When a brand embarks on a content strategy, it follows a path that impacts directly on brand and organisational culture. If real time continuous brand content marketing is to be successful, it will touch all aspects of a brand and become ingrained in everything the brand does.
One of the best examples of how brands benefit from a content revolution is Burberry. When Angela Ahrendts took over as CEO about five years ago, she embarked on a Burberry content strategy that transformed this iconic, but somewhat stodgy British fashion brand into a modern brand marvel.
At the World Retail Congress in Berlin in October 2010 Ahrendts explained: “We are creating more compelling content, in house, in more sophisticated ways than ever before. All of this is key to the business. The content connects everything we do: brand, culture, consumer”.
In addition, Burberry chief creative officer Christopher Bailey says: “We are now as much a media-content company as we are a design company, because it’s all part of the overall experience”.
This is an important cultural shifts as it relates directly to the notion that all brands are content brands. All brand have inherent content value and it’s up to brnad owners to recognise and execute of brand content creation opportunities.
In addition to its own content dissemination platforms, such as HD 3D video displays in all retail stores, in Burberry’s case the brand has been spectacularly successful in attracting over seven million Facebook Likes in less than four years, mainly through brand content methodology.
Burberry’s innovative web site Art of the Trench is also worth a visit to see how brand content can be completely embraced. by a brand.
It’s important, however, to note that brand content strategy and social media execution is not the same thing. Social media is one content channel that a brand can use as part of a greater content mix, including various print and video platforms.
