Black Friday has evolved into a true season of sales that spans the entire month of November, rather than a single day. THE ICONIC‘s brand storytelling reflects this shift. The brand focuses on building and sustaining momentum over an extended period, rather than centring its narrative around one peak moment.
B&T sat down with THE ICONIC’s CMO Jo Robinson to learn more about the winning formula that garnered sales and connected with consumers to create not just a commercial but a cultural moment.
“The sales season requires a huge, company-wide effort to prepare for the immense volume of orders and to ensure a frictionless customer journey throughout this peak period. We’re proud to share that this season was incredibly successful, with over 2.2 million units sold—equivalent to 71 items every minute,” Robinson said.
THE ICONIC’s brand storytelling
In fashion e-commerce, Black Friday isn’t just about discounting. For THE ICONIC, curation and customer experience are just as important as price. While the company offers compelling deals, it knows customers are becoming more selective with their share of wallet.
“We differentiate THE ICONIC by highlighting the strengths of our customer experience end-to-end. This includes our seamless shipping and returns proposition, which becomes even more valuable during such a busy trading period,” Robinson said.
“By combining strong offers with curated choice, inspiring content, and a frictionless experience, we’re positioning THE ICONIC as the most effortless and enjoyable way to shop Black Friday and Cyber Monday in ANZ,” she added.
The ICONIC maintains momentum year-on-year by listening to customer feedback, tracking demand, and offering competitive discounts across key categories and products, in addition to a wider suite of benefits, such as same-day delivery options and free returns.
“This year, our customers will also be rewarded for shopping with us with the launch of our much-anticipated loyalty program – THE ICONIC Front Row. Customers had the opportunity to sign up for free ahead of time, collect ICONS on their Black Friday purchases, and unlock extra rewards and exclusive benefits, creating an additional incentive to shop during this period,” she added.
How data, tech and trends bring Black Friday moments to life
Data, tech and trends thread throughout many aspects of the business to design a Black Friday experience that feels curated, not chaotic. An obvious place to start for a retailer with over 250,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) is search and discovery.
“Findability is absolutely critical, particularly at peak periods like Black Friday. The introduction of Multi-Modal Search (MMS) in 2024 has significantly improved how customers navigate our extensive catalogue, now able to use images, text and voice, combining AI so it can understand search more like a human would,” Robinson said.
For customers, this means they can search terms like ‘I want a disco outfit for a 70s party’ and the AI knows which product fits that vibe, even if THE ICONIC never labelled it as disco. The technology has also been applied to null searches, searches with a low number of results and low-performing searches to surface more relevant and inspiring items.
This has been a game-changer for both customer experience and conversion. THE ICONIC’s Snap-to-Shop is also now powered by MMS to generate more accurate and inspiring results.
Metadata enhancements are also powering findability. When it comes to imagery on a fashion website, attributes such as the sleeve length, neckline, and colour are the metadata. AI is helping THE ICONIC to tag more of these attributes automatically, not only making it substantially easier for customers to find what they want, but also reducing manual tagging time for staff and brand partners.
With the launch of THE ICONIC Front Row and AI-driven personalisation, this ‘season of sales’ period has seen the company add more targeted offers than ever. Using a combination of customer behaviour, Status Levels and past interactions to tailor the offers, categories and products each customer is likely to care about across app, email and push.
“Within our Fulfilment Centre, we have recently introduced smart proximity picking to speed up order picking and made improvements to our high-speed auto flow wrap machines for faster packing,” Robinson said.
“Our advanced logistics technology and carrier partnerships now allow us to deliver most customer orders to the Australian eastern Seaboard metro areas in just 24-48 hours,” she added.
How consumers are engaging with the shopping moment anew each year
“Boxing Day used to be the main sale event on the retail calendar, but shopping Black Friday from the couch has ballooned in popularity in the last five years in particular, with a longer shopping period and deeper discounts. It’s now THE ICONIC’s biggest sales moment of the year and our November order volume is estimated to be up by 15 per cent since 2021,” Robinson said.
“Customers are embracing the sales period, but there are behavioural shifts this year. They are savvy and deliberate. They know the sales period has extended and actively shop around and to compare offers,” she added.
For brands looking to win the Black Friday and Cyber Monday moment, they need to know their customers, appealing to their concerns and desires. If there’s anything we’ve learnt from Robinson, it’s that they will smell bullshit from a mile away.
