Shein’s run of dominance among the youth remains a constant, with the fast-fashion company comfortably taking the top spot on TikTok as the platform’s most-mentioned brand.
The controversial fashion label, which already took the honor of Google’s top-searched brand last year, amassed mentions from 13,400 influencers on the social media giant, according to data from Statista. In fact, Shein’s popularity is so vast that it generated over 2 million more mentions then the second-most-talked-about brand, Target. The mass merchant garnered mentions from 11,200 TikTok influencers last year.
TikTok and Instagram are arguably the biggest social media sites for influencer marketing, with Shein a big hit on the Meta-owned platform too. The Christian Siriano collaborator was third in influencer mentions on Instagram last year with 57,200, with only Instagram itself and fast-fashion competitor Zara surpassing it in influencer popularity.
As for the other popular TikTok brands, streaming platform Netflix was the third-most prevalent, being mentioned by 8,500 influencers on the social media service in 2022. Sephora is next on the list, with 7,500 influencer mentions.
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E-commerce giant Amazon was No. 5 with 6,900 influencers dropping its name, while Starbucks was the sixth-most popular brand among TikTok personalities with 5,900 mentions. Disney and beauty brand Sheglam were seventh and eighth on the list, with 5,700 and 4,100 influencers mentioning their labels respectively.
Coming in at the back end of the list are two other fast-fashion giants, with Boohoo Group-owned PrettyLittleThing and Fashion Nova both getting about 3,900 influencers to promote their products.
Surprisingly, while Zara was tops among Instagram influencers, it was nowhere to be found on the TikTok list. Similarly, while H&M came in fourth on Statista’s top Instagram mentions with 46,100 influencers, Shein’s other major fast-fashion competitor did not rank on the TikTok version of the list. The same goes for the perennially popular Nike, which had 40,500 influencers post about its goods.
Influencer marketing is an area that brands need to approach cautiously as they promote themselves to a wider base of consumers. According to a recent survey from Matter Communications, 69 percent of 1,000 consumers surveyed say they are likely to trust a friend, family member or influencer recommendation over information coming directly from a brand.
Authenticity has been the best way to gain traction within influencer marketing campaigns. The Matter survey indicates that 39 percent of consumers say authenticity is the most important factor when learning about a company, making it important for influencer marketing campaigns to stay focused on what the consumer is interested in. Another 25 percent prioritize easily understood material, while 13 percent feel value alignment is important.
Shein app feature may have posed security concerns
While Shein’s mobile popularity knows no bounds, the security of the app remains in question. According to Microsoft, a version of the Shein shopping application in the Google Play store that has been downloaded more than 100 million times was unnecessarily accessing Android-device clipboard content, creating a potential security threat.
Shein complied with Microsoft Threat Intelligence’s request that it remove the feature from its Android app that accessed user clipboard, according to the software giant’s blog post. However, users need to update their apps in order to avoid the potential security lapse.
Considering mobile users often use the clipboard to copy and paste sensitive information, like passwords or payment information, clipboard data can be an attractive target for cyberattacks. Leveraging clipboards give attackers a way to collect target information and extract useful data.
The post said that there are examples of attackers hijacking and replacing the contents of a clipboard for malicious purposes, such as modifying a copied cryptocurrency wallet address before the user pastes it into a crypto wallet app or chat message. Moreover, these types of attacks misuse a legitimate system feature rather than exploit a vulnerability, making the issue more challenging to mitigate.
“Microsoft discovered that an old version of the Shein Android application periodically read the contents of the Android device clipboard and, if a particular pattern was present, sent the contents of the clipboard to a remote server,” the blog post said. “While we are not specifically aware of any malicious intent behind the behavior, we assessed that this behavior was not necessary for users to perform their tasks on the app.”
The development comes after Shein’s parent company was fined $1.9 million last year for failing to properly handle a data breach.