Case Assignment
Imagine you have been hired as a consultant to the VP of marketing for Burberry. The VP wants to get an objective opinion from someone outside the company who is familiar with current digital marketing basics.
Your job is to write a short memo of 750 -1,500 words critically analyzing Burberry’s mobile marketing strategy. Note that the company has decided to use mobile social platforms to reach its target markets. Read and cite required articles listed above, including additional research you have done, to address the following issues:
� Evaluate the assumptions behind Burberry’s mobile marketing campaigns, with a brief introduction of the company mobile marketing efforts.
� Analyze the effectiveness of Burberry’s mobile marketing campaigns by applying relevant branding and promotion concepts. Also specify the criteria you use to evaluate the effectiveness.
� With the increasing popularity of mobile media and social media, what would you recommend to Burberry regarding its mobile promotion strategy? Explain why.
Internal Memorandum
January 15, 2018
To: VP of marketing, Burberry
CC:
From: Your Name, Marketing Consultant
Re: Opinion on the digital marketing efforts by Burberry
Mobile marketing efforts
Burberry, a luxury clothing and apparel design, production and sales company, is among the top businesses in its industry. The firm, whose headquarters are in London, England and with operations around the globe, uses a variety of operational and marketing models to ensure they remain a top brand. With competitors such as Chanel, Gucci, Dior, and Louis Vuitton, Burberry has to employ innovative solutions to engage consumers and push for purchases. In the recent past, Burberry has adapted to the use of mobile technology in a bid to push for the increase in market share and sales for the brand.
A unique approach by Burberry to the marketing of their brand and merchandise has been the use of mobile marketing. The use of mobile marketing refers to various approaches used by companies to lure and inform their customers about their products and services. In using this method, the targeted customer is one who uses a mobile device for communications, media usage, learning, and entertainment. The methods used in mobile marketing are designed for the mobile device with smaller screen size. Given the increasing size of the mobile phone market, as well as the constant rise in the number of mobile users, such targeted mobile marketing efforts by corporates are expected to have a significant impact.
Assumptions behind Burberry’s mobile marketing campaigns
A first assumption is the continued growth of the mobile market. By investing heavily in mobile marketing, Burberry assumes and heavily believes in the growth of the number of users of mobile devices. With this assumption, the company relies on the increasing numbers to upsurge the sales. In addition, the company assumes that their consumers are among the growing number of people who prefer having a mobile device such as a tablet, iPad, or smartphone in addition to a computer or laptop. This is in addition to those who are assumed to use mobile devices as their primary means of accessing information (Nagao, 2015).
Despite these assumptions having research data to back them up, they still are assumptions since some Burberry customers prefer to visit the traditional brick and mortar shop as opposed to using the various e-commerce alternatives (Nagao, 2015). The assumption that the use of mobile devices will continue to rise may also be halted with the introduction of an alternative form of technological communication that may render devices such as the smartphone obsolete.
Another assumption by the company is that their online presence mirrors the sales. While the various online digital campaigns have been relatively successful, the use of online metrics and numbers may not accurately reflect the expected sales figures. Such figures as the number of daily or monthly visitors to a given webpage, or the number of clicks on an online advertisement, the number of likes on social media postings, or the number of followers may not necessarily translate to sales. However, as per Burberry’s reports, the firm’s sales have increased since the launch of the mobile marketing campaigns (Burberry PLC, 2017).
Analysis of the effectiveness of the mobile marketing campaigns by Burberry
The goal of any marketing campaign is to acquire the interest of the public and concert the interest into sales. Case in point is the “Art of the Trench” online campaign, which involved the company making a website where people could share images of themselves wearing Burberry’s trench coats. The mix of providing a personal touch, the use of popular images, and an association with a reputed luxury brand such as Burberry by being given their “15 minutes of fame” served to improve the engagement with various levels of users. The effect of this campaign was a drastic increase in their social media usage, as well as a rise in the sales of the company’s trench coats (Marshall, 2012).
As opposed to other large corporates, Burberry has been an early adopter of technology. Since the firm is always seeking out more ways to engage with their customers, the firm uses new forms of social media to achieve this goal. For example, Burberry adopted the use of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube before most of their competitors. In addition to early adoption, the firm continually engages with their audience and posts targeted marketing material to the various sites. Burberry has taken an additional step by creating a mobile application that increases engagement by providing relevant mobile-friendly content in addition to facilitating online purchases of merchandise (Vizard, 2017). The launch of the mobile app-enabled a turnaround in the firm after recording decreases in revenue for two consecutive years.
Burberry took its culture of early adoption of technology to Snapchat to develop a strategic mobile marketing campaign. In 2016, Burberry collaborated with Snapchat Inc. to develop a marketing campaign that involved advertisements on the social media platform. Targeted products would have a Snapcode, which is the company’s stylized version of a QR code. By scanning the code, the user would gain access to premium content from Burberry on their Snapchat channel. Such interactions between Snapchat and Burberry have resulted in viewership of up to 100 million and Burberry taking an exclusive spot on the Discover section of the Snapchat app (Goodfellow, 2016). Such partnership is effective in enabling Burberry to reach a wider audience and gain views on their marketing campaigns.
Criteria used to evaluate the effectiveness of Burberry’s mobile marketing campaigns
In analyzing the effectiveness of Burberry’s mobile marketing approaches as an outsider, there was limited access to information. However, the basic criterion was the use of sales numbers from the company’s reports, as well as analysts’ reports. The changes in revenue figures after a particular mobile campaign was a strategy used to evaluate the effectiveness of the mobile marketing campaigns by Burberry. Another criterion used is the measure of social media engagement and response to the marketing material posted on the various websites. Case in point is the “Art of the trench” campaign where the traffic to the primary and related websites rose to over 10 million visits per month after the launch of the campaign.
Recommendations to Burberry regarding its mobile promotion strategy
While the core target of target for Burberry is the older demographics who purchase luxury items, the firm should be more open to target other age groups. From the engagement with the “art of the trench” marketing campaign, a significant share of the engagements with the brand were young people who were interested in Burberry and the project. While they may not all be customers, the engagement depicts a potential market that the firm could tap into. As such, Burberry should seek to roll out campaigns that encompass a broader target audience or alternative campaigns that target customers who are not in their traditional criteria of consumers.
References
Burberry PLC. (2017). Annual Report Archive.
Goodfellow, J. (2016, April 5). Burberry is printing codes on its products to encourage customers to use Snapchat in-store.
Marshall, R. (2012, January 17). Social media pays off for Burberry, as profits rise 21 percent.
Nagao, R. (2015, June). Marketing Audit: Burberry X e-commerce.
Vizard, S. (2017, May 18). Burberry rethinks how it markets product launches.