Digital Marketing Strategy of Retailer Burberry

Digital Marketing  is already an established feature in marketing strategies of large global brands, the debate of “traditional marketing is dead- social media hitting marketers and business by storm”(Lee, 2012) is over now. These days every consumer regardless their age bears at least one digital device which connects them to internet.  If you don’t have online presence you are losing major part of the consumer. For that reason every business has realised the strengths and penetration, social media has on the customers. We can witness these ourselves as almost every retailer from Independent night clubs or pharmacy shop to multinational retailer’s participation in our social media homepage/site. Based on the present situation we can clearly justify the statement that “digital marketing will soon be just marketing” by Dermot Nolan head of Moondance Business Consultants. More and more retailers are making transition to digital and allocating more spend to digital, hence the Digital marketing is the new normal for marketers. There are not many textbook definitions explaining what digital marketing is; however the basic principles of marketing still apply in digital marketing to result an in depth understanding about consumer behaviour to business.

There are two forms of digital marketing approach (Martin Brett, 2003) Such as, pull digital marketing, where customer actively seeks information from the brand and push marketing, where marketers’ displays the information even though customer did not asked for it. These approaches are executed in various digital platforms and it’s broken down in five different categories such as;

Various Digital Platforms	Brief	Digital Marketing Approach
Affiliate Marketing	Retailer can advertise or sell their products through other retailer website. In return a retailer will pay the website owner per click or per transaction happened through site.	Push and Pull approach
Display Advertising	This is the graphical advertisement which is appears in right side corner of the webpages. In other words this is called digital banners displayed on various websites. These digital banners can be in form of text, audio, video, Image or content.	Push approach
Email Marketing	This is the low cost digital marketing platform used by the retailer’s only if the customer willing to leave their email details.	Pull approach
Search Marketing	Retailer optimises the search engine in order to improve site traffic (more people visit their site).	Push and Pull approach
Social media	Social media or social networking is where people have a conversation about anything with their friends and foes within their community or outside their community.	Push and Pull approach

As you can see there are various platforms to execute digital marketing activity for marketers. When discussing about the digital marketing in general almost every marketer tend talk about social media than any other platforms. The rational for that is according to Forrester research 2008 “3 out of 4 individuals use social media to connect with their friends”. The affordable digital device allows mass population to connect with their friends and family using internet and social media. Facebook and twitter is the commonly agreed stage for social media activities, there are various facts and figures presenting number of people using these social media sites in a daily basis we will not explain the “numbers” using social media. Yet this gives clear understanding that social media is bigger platforms for retailers. It is clearly known that social media has the potential to reach the masses and every retailer is drawn towards social media marketing greatly, but it’s not clear how effective retailers marketing programme is in social media.

The structure of this essay is layered on that thought; hence we are examining a retailer’s social media strategy and explore how effective they are conveying brand message and awareness using social media.

About Burberry

Burberry is an iconic British brand established in 1856 well known for its famous trench coat and distinctive tartan pattern even today and the most fascinating fact is that Burberry is more than 156 year old brand and still appealing to the current generation. Moreover this is the rationale for selecting this brand for this essay with such a long history how Burberry manages to stay relevant among different age group customers enthrals every marketer’s interest.

Burberry Facts

Burberry Trades under three different brands

• Burberry Prosum (High Price)
• Burberry London (Mid range)
• Burberry Brit (Entry Level Products)

Other Detailed Facts and Figures

Total Number of Stores	500
Number of Operating Countries	50 Countries Worldwide
Operating Channels	·         Exclusive Retail stores, ·         Concession Store, ·         Wholesale, ·         Licencing and ·         Digital Sales
Product Mix	·         Men's Wear ·         Women’s Wear ·         Children Wear ·         Accessories
Total Revenue	3000 in which 71% of the revenue comes from retail stores. (Look the Image below)
Out Performing Market	Asia Pacific with the revenue of 745 Million which equals 30% of total revenue.
Revenue Generating Product	Accessories generate revenue of 734 Million which accounts for 29% of the total revenue.

Till 2006 Burberry was struggling to set the brand position as luxury brand and it was considered as out-dated old British brand but In recent years Burberry has transformed their brand image from out-dated business with out-dated fashion to global icon brand (Ahrendts, 2013).  As result brand Burberry is ranked as 72^nd brand in top global brands by (Interbrand, 2014) and by the same research group Burberry ranked as 10^th Luxury brand in the world with the revenue of the $3000 million.

