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When it comes to marketing, Burberry is ahead of the pack.
The brand used technology to drive its digital strategy. It collaborated with tech companies, streamed content on Snapchat and maximized social media.
The results?
Burberry achieved a one-year growth of 86% and a brand value of $3.38 billion.
What are these marketing strategies? How did the brand pull it off? Read on to find out.
1. Burberry Bespoke - enabled customers to customize their trench coat
Burberry took customization to a whole new level with their Burberry Bespoke campaign.
The brand enabled customers to choose the style, color, fabric and materials of their trench coat.
Customization is easy. Users indicate their sex first on the brand website. After which, a model appears onscreen and the customers can design their trench coat on real-time. They can choose from 10 style combinations and from several options that allow different looks.
2. Burberry Kisses - send a virtual kiss to anyone in the world
For starters, Burberry Kisses is a line of lipstick launched by Burberry.
The brand wanted to promote its beauty product. At the same time, it aimed to explore the concept of love through a kiss—the most common symbol of human affection
Burberry understood that their millennial target market loved technology and the online world. So, it partnered with Google to create a tech experience like no other.
The collaboration’s result was a fairly simple campaign. With the use of Google's facial recognition technology, Burberry enabled users to send personal messages, sealed with their own virtual kiss. The kiss was captured via a webcam, and the computer replicated a user's lips. Once the message was written and sealed with the user’s kiss, the message was sent.
What's great about sending these messages, is that customers can see their messages travel in a 3D landscape. They can witness landmarks and street view images, which made the experience a lot better.
Not surprisingly, Burberry Kisses had phenomenal results. It garnered 253,000 search results and users from 13,000 cities sent a kiss within the first 10 days.
3. Uses Snapchat to Deliver Exclusive Content
Burberry knows what millennials love.
This is why it used Snapchat to promote its fragrances and collections.
The brand provided users with a "snapcode" that they could use to unlock exclusive content. From the content of its Mr. Burberry fragrance to the behind the scenes events of its campaign, Burberry provided all the juicy details in a snap! In fact, the brand's Spring/Summer 2016 collection debuted on Snapchat, a day before it's release.
So, what can we learn from Burberry?
You can never go wrong with Snapchat.
4. Art of the Trench - gave consumers '15 minutes of fame'
Instead of using models and celebrities to showcase its glorious line of trench coats, Burberry used its customers to showcase the brand's iconic products.
This is the “Art of the Trench” campaign in a nutshell.
Burberry created a standalone social media platform where customers could upload photos of themselves—wearing their trench coats. Users were featured on the site's main page for 15 minutes. Afterwards, customers could like and share these photos on Facebook or Twitter. They could also filter the images by trench type, colour, gender, weather, popularity and visit the Burberry site to purchase the product.
What's amazing about the campaign is that Burberry did not explicitly promote the product. Rather, it relied on word-of-mouth through social media ad The Sartorialist.
This strategy enabled the campaign to have an organic feel.
The takeaway? Word-of-mouth is always the best promotion.
5. Burberry Regent Street - combined online and in-store shopping
In 2012, Burberry blurred the line between online and in-store shopping.
The brand opened the Burberry Regent Street in London to provide users with a unique ecommerce experience.
"Burberry Regent Street brings our digital world to life in a physical space for the first time, where customers can experience every facet of the brand through immersive multimedia content exactly as they do online," said Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts in an interview. "Walking through the doors is just like walking into our website. It is Burberry World Live."
Image: Vogue[/caption]
Customers can visit the store with items saved from their online account. In addition, the interiors of the store reveal a huge screen where catwalk shows can be watched live. The store also has various mirrors with images featuring the product's photos, as seen on the catwalk or in a movie.
There’s no doubt that a visit at the Burberry Regent Street is an upgraded experience of shopping on a website.
Here’s a recap of what we’ve learned from Burberry’s success:
- Enable product customization
- Collaborate with tech companies
- Use Snapchat to deliver exclusive content
- Use word-of-mouth marketing
- Combine online and in-store shopping
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Monique Danao is a writer and content creator with an expertise in marketing and SEO. When she's not writing, you'll find her enjoying funky food, listening to music and marketing startups.
