Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook…Burberry!

Burberry’s new holiday campaign entitled, ‘The Tale of Thomas Burberry’ is a knock-out success (Shepherd, 2016; Vaynerchuck, 2013). The holiday advert features Irish actor, Domhnall Gleeson, as the visionary Thomas Burberry who can ‘dream a world’ in his head (Shepherd, 2016). The advert takes the viewer from Burberry’s humble beginnings as a tailor and inventor of fabrics to setting up his own shop (Shepherd, 2016). What follows thereafter is the stuff Hollywood movies are made of:  Burberry finds love (and a wife) in Sienna Miller’s character; dresses Dominic West’s character and crew in Burberry’s durable fabrics to battle the monstrous cold that awaits them on their expedition to the Antarctic; additionally, Burberry dresses and falls in love with Lily James’ character,  Betty Dawson (ala an Amelia Earhart character), who is attempting to set a world record by flying from London to Cape Town, but mysteriously goes missing in the middle of the flight; lastly, Burberry dresses British soldiers who are going off to war and imagines the many lads who will die for their country (Shepherd, 2016). And all within this story, love, fear, jealousy, anger, and hope are weaved throughout (Shepherd, 2016).

Burberry, with one hard hit via the campaign knows the way to capture the hearts of customers is to give before asking customers to buy (Vaynerchuck, 2013). And, one can say this video is also native advertising as the high-quality video is no different than high-quality videos that people seek out on the web (Vaynerchuck, 2013). In today’s over saturation of information, true art rises above it all, and Burberry’s ‘Tale of Thomas Burberry’ shows that good content is always “king” (Vaynerchuck, 2013, p.117).

Burberry’s holiday campaign is no ordinary 30 or 60 second TV spot, rather, a 3 minute brand video directed by Academy Award-winning director, Asif Kapadia, and features some of England’s most-respected actors (Shepherd, 2016). The holiday campaign creates memorable content and knows that giving the campaign  an actual ‘story line’ can only be done on a platform such as the internet which allows for a high quality visual experience (Tugand, 2016; Vaynerchuck, 2013). Burberry’s ‘Tale’ is the perfect micro-content to an overall Burberry brand campaign, which pushes its product through this engaging video which leave viewers asking for a full-length movie (Shepherd, 2016; Tugand, 2016; Vaynerchuck, 2013). This is the power of great content (Vaynerchuck, 2013).

References

Shepherd, J. (2016, November 5). Burberry Christmas adventure:  Lily James and Twitter want a full movie based on ‘the tale of Thomas Burberry.’ Independent UK [Online]. Retrieved from, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/burberry-christmas-advert-lily-james-the-tale-of-thomas-burberry-film-a7400831.html

Tugand, A. (2016, August 14). It’s Chilling. It’s Thrilling. It’s a 30 min commercial. New York Times [Online]. Retrieved from http://nyti.ms/2brqqG9

Vaynerchuk, G. (2013). Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to tell your story in a noisy, social world. New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.