The above chart clearly represents the Burberry growth after its CEO Angela Ahrendts took charge to expand Burberry. Angela Ahrendts explained how she transformed the Burberry brand image by centralising the design team and shifting the focus on core innovative products. Subsequently   (Ahrendts, 2013) agrees that after embracing social media and innovative technology Burberry was able to reach the mass and create unique experience for the brand, this helped the brand to stay relevant to the millennial customers as well. As a result today Burberry has more than 3 million followers on twitter(T B Stats) and 17 million followers on Facebook  (F B Stats).  This is the phenomenal reach for the brand with such old wing, among young generation in social media. Burberry should be doing something right in social media due to which they have so many followers digitally.  Hence we will analysis the Burberry social media activities and strategies to understand how that helps Burberry to create strong brand image.

Market Positioning & Target audience of Burberry

Burberry has four different product collections: - Menswear, Womenswear, children’s wear and Accessories. According to (Jacobsen, 2012) Burberry products fall into two main categories “fashion or continuity”. Fashion products are those which are developed based on the market trend analysis or forecast, continuity products are those which is present every season such as base line trench coat. Burberry brand is positioned as functional luxury segment you can see this in the product line of the Burberry with amount of detailing in their design for mid-range products and entry products as well. This is the reason Burberry products is applicable to the 25-year old to 65-year old consumer considering their diversified products and price range we can conclude that Burberry products appeal to consumers of all age groups but these consumers are divided by the pricing of the products.

Burberry Marketing Strategy

Angela Ahrendts adopted a strategy for Burberry to develop customer base by offering “Functional Luxury” products to create a global reach during the time global recession. In addition Burberry decide to make use of their Heritage brand image and trust resulting which Burberry re-vamped their trench coat design and retained it as the base product for Burberry in all apparel products segments. Moreover she found that Burberry stores does not provide any experience from the stores, hence to create exciting experience to all generations of customers Burberry decided to create hyper experience for the brand customers thought all the channels. They use lot of celebrity endorsement to market their brand products and Burberry invites the celebrity to the store along with their consumers. The most noted thing in Burberry marketing strategy is that they use more digital approach to market their products. You cannot see the Burberry products on Tv or billboards but you see the Burberry products advertisements on fashion websites or fashion magazines websites or social media pages deploying the products they are showcasing for the season before it reaches the store. Burberry took one step ahead of showcasing runway stocks they started selling the runway stocks during the catwalk show itself. This means that they are creating experience to customers in store as well beyond store.  Based on the brands action we can conclude that Burberry marketing strategy is to create hyper experience with accessible luxury products thought all the channels. Therefore this is the main reason why Burberry brand creates excitement among the customer of all age.

Burberry Digital Activity

Burberry Social Media Participation Timeline

 

Digital Campaign of Burberry

Art of the Trench

Burberry’s 1^st digital campaign was the “Art of the Trench” which enthralled brands loyal trench coat customers. The main motto of the campaign was to attract the loyal trench coat customers by inviting them to post their selfish to the campaign site and that resulted in social media sharing. Burberry encouraged the customer to vote their favourite images that allowed customers to share and comment on the products and people wearing them. It is believed that this campaign helped Burberry to gain more followers in 2009. Burberry has taken the success of campaign one step further by using the customer selfie to their e-commerce site making full use of user generated content to generate revenue.

Burberry Acoustic

The Burberry Acoustic campaign showcase the young British musical band consumer can watch this video and enjoy the music showcased by Burberry young bands and this leverage the social media participation of sharing, commenting and liking the videos. This campaign clearly signifies the Burberry efforts to reach the younger audience, all the Burberry acoustic bands wears the Burberry garments. This eventually creates the product buzz among the customers as well.

Burberry Kisses

This campaign is example from Burberry that these campaigns are not created to make money but to engage the customer to their brand. Burberry has recently partnered with Google in 2013, campaign allows customer to get a digital print of customer kiss using webcam or smartphone they can send it to their loved ones. (http://kisses.burberry.com/)

Burberry Fashion Collections

This campaign proves that Burberry is different from conventional luxury brands allowing customers to see the fashion collection of Burberry from runway/catwalk or fashion shows live in youtube and Burberry website. This campaign not only allows them witnessing latest fashion collection but also allows the customer to buy the goods from online. This excites the customers and this excitement turns into loyalty of visiting Burberry stores or Burberry e-commerce site. 

