We are honoured to be the only British luxury brand included in the Interbrand Best Global Brands 2019. Based on Interbrand's valuation methodology which ranks brand strength, Burberry’s brand value has increased 4% to $5,205m.
Burberry is at the apex of an exciting creative transformation. Part of this is asserting our leadership in digital innovation through our award-winning B Series, re-imagining social media content and created engaging brand activations around the world.
Contributing to the 2019 Interbrand report, Mark Morris, our Senior Vice President of Digital Commerce, talks to Rebecca Robins at Interbrand about the digital evolution of personalised luxury commerce.
I see luxury customer service moving towards a human relationship, augmented by data. This allows us to serve customers effectively across channels and regions in a way that was not previously possible. We’re working both in-house and with our partners on an elevated luxury service and looking closely at our travelling consumer. We have the capability to give our global customers a really personal and seamless experience by deploying the best technology.
Burberry was a first mover in digital and tech in the luxury industry, at a time when there was a lot of resistance from luxury brands. We pioneered how to use digital to energize our brand and the luxury customer relationship. We build experiences in-house, like B-Series and the online Monogram World, but also work with like-minded partners across the globe. As part of this, we have built longstanding relationships with partners such as Apple. We were one of the first to put iPads in store, one of the first to launch Apple Pay on the web.
A personal relationship is the essence of luxury and that is a guiding philosophy for us. We look at what’s most relevant and where are we going to make an immediate difference for our customers. We have designed a messaging tool that works for a luxury relationship between an Associate and customer. This is a first for a luxury brand. When we think about how we use technology, messaging is appropriate for luxury, as it’s intimate.
We have built two apps, one for our customers and one for our store associates, and we have a product team and a data science team to understand behaviours, deepening our knowledge. R World, our associate app, features an Instagram-style newsfeed and provides our employees with operational tools to aid a better understanding of our customers. This enables our team to be really responsive and proactive.
The apps can communicate with each other through our messaging function, R Message, which means that we can speak to every customer as an individual, on a very personal level. How you personalize someone’s in-store experience is really interesting.
Seeing the positive response to our B Series product drops is exciting, as our customers shop exclusive products on social media platforms such as Instagram and WeChat. We are in constant ‘test and learn’ phase with what we’re creating and it’s been exciting to see some of our digital initiatives roll out at scale. It has also been a good year for innovation in sustainability. We are experimenting with new materials and we recently launched a capsule collection crafted with ECONYL, a sustainable nylon yarn made from regenerated fishing nets, fabric scraps and industrial plastic.
Read the full Interbrand 2019 report here.
