CHANGING THE MODEL
Companies are downplaying sex appeal to sell customers on the experience of buying underwear online.
When Michelle Grant started an Instagram account to promote Lively, the elegant, online-only brand of women’s underwear that she launched in April, she posted playful images (a woman dancing in a bra and a fur coat; another skipping down a deserted road) and captioned them with empowering messages championing “women with wild hearts and boss brains.” Between the Instagram promotion and a simultaneous email campaign, Lively’s website received more than 700,000 page views in two days. The attention crashed
