The Power of Digital Media: Burberry's Share-worthy Campaign

Table of Content

• Offline Media, Online Media

  • Types of digital marketing tools

  • Share-worthy campaigns

• How Many Ads Do We See Every Day?

• The Power of Video Ads and Effective Storytelling

  • Analyzing Burberry “Open Spaces”

• Conclusion and Key Summaries

Offline Media, Online Media

Last week, we talked about offline media and what the ever-growing digital age entails for us - businesses, marketers, and consumers. Traditional media like television, radio, and billboards are still acknowledged by the public and very much involved in advertising today. However, today we will be crossing the bridge to explore digital media - the communication and facilitation of the promotional programs we leverage for digital marketing.

There are various forms of digital marketing and tools when we are trying to reach our online audience. For example: display ads, paid search (SEM), video ads, social media ads, mobile ads, email marketing, sponsorship and content marketing. All of these tools are beneficial in their own ways - paid search optimizes your site organically to increase visibility and traffic; email marketing creates personalized content and allows you to communicate with your audience. The amount of resources we have for digital advertising can be overwhelming, which is why it is important to first understand the objective of your campaign, and then deciding which tool to use and/or when the right time to use each tool is.

So, why do businesses spend so much of their time and marketing efforts in digital marketing? One of the key drivers of this investment is the ability to leverage the power of sharing, which can exponentially expand a campaign's reach and impact. Let’s look at the 3 essential elements when it comes to creating a share-worthy campaign:

RunwaytoRevenue, 2023

Sharing is essentially an endorsement. When someone shares your content, they are vouching for it, and this personal recommendation can carry a lot of weight in the eyes of their connections. This is why businesses place such importance on creating share-worthy campaigns in their digital marketing efforts.

How Many Ads Do We See Every Day?

Statistics show that the average person sees between 4,000 to 10,000 ads in a single day. But, just how many do we actually acknowledge or notice? Less than a hundred. That is approximately 1%. To protect us from information overload, our brains subconsciously screen out most ads. This puts advertisers in a bid for our attention.

Slide through this carousel of ads curated in less than 10 minutes over 4 platforms:

The Power of Video Ads and Effective Storytelling

Effective storytelling is a crucial component not only in creating share-worthy digital campaigns but also in the realm of video marketing. When we shift our focus to video campaigns, the significance of storytelling becomes even more pronounced. Video campaigns have a unique ability to immerse the audience in a narrative. They combine visuals, audio, and often a compelling storyline to create a rich and engaging experience. Let’s look at one of the most influential and successful video campaigns in the fashion landscape.

Burberry - FW21/22 - Open Spaces

The British fashion house unveiled a surreal campaign, taking viewers on a journey through the freedom of imagination. Open Spaces blurs the lines between reality and fantasy. Riccardo Tisci, chief creative officer of Burberry, collaborated on the film direction with Megaforce to bring the vision to life. The video features four bold individuals bounding weightlessly through fields, twisting high above a towering forest and floating beautifully over a cliff edge. This makes the ad creative. Inspired by a quote from Thomas Burberry’s book Open Spaces – "Inherent in every Burberry garment is freedom", the campaign offers the freedom to move into new spaces beyond boundaries and expectations.

“Freedom allows us to be creative, to dream, to be anything or anyone. Burberry, like me, has had freedom at its heart since the very beginning. This campaign celebrates the fearless spirit of exploration which connects us with one another and the natural world. It’s about pushing boundaries and pursuing endless possibilities – looking to the future and connecting us all.” – Tisci

What makes this ad great?

The symbolism that takes place in the film plays a huge role in what makes this ad great. Throughout the film, we see the characters flying through the sky and magnetically pulled together towards the end, symbolizing our interconnectedness with nature and one another. Since the very beginning, a pioneering spirit has been part of the brand’s heritage. Thomas Burberry invented gabardine and created iconic outerwear to help people embrace the outdoors and explore new spaces and places. Open Spaces demonstrates modernity but still stays true to the brand’s origins. This makes the ad relevant.

In a sea of ads, Burberry managed to captivate our attention with this 2 minute film, and not only that - it makes us crave for more. This is extremely difficult to do in today’s competitive content marketing landscape. Burberry demonstrated how to successfully make a compelling fashion ad with a sense of entertainment through Open Spaces.

The constant movement throughout the film, the acrobatics, the action-packed scenes, and the ability to tie everything together to reflect a story proves the true creativeness that Burberry is as a fashion brand.

In an effort to promote FW21/22 at the time, Burberry published this ad to illustrate that their clothing pushes boundaries, such as how the models in this video defy gravity. Fashion ads such as this represent freedom in the way few clothing ads do. Open Spaces contains everything you would find in a Hollywood movie: adventure, action, captivating visuals, and an intriguing concept.

Storytelling in Digital Ads

Since people remember stories 22x more than facts and figures, storytelling in your content can boost conversion rates. Burberry understood the importance of storytelling and leveraged it for not only Open Spaces, but a majority of their video ads. This is something we see in fashion campaigns and what a lot of fashion brands try to achieve. In this case, Burberry explored the whimsy of youth and freedom through an artistic film that emphasized human connection to the earth, and the audience loved it. This makes the ad worthy of social engagement.

Burberry, 2021

Conclusion and Key Summaries

We explored the significance of digital marketing, emphasizing on the various tools that marketers can use to engage with their online audience. Looking at the value of creating share-worthy campaigns, we discuss the essential elements that are creativity, relevancy and social engagement. Shedding light on our consumption of ads as consumers, we highlight the importance of creating campaigns with a lasting impact with Burberry’s Open Spaces as an example.

The Hollywood-esque film demonstrates how storytelling can capture the audience’s attention through the use of symbolism along with the 3 essential elements of share-worthy content: creativity, relevance, and social engagement.