[THE FOLLOWING IS PLACEHOLDER TEXT, PER LESLIE on 8/18]
Declare what your brand will stand for. This one was easy for Burberry's new leadership team, led by Ahrendts back in 2006. It all tied to getting back to the glamorous fashion roots that had movie stars and the rich and famous in the 50s and 60s proudly showing off their Burberry trench coat and, in effect, selling the coat for the company-what we call "earned media" today. Trench coats represented less than 20% of their sales in 2006 and the "coat as fashion" trend exploded in the mid-2000s. Harking back to the romance of Burberry in a modern world became the brand's mantra, and "being the leading, globally relevant, luxury British brand" became the brand's aspiration. When you choose very purposeful words like leading, globally, relevant, luxury and British, you have, in effect, chosen the hallmarks of what your experience has to deliver upon.
Choose a target wisely. When Burberry began to relaunch their brand and truly own their new positioning, it would have been easy to choose the middle-aged man who probably already owned an old trench coat as a target. If they had gone that route, though, 2% annual growth would have continued to be the norm.
However, Ahrendts and Bailey broke free of tradition and declared they would build a brand, product and experience aimed at Millennials. Bailey stated, "Most of us are very digital in our daily lives now. Burberry is a young team, and this is instinctive to us. To the younger generation who are coming into adulthood now, this is all they know." While it can be unfair to group them all together, more often than not Millennials are the influencers, tastemakers, official critics and reviewers in society today. They also happen to be incredibly brand loyal as a collective whole, with an increasingly attractive level of disposable income. If delivered well, this target would pay dividends to Burberry for years to come.
Design an experience that delivers your brand promise to the target audience. Once the first two objectives were in order, developing an experience became directionally straightforward. It's not a simply a matter of fixing broken links in the customer journey, it is about understanding the customers' needs and motivations and designing an experience that best meets that need. For the most part, high-end fashion had been about the fashion house telling you what the latest fashions were and ordering you to like it/buy it.
Burberry looked at the target customer and realized that Millennials are more influenced by peers than by anything that a fashion house might have to say. And discovery, advocacy and sharing among communities do a lot of the heavy lifting of brand-building. While a company can make a potential customer aware of its brand, current consumers and advocates help sell it.
One customer journey innovation is Burberry's The Art of The Trench, described as "a living celebration of the Burberry trench coat and the people who wear it." This platform successfully positions the customer as a hero, and provides a forum for him or her to proudly show off their trench coats and individual styling via selfies posted on Instagram or Pinterest. Thousands of selfies have been posted, with comments, likes and dislikes and the opportunity to shift any one of those pictures into a purchase.
Burberry also recognized that music is so interwoven into customers' lives that it created Burberry Acoustic, a platform for new British bands looking to get a break. A few years ago, you might have seen Jake Bugg before he made it big or The Daydream Club posting videos on the Burberry Acoustic website that streamed to Burberry stores around the world. Burberry's authentic dedication to giving young British bands an opportunity to break through, using all of its multi-media platforms, is not only on-brand but plays right into the Millennial sweet spot of getting access to music in unique and innovative ways.
Create a branded experience, branded signature touchpoints and the organizational alignment to empower employees to bring the brand to life in unique and surprising ways.
Online, Burberry created Burberry Bespoke, which allows you to design your own customized coat by choosing from hundreds of different options, from the buttons on the outside to the lining in the inside. In the store, many products are lined with an RFID tag that, when triggered, will launch a video about its craftsmanship. A dress taken into the changing room may trigger a runway video showing this jacket/dress combination on a model
Top photo © Burberry