From a user base of 130 million in 2013, Instagram grew ten-fold to cross the 1 billion mark in June 2018, transforming what was originally conceived as a photo-sharing app into the social media platform of choice for influencers, advertisers, and brands.

Spending an average of 28 minutes each day on Instagram, 89 percent of these 1 billion-plus monthly users – 65 percent of whom are under 35 years of age – rely on Instagram, and its 500,000 influencers, to help them decide what products or services to buy.

With over 200 million Instagrammers visiting at least one business profile daily and a third of the most viewed stories being from businesses, Instagram has a potential advertising reach of 849.3 million users. Little wonder, then, that Instagram is today considered the world’s most powerful marketing tool, with more than 25 million business profiles – including an estimated 75.3 percent of US businesses — already using it and countless others clambering aboard every day. Its advertising revenue, generated by over 2 million monthly advertisers, touched USD 20 billion in 2019.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic and its attendant woes became an all-pervading global reality, trends in the 21st-century market place clearly indicated the growing importance of online shopping and eCommerce – and the crucial role that social media plays in this development. The current somber backdrop, against which the world is struggling to define the ‘new normal’, has, ironically, served to highlight this importance and encourage efforts to further expand this sphere with a greater sense of urgency. 

Keeping pace with, and often anticipating, events, Instagram has evolved beyond the selfie-pets-food focus it began within 2010 into the full-fledged marketing channel it is today. Its burgeoning userbase —  and a resultant increase in traffic — saw it change from chronological feeds to an algorithm in 2016. Acknowledging its pre-eminence as a marketing platform, Instagram unveiled a slew of new features in 2019 to assist retailers, including advanced analytics, innovative methods to drive traffic from Instagram stories, a new stand-alone video platform – IGTV- and, most significantly,  the introduction of the shoppable feature, making Instagram an e-commerce platform where customers can purchase products directly off posts.

With 72 percent of users reporting that they make a purchase decision after seeing something on Instagram, retailers view it as a perfect platform to consolidate their brand aesthetic and engage in direct conversation with existing and potential customers —  and seize the pivotal opportunity it presents to build trust and rapport.

Recognising the vital part visual presence plays in complementing eCommerce, as Instagram’s appeal and success have borne out, retailers have responded by exploring newer and more creative ways to appeal to millennial sensibilities. 

In the years leading up to 2020, retailers worked with their design teams – in-house or outsourced – on two broad fronts to capture the imagination and attention of customers. By creating Instagram-worthy physical retail spaces to attract and excite customers, and alongside, a digital presence to showcase — through regular, often daily, updates — their line of products and services, couched in a distinctive signature story. 

Both endeavour’s yielded spectacular results, as designers, with a bold sense of innovation and aesthetic finesse, created digital and physical spaces to court customers. 

From San Francisco (Museum of Ice Cream), Los Angeles (Alchemy Works) and New York (Bellocq Tea Atelier) to London (Aesop, Alex Eagle, Word on the Water), Paris Laduree), Berlin (Bikini), Milan (Corso Como), Madrid (Casa Gonzalez & Gonzalez) and Lisbon (Avida Portuguesa) and from Dubai (Charlotte Tilbury) to Tokyo (Moreru Mignon) and Seoul (Innisfree), retailers, have, through intelligent and innovative design, created Instagram habitats, or ‘Insta-interiors’, as these spaces are known, for the faithful to congregate and celebrate the brand and its attributes.

The ongoing pandemic has, in general, slowed down foot traffic in these brick and mortar spaces, but reports suggest that certain retailers have, by inviting a range of fashion-focused social leaders or influencers onto their premises, sought to highlight what the brand has been doing to make the store safer and reemphasize the pleasures of physical shopping. Others are making use of their properties in a different way. In what is being described as ‘personal shopping for the Zoom generation’, off-site customers are connecting via video chat to onsite advisors from leading brands Customers seeking a more thorough exploration can book a tour with an in-house personal shopper. After all, the adaptability of the human race has never been in question. 

The digital space, too, has witnessed some remarkable developments. Being almost entirely image-driven, unlike most other marketing channels, Instagram demands that all content be eye-catching and consistent.  Built around carefully crafted stories – embodying the retailer’s values and virtues, matters of crucial importance to today’s aspirational customer – each facet highlights and enhances the retailer’s distinct and unique identity. The Instagram pages of Brit + Co, Onnit, Privacy Please, Bulletproof, and other such leading retailers present brilliant examples of this how this can be, tastefully and successfully, achieved. 

All of this is not, however, as easy as it may sound. Traditionally, designers have worked closely with retailers to develop a comprehensive design brief from which they proceed to the end goal. But, in the case of ‘Insta-interiors’, the process is not quite as smooth. Designers are now often asked to create a space with very little direction other than it to be “Instagram worthy”.  

But one thing is certain:  Instagram has underscored the importance and the power of design – whether it is in wayfinding or branding or experiential design – in optimizing its use as a marketing tool. And, as a consequence, it has provided designers with the opportunity to explore and expand the realm of creativity with more focused commercial objectives into the future.