During the first decade of the 2000s, Burberry has been living a brand perception nightmare.

Back in the days, people in Great Britain started associating the 156 years-old brand with the chavs, a particular ‘tribe’ of British teenagers that used to wear Burberry caps as a distinctive uniform. Who are the Chavs? They probably are the worst stereotyped category of people in the UK: violent soccer fanatics; low-class and poorly educated heavy drinkers, smokers and drug takers. The brand perception was so damaged that Burberry had to remove the baseball caps from sale, and they had to reduce the visibility of the brand’s distinctive pattern.

Burberry is not the first and won’t be the last label to attract unwanted promoters: Abercrombie & Fitch offered to pay Jersey Shore’s star Michael ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino to stop wearing their clothes. People can consider ditching a product, if the celebrity endorsing it misbehaves, or if the people that use it doesn’t look cool.

Back to our story, we can add that – for a very classy and traditional fashion brand like Burberry – the association with such a ‘peculiar’ category of consumers can be really annoying.

 In recent years they strongly took control of their brand communication, and Burberry is now finally losing its connection to chavs imagery. Of course it happened step-by-step, as you can see in this Daily Mail article dated back in 2008. But there’s something even more important: nowadays Burberry is not just a high-level fashion brand, it’s also becoming a booming multimedia company.

They do not only make high quality clothing design, they also are raising public interest and using social networks to attract and engage customers. With live streams and appealing new web initiatives, the brand has now millions of new fans, reaching a more and more international audience (especially considering that less than 10% of sales are in the UK).

But what are they doing so right?

Christopher Bailey, Chief Creative Officer of Burberry, joined the fashion company in May 2001. Eleven years later, he has revolutionized the brand in many aspects, including its digital strategy. He seems to be one step ahead.

First of all, Burberry knows how to take advantage of the pride of being Brit by championing British talent, models, musicians, and appealing personalities such as actress Emma Watson.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoK8yZ6L9fo&feature=relmfu

In addition, the British label launched Burberry Acoustic, a program where Bailey selects British recording artists (such as the band the Feeling) and promotes their songs. Let’s forget the chavs: the British heritage is now complete.

Now let’s talk about their marketing-oriented digital strategy. Burberry is also innovating its online customer experience. The brand already has more than 10 million followers on Facebook and has launched this video to celebrate it:

More than 600,000 people follow Burberry on Twitter so the fashion brand has officially become the most popular luxury label on Facebook and Twitter.

The company will continue focusing on new digital marketing strategies: 60% of the marketing budget is for digital campaigns (three times more than the market average), according to the Financial Times.

Its digital efforts include: an online shop (in 45 countries and six languages​​), its own platforms (such as The Art of Trench), Burberry Acoustic music, multimedia content for the different social networks, live broadcast of the catwalks, music downloads on iTunes.

A special mention for their presence in China: as we often say (like in this post) many brands started to not only consider Facebook and Twitter as the only viable social media platforms, especially in those countries where the big slice of the pie is taken by local social networks. In the Chinese market Burberry is active on Kaixin001 and Douban – two of the several Chinese Facebooks – and on Youku, the Chinese version of YouTube.

The brand has also a strong presence on Sina Weibo, which we can consider the Chinese version of Twitter. Burberry is the most engaging fashion brand in this 250 million users platform: their conversation strategy is based on the power of influencers, and on the integration with offline event (as we can see here).

The Facebook page has been used to engage people in many different ways, for example, the launch of its fragrance Burberry Body through this social networking service, instead of using shiny fashion magazines. The Facebook promotion offered a free sample of the fragrance to people allowing the brand’s application to access their data on Facebook. Its TV ad campaign supporting the launch of the fragrance broke first on Burberry’s YouTube channel so people were able to share it in social networks.

Burberry has created the ‘tweetwalk’ and other fashion brands are following. The British brand opened his collection spring/summer 2011 by showing pictures and videos of the catwalk show on Twitter, generating a huge amount of interest. The show was broadcast in Picadilly Circus as well, making it even more public and popular. The company also distributed a backstage lookbook on Twitter before the press had the opportunity to do it.

Burberry has continued presenting its catwalks in this way, allowing worldwide Facebook and Twitter users to share their personal comments in real time.

And once the customer sees the collection, he/she can buy a dress (which was sold on their website 72 hours later) and within six to eight weeks he/she will get the item. That breaks with the traditional model of fashion where new products are shown to the public with more than one year in advance. In fact, Bailey criticizes the very concept of ‘seasons’, since while it is winter in Europe and North America, in the Southern hemisphere it’s summertime.

Burberry talks about its products through Facebook but also makes customers feel part of the company and creates engagement. However, the brand has no two-way communication on Facebook (users are not able to upload their own content to the Burberry wall and the brand doesn’t reply to comments on Facebook). Contact with the fan base is possible by chatting on Burberry.com or through its personalized customer service. Its content is the key to connect with fans.

“A brand is not just about product, it’s about experience as well, and experiences need to come from the center of a community” Bailey said (source: Mashable.com).

Burberry has also created a very simple and attractive platform for devotees of the trench coat: Artofthetrench.com allows sharing pictures of the fans wearing their trench and people can comment on each other’s photos. It’s another strategy to make the people feel close to the label. Moreover, the famous fashion blogger, Scott Schuman, took part of this project by taking pictures all over the world of people wearing the item.

Lately, Burberry has allowed the ‘mass customisation’ by launching Burberry Bespoke, a service where customers are able to design and order their own unique trench coat. Customers select the cut, fabric, color, linings and trimmings they want and four to eight weeks later the coat arrives… And those who can’t afford to buy a trench can still create a design and share it on Twitter and Facebook!

Is Burberry afraid to ‘cheapen’ the brand by letting the entire world in through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and live streams? I don’t think so; the label recognizes the opportunities that social media can offer, making the brand more appealing. I think Burberry has more control of their reputation and image by being more open.

After all, a lot of luxury brands are opening their communication to different kinds of digital experiences: let’s think about the champagne brand Veuve Cliquot’s Wish You Where Here, an interactive page with both brand-produced and user-generated contents, revolving around the high-society lifestyle that the expensive beverage wants to be associated with. Or the Mon Monogram initiative by Louis Vuitton (another LVHM brand), where users could create a personalized design (including their initials!) for the worldwide recognizable LV bags.

Burberry’s latest move? They will open their largest store in London for the Olympics this year in Regent Street, one of the major shopping streets in the city. There will be millions of people in town looking for a real British experience and a piece of Britain to take home with them: what souvenir would be better than a Burberry trench?

Burberry has earned the nickname of ‘digital genius’ according to the L2 think tank, which publishes a ranking of digital competence by evaluating websites, marketing strategies and efforts in social networks and mobile applications.

I think they deserve it, since the brand seems to know very well that digital communication and technology are part of the way everybody lives, and they know how to exploit it.

That’s why, after overcoming some serious perception issues, Burberry has become a true pioneer in the digital branding.

Jessica Noguez