Creative Economy Blog

Why we should all take our cap off to Burberry

Natalie Hodgson - 19.02.2013

On Monday, Burberry streamed its London Fashion Week show live across the world and to its Regent Street flagship store, allowing global consumers to become part of the experience. By offering a new way to watch as if from the front row they ensured customers were fully immersed in the show.

As part of the show Burberry offered a 'smart personalisation' service, where coats and bags are embedded with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips that unlock bespoke content when contacted with customers' smartphones and tablets. The chips activate short films that tell how the item was created - from initial sketches to shots of your name being engraved on a nameplate stitched into the lining. Shoppers in the brand's Regent Street flagship store will see the RFID chips activating videos on its large-scale mirrors, which turn into screens when passed.

This is the latest in a series of new technology initiatives by the heritage brand to position itself ahead of the fashion pack. Burberry is not only leading the FTSE 100 company's use of social media, but with 21,000 tweets, it was the most tweeted brand at last season's fashion week.

And from high end to high street, Topshop's Unique line has partnered with Google and YouTube to live stream the show to a wider audience. Fans of the brand will also be able to experience the catwalk from a new perspective via a 'model's eye view' camera. And customers who order pieces from the show will receive them first - three months before they'll be available in stores.

It is worth noting that many arts organisations have been at the forefront of experimenting in this space, for example National Theatre's broadcast of live performances into cinemas has enabled them to reach wider audiences and find new revenue streams. Nesta's NT Live research  found that cinema audiences report even higher levels of emotional engagement with the production than audiences at the theatre.

The Digital R&D fund for the Arts, our partnership with ACE and AHRC, has been set up to encourage greater collaboration between the arts, digital technology providers and the research community so that they can undertake projects to enhance audience reach and/or develop new business models, crucially making the results of which public, so that the wider arts sector can learn. So far we've supported eight pilot projects to explore how they can use digital technology, combined with research, to extend their reach and offering. This month we announced a further nine that we hope to be the next digital trendsetters of the creative world.