Burberry has announced that its Spring/Summer 2021 fashion show will be available via live-streaming service Twitch. The fashion brand said that the partnership with Twitch will help give guests an immersive and interactive experience. Burberry will use Twitch’s Squad Stream option to provide guests with multiple perspectives on the show. Guests will also be able to communicate using the chat function.
Burberry chief marketing officer Roid Manley said that the partnership with Twitch was the first of its kind and that it “unlocks an exciting new space” for the Burberry community. The fashion retailer said that this collaboration was the “next step in Burberry’s journey to continually engage with its community through curated content and experiences.”
Mintel comment:
“Having been the first luxury brand to join forces with Tik Tok, and not long after opening a new high-tech concept store in China, Burberry seems set to continue to innovate in a new partnership with Twitch.
The move to live-streaming aligns with Mintel Trend Going Live which tracks the growing interest in this relatively new channel. The trend shows how brands are using live-streaming to share experiences and foster a sense of community with their customers. Burberry will be hoping that the move will also engage consumers who are still staying away from the brand’s physical stores as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The partnership aligns with the brand’s attempts in recent years to engage younger consumers and will appeal to the brand’s key audience in Asia where live-streaming is particularly popular. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for approximately 40% of Burberry’s sales in 2019/20 and has been its strongest performer so far in 2020/21.
It will be interesting to see to what extent Twitch’s current audience, which skews younger and male, will engage with the luxury brand’s content or whether the move will bring in new audiences to the streaming platform.”
