This thinking also shapes how the brand uses social media. \u201cIn luxury, people love to strive for the billboard or print, but the reality is [our brand] is mostly experienced through mobile devices and social platforms, and our teams have really embraced that,\u201d says Kiman. Instead of creating content in parallel, the social team now has a standing spot in content review sessions, as well as a clearer role on-set. \u201cSocial has a big seat at the table when it comes to our campaigns. We don\u2019t go to set if they\u2019re not on the schedule,\u201d says Kiman.<\/p>\n
Now, social teams have been brought into the development much earlier, which lends itself to more experimentation, particularly in short-form video. For the 170th-anniversary campaign, Burberry\u2019s social team asked stars, including Jonathan Bailey and Kendall Jenner, questions such as the most British thing they\u2019ve done, or advice for first-time visitors to London. The brand has also leaned into niche British TikTokers such as Bus Aunty (Bemi Orojuogun), who posed with a Burberry red bus<\/a> (generating 11.2 million views), and Crazy Auntie Ann who pretend DJ\u2019ed in her kitchen<\/a> wearing Burberry check jacket (generating 12.4 million views). \u201cThere\u2019s a whole curriculum for marketing degrees out there, then there\u2019s this outstanding bit of work,\u201d one commenter wrote.<\/p>\n British luxury, marketed globally<\/p>\n Britishness sits at the center of Burberry\u2019s positioning \u2014 but most of its customers aren\u2019t British, and nor is Kiman, who grew up in the US. For him, the challenge is about calibrating between an imagined and a real version of Britain. \u201cI\u2019ve always been an outsider in my roles. Most people experience wanderlust \u2014 looking across borders and being inspired \u2014 and that is something that happens at a very young age,\u201d he says. \u201cYou don\u2019t feel that about your home market. Sometimes, you feel [a projection] is on the nose, but the fact I\u2019ve lived in different cities lets me acknowledge that bias while leveraging it. We have to be really proud even about the postcard version of London and the UK that we\u2019re projecting, and at the same time show we have insider knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n The marketing team has spent significant time defining what that actually means in practice, from romanticized visual references like the Big Ben and the British countryside, to globally recognized British talent such as Cara Delevingne and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, to softer cultural codes such as weather, wit, and humor. Humor, in particular, is one of the trickiest to get right. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to tell a joke at the dinner table where everyone is going to laugh \u2014 and that\u2019s our challenge when we lean into wit. Will everyone understand this?\u201d says Kiman.<\/p>\n Some ideas never made it to consumers. In the early stages of the reset, projects were sometimes pulled late in the process if they didn\u2019t quite land. \u201cWe had stumbling blocks with that early on, where we would talk to our regions and they would say, \u2018We don\u2019t understand what this joke is about,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cSo now, if we\u2019re playing with wit, it needs to be understandable \u2014 or we\u2019ll give you the background story and the narrative to help it be digested.\u201d<\/p>\n