Material World

Well, this is a shocker: today a digital think tank called L2 publishes a study, “L2 Prestige 100®: Facebook IQ,” which ranks the high-end brands as: “genius, gifted, average, challenged, and feeble” according to who uses Facebook best. Out of brands that span the auto, watch and jewellery, fashion, beauty, and spirits and champagne sectors, Burberry, normally held up as the most web-savvy, digi-forward company in the luxury industry, ranks…average. Actually, it’s number 49.

There are 48 companies ahead of it in the study’s Facebook IQ ranking. Louis Vuitton does better. So do Diane Von Furstenberg, Dolce & Gabbana and Hugo Boss. Tory Burch, among fashion names, does best (it’s number10!).

This threw me for such a loop I emailed the study’s authors, Scott Galloway and Maureen Mullen, and asked them to clarify. You can check out their methodology yourself, but here’s what came back from Ms Mullen:

“Burberry was number one overall in terms of number of fans (6.5m) but lost ground:

• because it is one of the 20 per cent of brands that does not allow fans to post on its wall, suggesting they aren’t yet ready to abandon command and control. (Note as of August 15 Facebook is making this functionality mandatory for brands.)
• because, despite the Art of the Trench project, the brand does not allow fans to upload photos or videos to its Facebook page
• because the brand also doesn’t respond to fans or maintain any two-way communication
• because its interaction rate (per cent of their community that responds to brand posts by “liking” or “commenting”) was very small relative to the size of the community (only about 0.01 per cent of the community on average responds) to comments.  The percentage of their community that responded to posts actually is decreasing over time, suggesting that fans that are added (520,000 fans added in May 2011 alone) aren’t necessarily interacting with content on the page
• because the integration of its Facebook efforts with other web properties (its site, product page through “Like” button, other social media properties) was limited compared to other brands
• because, while the brand scored well in terms of its own video and photo content, it lost points for limited interactive tabs, shareable marketing programs and commerce orientation on the Facebook platform.”

That’s a lot of “becauses.” As for the brand that came in at number one, BMW, Ms Mullen said: “Leader BMW suggests that big pages (they have 5.7m fans) don’t necessarily fall flat.  0.28 per cent (versus Burberry’s 0.01 per cent) of its community responds to brand posts and the brand has its community working for it from a content perspective, with the page hosting more that 26,000 fan photos and 400 fan videos.”

Burberry said it hadn’t seen the report and would need to read it before responding.

(By the by, Gucci and Chanel, both of which are also supposedly super-digi stars, also ranked “average.”)

And as for why this matters, L2 says: “one out of every eight minutes spent on the internet is on Facebook.” It adds: “there is a nonzero probability that in the next 36 months a new digital ecosystem could evolve where, simply put, Facebook is the internet” — translation: it thinks that there is a chance that in the next 36 months, a new digital ecoystem could emerge where Facebook is the web. L2 also argues: “our thesis is that competence on Facebook is inextricably linked to shareholder growth in the prestige industry.” Yowie! Be there or lose market share!

Besides, I can think of two more reasons, one financial and one marketing.

On the latter, a large part of what has helped make Burberry “cool” and “new” despite the relative sameness of its check and trench, has been the trimmings of IT super-stud-dom imagery attached to the logo: the idea that Burberry is at the forefront of the Brave New World, a pioneer in the tech frontier like its customers. To contravene this perception could be dangerous to the brand.

As for the possible financial fall-out: Mr Galloway calls F-commerce “the new, new thing.” (Thank you, Michael Lewis.) Companies that don’t use Facebook to its full potential can miss out on a potentially very big source of commerce.

And speaking of that, I’m about to try a new, Facebook-based e-tail site called Sneakpeeq, which seems the obverse of all of the above: it exists only to serve and access the Facebook community, at least for contemporary brands. I’ll report back on Friday. Meanwhile, anyone want to bet on how fast Burberry changes its comment policy?