How Burberry soared on Digital Platforms?

Burberry was founded in 1856 by 21-year-old Thomas Burberry making it a ‘Heritage Luxury Brand.’ Burberry has achieved several milestones year after year, proving its worth to its target audience. Burberry has adapted to the dynamics of the market time and again, keeping up with the changes in the industries of fashion and technology.

With the rapid growth of the company and its consumers alike, Burberry has redesigned itself to communicate with its consumers, potential customers, and target audience. Moving ahead in time, and evolving to create a platform for two-way communication, Burberry made its place in the digital world through various digital media spaces. Along with Institutional Communication through fashion and luxury magazines such as Vogue and many more, Burberry has made itself available on Interpersonal Communication platforms such as Instagram and Twitter as well.

Burberry has made itself available on several digital platforms like Youtube with 357K subscribers, Instagram with 18 Million followers, Facebook with 17.5 Million followers, Twitter with 8.2 Million followers. These numbers are proof of how digital space has become a leveler for consumers and potential customers alike.

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The ‘Burberry Bespoke’ Campaign took customization to a new level. The brand enabled customers to choose the style, color, fabric, and materials of their trench coat on its website.

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Burberry used Snapchat to showcase exclusive content, becoming the first brand to use the ‘snapcode’ to get access to the collection. Sharing behind the scenes of the Mr. Burberry fragrance and going as far as debuting the SS 16 collection on Snapchat, a day before its release.

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The ‘Art of Trench’ campaign where the customers showcased its line of trenchcoats instead of models. And the pictures were shared on Facebook and Twitter. Users were also featured on the Burberry website’s main page for 15 minutes.

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Burberry partnered with Google to promote its line of lipsticks, Burberry Kisses. Keeping the millennial audience into focus, the collaboration made sending digital kisses sealing the envelope with a personal message to anyone in the world possible.

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Burberry envisioned creating an inter-personal relationship with the customers by modifying the in-store experience and combining the online e-commerce store in ‘Burberry Regent Street’ in London.

The 2019 Annual Strategic Report of Burberry had ‘Communication: Product First, Content Revolution, Focus on Experiences’ and ‘Digital: Content Creation and Storytelling, Personalised Luxury Services, Seamless Omnichannel Experiences, Accelerate Digital Partnership’ as two of the four Revenue Drivers of the company.

Evolving Burberry.com and delivering improved functionality and more immersive storytelling introducing fresh and curated editorial content with more frequency, and enhancing all their product pages with styling suggestions and easy-to-navigate product and brand information.

In line with their strategy, Burberry has made good progress with digital third parties. Over FY 2018/19 they partnered with Instagram and WeChat to launch social shopping for the first time. Burberry became the first luxury brand to integrate its full Chinese stock onto the WeChat platform, allowing customers to pay through WePay. It also became one of only six luxury businesses to partner with Instagram on the launch of an integrated shopping experience, allowing customers to navigate products within the app and use integrated payment systems, such as Apple Pay. It has also continued to deepen its relationship with Farfetch, enabling customers to access their full range of inventory in more than 150 countries, and rolling out access to its regional fulfillment hub for US customers. The same business model was used as a template to launch with additional third parties over the year, serving customers across Europe, the US, and China.

“Our communications approach is product-led and tailored for social channels. In this phase, we have focused on re-energizing our brand and reaching consumers through influencers and key opinion leaders. Key focuses for FY 2018/19 were bringing Riccardo Tisci’s creative vision to life, re-igniting brand heat, and shifting consumer perceptions.” (2019 Annual Strategic Report of Burberry.)