Successful Rebranding Stories: How Burberry Refashioned Itself into an Iconic British Luxury Brand

Can you imagine Burberry, the iconic British luxury brand, was once likened to a brand for gangsters?

Since late 90s, Burberry started to become a brand that was associated with ‘chav culture’, a pejorative term for the hooligan-like youths with lower social status.

By early 2000s, Burberry almost lost all of its brand prestige.

People began to disassociate with the brand, and naturally sales started to fall over the years.

Burberry knew they needed to change people’s perception of the brand.

By capitalizing on their long heritage and their core brand values, they managed to pull off one of the most successful rebranding campaigns; by moulding themselves into an authentic, luxurious and fashion-forward brand.

Piggybacking

One of the first moves by Burberry was to endorse Kate Moss, the famous British supermodel, as the face of its brand.

At that time, Kate Moss was dominating the fashion industry and her collaborations with multiple luxury brands brought her to fashion icon status.

By endorsing Kate Moss as the face of the brand, Burberry adopted her traits almost overnight, moulding themselves into a fashion icon with sex appeal.

This strategic move allowed them to reach out to a younger, stylish and affluent group of consumers.

Digital Communication

Endorsing Kate Moss wasn’t enough.

Burberry introduced a logo of a knight with the Latin motto “Prorsum”, meaning “forwards”.

With that mindset, they adopted the digital medium aggressively to communicate with their younger audience which was something unheard of especially for luxury design house at that time.

They launched a fresh and contemporary website design with a new modern monogram logo while embracing a series of online engagement such as livestreaming of fashion shows and social media campaigns.

Over the years, they took up an even more creative, artistic approach while maintaining their heritage to reach out to new audiences.

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