BoF: Are millennials the customers of the future?
AA: It’s a great question. Eight years ago we targeted the millennial
consumer, because that was the white space we needed to play in because
our peers didn’t. We knew that was the customer coming out of these
high-growth emerging markets.
There are going to be seven billion smartphones in everybody’s hands in the next five years. Now, everybody
is a digital customer, so doing things digitally is no longer a niche
[play]. Doing things digitally is how the entire world communicates.
That’s our language today. Digital is not an afterthought. Our design
teams design for a landing page and the landing page dictates what the
store windows will look like, not the other way round. In creative
media, they’re shooting for digital, then we are turning it back to
physical.
I talk to these outdoor companies and we get some amazing deals.
They’ve invested in thousands of digital screens but everybody is still
giving them still images. It drives them crazy.
Great companies need to move as fast as the consumers are moving.
Look at Samsung. Look at Apple. Look at what is happening in this whole
world. The brand has to look cool on every device.
BoF: How are smartphones driving your strategy?
AA: None of us go anywhere without them and organisations have to
keep evolving. Sometimes what [investors] don’t like is the expense
structure. Look at the number of new departments that we have had to
create in the last three years alone. You can farm a lot of it out, but
you’re going to pay three times the amount, or it’s going to take you
three times longer.
So, if we all agree none of us are getting rid of [mobile] and it’s
only going to get better and better, how do I make sure there is a team
in house that can take every bit of our content and make sure it’s
perfect and relevant and for where mobile is going. There are companies
that still do everything for print. We were doing everything for
desktop, but now let’s do everything for mobile and then take it back to
desktop.
BoF: Is that is what’s happening now?
AA: That’s what is happening right now. We have a huge team, we have a
mobile director, we have a mobile team in the creative department, a
whole mobile team in the tech department, because we know this is where
it’s going.
All you have to do is look at your own behavior and how you want to
shop. How many times do you go on Google? So what’s our Google strategy?
What’s our YouTube strategy? What’s our Facebook strategy? Wherever the
consumer is going, we have to have a strategy, for every consumer
across every one of those devices, platforms and channels.
FULL READ: http://www.businessoffashion.com/2013/09/burberry-angela-ahrendts.html
