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Burberry

AS fashion launches go, this one was small. So small that even die-hard fashion fanatics might not yet know it ever happened.

Last month Burberry launched Burberry Bespoke, a service that allows customers to design and order their own unique trench coat. Customers select the cut, fabric, colour, linings and trimmings they want (to ensure no one orders a combination that might be considered "off brand" certain choices are removed as you progress through the ordering process) and four to eight weeks later the coat arrives.

And it's all done online.

While the program is more along the lines of customisation than a truly bespoke service, the really innovative thing about it is that it's an online initiative. Building your trench coat is simple. As you go through the various options your coat is rendered on a model in real time. Then, before you proceed to the checkout, you can share your design with friends on Facebook, Twitter or via email. And that's where the real genius of this service comes in. While Burberry will no doubt sell customised trench coats through the site, it won't consider the program a failure if it doesn't. "Honestly, it makes no difference at all," Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts told The Wall Street Journal last month about how many coats the company hopes to sell through Burberry Bespoke. "It's customer engagement. You want them to engage with the brand."

There's no doubting Burberry's ability to engage with its customers: present and future. The brand's Facebook page had 9,394,989 fans at the time of going to press. That's more than double the number the page had at the end of last year. Burberry uses Facebook and its YouTube channel, which has had more than eight million views to date, not just for public relations purposes but also for things that on the face of it have little to do with the business of selling clothes, such as its promotion of Brit bands under the banner of Burberry Acoustic. When it came time to launch a new fragrance, Burberry Body, the company decided to do it on Facebook rather than a traditional print media campaign. More than 250,000 people worldwide signed up for the chance to get a free sample of the new scent and the majority was more than happy to give permission for their contact details to remain on Burberry's database, according to The Financial Times.

The company uses other social media sites such as Twitter and Instagram and also has its own social networking site, artofthetrench.com. Art of the Trench allows people from all over the world to upload a picture of themselves wearing their Burberry trench coat, the results of which can be seen on this page. The idea is to inspire others in the myriad ways in which a trench coat - Burberry's most iconic piece of clothing - can be worn. Within a year of launching in November 2009, the site had received more than 11 million page views.

Burberry is the fashion and luxury world's undisputed king when it comes to technology. Last year the business magazine Fast Company recognised it as the 13th most innovative company in the world. And, according to New York University-based think tank LuxuryLab's Digital IQ Index - a ranking of the technological performance of luxury brands based on a use of a range of online platforms - Burberry has the highest score out of 49 different brands.

Burberry is no longer just a fashion company, it's a fully fledged media enterprise. Ahrendts recently told the Executive Marketing Summit in New York, organised by leading brand consultancy Interbrand, that the company "went digital" because things like Facebook and Twitter are cheap to use and that it was a way to compete with the larger conglomerates with deep cash reserves to use for traditional marketing and also as a way to reach a younger customer. "I don't care if they don't buy," Ahrendts told the Interbrand audience. Facebook and Twitter, she said, are about placing the Burberry brand front of mind for new customers.

It's easy to be sceptical about a brand that trumpets the number of Facebook fans it has as a sign of its digital prowess. But at a time when some retailers are either burying their heads in the sand about online retail or asking the federal government for help against the online threat, Burberry is approaching the issue by simply exciting its customers and turning the business of buying clothes into entertainment. The brand's shows are streamed live into select stores around the world and the company's "retail theatre" technology allows customers to buy direct from the runway for delivery in seven weeks. The only thing preventing Burberry from doing this in Australia is that it would mean getting customers into stores in the middle of the night.

Where other brands go to great lengths to make admission to their fashion shows as exclusive as possible, Burberry tries to make the presentation as democratic as possible. For its Spring/Summer 2012 fashion show in London in September, it collaborated with Twitter to live-tweet the show from backstage. That meant moments before the likes of Vogue's Anna Wintour saw the collection on the catwalk, the brand's legion of social media fans had already seen each look backstage.

For Burberry, it's a strategy that appears to be working. For the six months ended September 30, it reported a 29 per cent increase in revenue. Retail sales grew by 45 per cent in the period and now account for 64 per cent of the company's revenue. The figures are a reminder that despite all the digital savvy and the almost 10 million Facebook fans, for a fashion brand it still comes down to sales at the cash register. Announcing the half-yearly results, Ahrendts said the focus for future growth is on retail flagships in cities with a high spending local population or which are frequented by luxury travellers. You would doubtless hear much the same strategy from every other luxury brand, regardless of how digitally progressive they are.

Ahrendts refers to Burberry's online store, which relaunched this year in six languages and is available in 45 countries including Australia, as a "a million square foot store". It needs, she says, to have the same look and ambience as every one of the brand's bricks-and-mortar stores. Burberry achieves this not by making the website resemble a store you might find on London's Bond Street or New York's 57th Street but by making those stores, and all the others in the network, resemble the online one.

Stores such as the recently opened flagship on George Street in Sydney or the refurbished store in the Crown complex in Melbourne or the new one on Canton Road in Hong Kong feature large video screens on the exterior and throughout their interiors that all carry the same content, beamed from the London HQ. The technology not only means Burberry can have the same visual merchandising throughout the world at the flick of a few keystrokes, it also allows it to have consistent communications with its customers no matter where they are. "You have to be totally connected to anyone who touches your brand," Ahrendts told the Interbrand audience in New York. "If you don't do that, I don't know what your business model will be in five years time."