Consumer discussion on Social Media about Burberry Campagins.

There is no second opnion that burberry has revolutionized the way brand interacts with consumers, they have proved to be different from the conventional luxury brands. Giving a diffininte and exciting experience. We belive that luxury brands is no longer difined by the rarity or price of the product but they are defined by the unique pelsures and experience they receive from the brand. Burberry not only creates good social media content but also they create good customer experiences at every point of the customer jouney.

Burberry Secert of Success

Undoubtedly the burberry media content is very engaging they use user generated content to spread the awarness among the customer. By adopting this strategy, brand can spread awarness to various number of people ranging from customers, asperational buyers and non fans of the brand (Lipsman et al., 2012). This can be one of the important ratonale for 16 million burberry facebook  followers. Buberry not only uses celebraity like Emma Watson as communication tool but they are using digital campagins such as Burberry acoustic and burberry kisses to reach millions of young generation customers.

If we notice the digital marketing activity and campanigs of burberry their are two notable common elements.  Firstly, Burberry is not differenciating the digital marketing to other marketing activities and secondly burberry is linking digital campaings and promotion to all the trading channels. Thus brand intregrating digital to luxury to create overall experience. Brand launched its mobile site in 2011 and didn’t stop there. It has also fitted in-store sales persons with nessary degital device to create a physical expression of its online environment where customers can engage with the products both online and in-person, customers can customize their apparel in store and try on RFID-tagged items in front of a mirror in the store that projects selected apprel  video displayed fashion show. It’s a true melding of online and real-life worlds and has resulted in converting from british brand to global brand. Christopher bailey  burberry head desginer says “it is all about overall experience” to the customers, without a second thought customer are entralled and excited by the expirence they get with burberry and burberry ability connect all different channels into one channel keeps them engagged and loyal to the brand.

To put in nutshell, burberry  sets the clear example to all marketing students that content marketing alone will not create brand awarness and loyality. It is linking the digital media content and campagins to all trading channels which drives customer to store/E-comerece site by creating overall experience throught the customer journey.

Reference

Ahrendts, A (2013) Burberry's Ceo on Turning an Aging British Icon into a Global Luxury Brand [Online]. Available: http://hbr.org/2013/01/burberrys-ceo-on-turning-an-aging-british-icon-into-a-global-luxury-brand/ar/1 [Accessed 4 April]

Interbrand (2014) Best Global Brands 2013 [Online]. Available: http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/2013/top-100-list-view.aspx [Accessed 30 March 2014]

Jacobsen, L M (2012) Burberry Marketing Case Study [Online]. Available: http://laurenmjacobson.wordpress.com/case-studies/burberry-case-study/ [Accessed 5th April]

Lee, B (2012) Marketing Is Dead [Online]. Available: http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/08/marketing-is-dead/ [Accessed 29th March]

Lipsman, A, Mud, G, Rich, M and Bruich, S (2012) The Power Of "Like": How Brands Reach (and Influence) Fans through Social-Media Marketing. Journal of Advertising Research, 52(1), 40-52.

Martin Brett, J V D. (2003). E-Mail Marketing Expioratory Insights from Finiand, Journal of Advertising Research (Vol. 43, pp. 293-300).

Revenue, B  [Online]. Available: http://www.burberryplc.com/about_burberry/group-overview [Accessed 4th April]

Stats, F B  [Online]. Available: https://www.facebook.com/burberry [Accessed 4th April]

Stats, T B  [Online]. Available: http://twittercounter.com/compare/Burberry/Louis%20Vuitton%20/week/followers [Accessed 4th April]

Other general reference

Burberry online Marketing “http://www.strutta.com/blog/Burberry-online-marketing/” Access date 2^nd April 2014

How Burberry doing digital effectively “http://www.psfk.com/2013/07/burberry-digital-marketing.html#!DjRrn” Access date 1^st April 2014

Burberry CEO Interview “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krQG2Hceov4”

Burberry CEO on “The Secrets behind Burberry’s Growth” “https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj68gnJO3FA” Access Date 9^th April 2014

Christopher Bailey interview with “The Guardian” press “http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/partner-zone-brand-union/burberry-digital-strategy-brand” Access date 9^th April 2014