet, overall, Michael Kors could benefit from deeper emotional storytelling to strengthen consumer engagement. Despite its visually appealing content, the brand’s e-commerce site, social media content, and content marketing lack the narrative depth needed to differentiate it from competitors.

Audience Centricity

In general, Michael Kors content lacks the audience-centricity one would expect for a mature premium fashion brand. Its social accounts have a same feelingness indicative of the current state of content across most fashion brands.

Indeed, Michael Kors continues to rely on imagery of jet-set lifestyles as a central theme. While this approach aligns with the brand’s identity, it risks blending into the sea of similar aspirational messaging competitors use, limiting its ability to stand out meaningfully.

That said, one should credit the Michael Kors marketing team for bridging the digital-IRL gap through regional activations of campaigns like "Hotel Stories" at boutique hotels. This type of activation has the potential to engage more deeply with audiences through physical spaces tied to broader branding initiatives.

Social Shoppability

Regarding social shoppability, the Michael Kors Instagram takes a practical approach with a broad set of fully shoppable posts. While it falls short with storytelling and content consistency across channels, it makes up for it through ease-of-use and a more guided digital shopping experience than most luxury brands.

Strengths

1. Michael Kors has a strong, identifiable brand DNA with innovative digital-IRL activations.

2. It excels in social shoppability and creates a much more unified shopping journey across channels.

Challenges

1. Despite its polished campaigns, the brand’s marketing struggles to create emotionally resonant narratives that connect with its audiences.

2. How the brand’s core aesthetic is expressed through content feels diffuse and no longer provides a unique identity for the brand in a fashion space saturated with similar messaging.