How I fell in love with Angela Ahrendts (ex Burberry CEO now VP retail at Apple)
I mean professionally.
Three main reason:
- Culture
- Brand
- Design
I was completely inspired by what she did with Burberry since 2006, not only in term of hard achievements (tripled revenues) but also in how she achieved that.
I am looking forward to see how she will change Apple for retail and beyond.
The culture of empowerment
“[The challenge] is getting communities and getting companies to truly keep pace with every single individual because this”—she waved her iPhone—”is enabling them,” she said. “If you want to keep the next generation and if you want them to be united, you have to see this is how they live. You have to blow up all your existing policies—everything!—and rebuild them around this.”
The brand approach
Her approach to the brand and what it means to the business is iconic.
“Everything we’ve done is counterintuitive to traditional selling organizations, with their traditional training. My dad used to always say that he could teach anything but he couldn’t teach how to feel. That’s the hardest part when you have 11,000 people: How do you teach them to feel how we feel? When I first started, we had no training programs—none of that. We had to put in world-class sales and service training programs. The thing is, I don’t want to be sold to when I walk into a store. I want to be welcomed. The job is to be a brilliant brand ambassador. Everybody is welcome. Don’t be judgmental whatsoever. Look them in the eyes. Welcome them. ‘How are you?’ Don’t sell! NO! Because that is a turnoff. So how do you hire all these amazing people and put them in a world-class retail setting and then say, ‘But you’re not allowed to sell’?! How do you put this whole digital team together and say, ‘But we are not doing any direct marketing to sell to you!’? The digital guys look at you like you’re nuts. But no, no, no, no, no. What we have wanted to do is build an amazing brand experience and an amazing way that people can engage with the brand. Then it will naturally happen. And then I don’t care where they buy. I only care that they buy the brand.”
With all respect I found a lot of “idem-sentire” on how she explains the relationship with customers, sales and brand with my personal beliefs and style.
The fact that she said “ I hired a chief customer officer who came from Lloyds who built us a huge insights and analytics department. “ sounds a lot like my views on the Chief Fans Officer for sport (http://cdmwebguru.blogspot.it/2013/06/everybody-needs-cfo-chief-fans-officer.html).
Design first
“Great design…you won’t have a business today without great design,” said Ahrendts, sounding ever more like an Apple veteran. “[Design and business] are so inexplicably linked—at all levels.”
What I specifically found fascinating is how she opened up extreme innovation in the company’s approach to marketing and retail as an execution of their brand approach, joining up completely online and offline, virtual and physical.
Like what they have done in the London regent Street store mixing video, online, and physical goods in a totally new way, or how they used the just launched iPhone 5S to shoot a fashion show live.
Please listen her at 2:59 in the above video when she says: “… If you don’t believe that there is a massive convergence coming between digital and youTube and TV. An average consumer has now been enabled to create some of the most brilliant content through a device that they already have.”
Let’s see how she will change Apple retail.
I believe we should apply what make sense from what she did in fashion to the world of sport media, i think there is some interesting inspiration here.
Sources:
YouTube videos:
Fast Company article by Austin Carr (http://www.fastcompany.com/3019991/apples-new-consumer-experience-chief-angela-ahrendts-on-the-future-of-retail)
