The first truly digital luxury brand: why Burberry gets it? With the launch of The Art of the trench, Burberry certainly became the first truly digital luxury brand. The first luxury brand to really understand and adopt digital behaviours to conceive and support its brand online communications. There are many reasons why it became a clear success and digital is certainly one piece of a bigger picture.

1. Case study: Burberry
The first truly digital luxury brand
All images belong to Burberry. Crafted by @DigitalPlanner. London. June 2011

2. Case in point.
Burberry created its own community inspired from its core product:
the trench coat. The company describes the site ‘Art of the Trench’
as ‘a living document of the trench coat and the people who wear it’.
Impact on awareness? Between its launch in November 2009 and
mid-2010 the site notched up more than 7M visits.
On facebook, it took a year to have 1M fans, 6 mth to double that
figure and today they reach out to 6.4M fans, took them 2 years to
get there.
Value creation? Brand growth: 86%. It’s ranked 4th in fastest
growing brands by MillWardBrown. Revenues in the second half of
this year had risen by 30% to £860m (sce: Guardian).

3. Why is this exceptional?
For a luxury brand the web is a very tricky environment.
The nature of the medium itself contradicts all the vocabulary of
a luxury brand is trying to express itself with:
- It is not exclusive. Anyone can enjoy the same experience.
- The brand cannot fully control how the final experienced is
packaged.
- The consumer decides on how he wants to interact: he can pick
the device, the browser, he’s in full control with the product etc.
- Any online brand could benefit from the same online
experience. Contrary to the retail environement where you can
decide to have only one store on the Champs-Élysées, for
example.

4. “Attracting the Millennial customer to
luxury started two years ago — I said
that we can either get crushed or ride
the greatest wave of our life”
- Ms. Angela Ahrendts - CEO Burberry

5. 5 things they’ve done right

6. No.1. The Sartorialist.
Art of the Trench showcases images from professional
fashion photographers, Magnum photographers and the
public. One of the key ingredient is that Burberry leveraged
a digital trend that was already successul among its target
audience: street style photo blogging.
Plus, they added to the experience contributions from
celebrated fashion photo-blogger Scott Schuman, better
known as The Sartorialist. He was already a recognized
authority and influencer among this target market when he
came in as a support to launch the Burberry platform.
By doing so, the brand earned instant credibility among this
highly selective online audience.

7. No.2. They acknowledged.
As IWC recently did with their new website, they took into
consideration their target audience. They offered an experience
that matches the digital knowledge and habits of their audiences.
The experience invites users in an easy, intuitive, pleasant flow.
Outside of the Art of the Trench platform, the website also
provides end-users with a great only shopping experience. UX,
options, images have been treated a well as the offline
merchandising would be, which is not something common in that
industry.

8. No.3. Connected content.
Every images post is ready to be connected and shared through
the internet. Original content is created and spread online
supporting the awareness of the brand online.
Like’, ‘Comment’, ‘Share’ all functions making it possible for
one to:
1- get the word out online,
2- borrow from the Burberry brand and reflect back on your
online status as someone who has great taste, fashion-sense
etc.

9. No.4. Fuelled by love.
Burberry based its social media communications strategy on sending
out one single message that aligns with the brand DNA (British
roots) and the product (trench coat). They embedded it in a digital
environement using its code and vocabulary properly, all steps being
there for the brand to succeed.
With such a digital statement the buzz was there day 1 (Nov. 9,
2009) with 1.5M results in Google when searching for ‘art of the
trench’. Oh, and of course fans were there too because at the end of
the day what fuels all this is a true passion for one of the most
inspiring fashion brand.

10. No.5. They embraced it.
The unique democratic positioning of the brand allowed it to
articulate a digital vocabulary that is unique and consistant at
every touchpoint.
We’ve briefly surfed through the social media initiative, but this
is true for many other initiatives: the brand launched its owned
Youtube channel in 2005, they orchestrated livestream fashion
shows with 3D... Not only the communications are digital but
the way the company operates is truly digital.

11. Key take-aways
As a luxury brand, Burberry showed the industry that luxury
brands can engage with their audiences online. The days of big
flash story-telling websites might be gone as new venues are
catching-up the attention of the digital savvy luxury consumer:
http://www.net-a-porter.com/ for instance.
Through its digital commintment, the brand delivered on its
‘PRORSUM’ statement.
The more niche your community is, the more successful it will
be. Social media is a great tool to reach out to like-minded
crowds that can posivetly impact your online presence.
Brand, culture and consumers are brought together and are
part of the same story.

12. “We could not have been more wrong
in our expectations of the internet”
- Alex Bolen.
Chief executive Oscar de la Renta, quoted in The Economist, on the news that the brand had
received an online order for an $80,000 sable coat from a new customer

13. What could be next?

14. The next Monocle?
"Burberry is no longer just a fashion company - today they
are a thriving media enterprise. It is successful not just
because it makes great clothes but because it understands
the importance of sparking interest in the community and
using social media to engage and delight their consumers."
- J. Shields, VP at Facebook

15. About the beauty line?
The recent launch of the cosmetic line is very interesting,
very little luxury brands have succeeded in retailing their
cosmetics line online.
How Burberry is going to express its uniqueness in the
digital world outside of its key product - trench coat?

16. Getting mobile
Burberry has a huge potential through the mobile world via
the Instagrams world.
The Creative Class is currently taking over some mobile
time, could Burberry leverage this trend?
Platforms like Instagram could help it go a step further and
move The Art of The Trench to a new mobile stage.

17. Thank you.
Crafted by Isabelle Quevilly. @DigitalPlanner
Image credits: Google Images, Burberry fans, Burberry/Testino.
London. June 2011.