Following its successful ‘Art of the Trench' campaign, luxury fashion brand Burberry has teamed up with Google to let people capture their kisses by direct contact with their touch screen device, adding a personalised message and send on to friends across the globe. The YouTube video below has already notched up half a million views three months after the campaign went live.
Brand: Burberry | Sector: Clothing, Luxury | Country: Global | Agency/Partner: Grow, oogle | Objective: brand awareness, consideration and purchase | Format: Social, Mobile
Kisses.Burberry.com lets Google Chrome and mobile users share “kisses” via a desktop camera or touchscreen device’. These ‘they can then personalise, by adding a Burberry Beauty lip colour’, before sending it on. The “journey’ of each kiss is then ‘brought to life’ via a 3D animation using Google Earth and Streetview.
According to Burberry Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey, the experience is designed to give technology "a bit of heart and soul."
The initiative is part of Google's Art, Copy & Code project, an ongoing series of storytelling collaborations between Google and brands.
Sending and receiving a postcard is itself fun and engaging, but equally impressive is the map of kisses users can view at the end, which shows cards being sent from city to city in real-time.
How it worked
The idea was conceived following experiments in facial recognition technology that can detect the outline of a user's lips through their webcam. Burberry and Google then used modern web technologies such as HTML5, WebGL, CSS3 and WebP.
To add a further personal touch to every letter sent, they used location data. For example, as users see their messages travel to their destination across a 3D landscape, they can see local landmarks and StreetView images reflected into puddles, further bringing the experience to life.
Results
By creating a personal yet shareable experience that appeals to everyone, this campaign built a connection to the Burberry brand without feeling like a traditional ad. The campaign adopted a “build once, run everywhere” fashion that meant the Google Chrome ad ran across devices, both as websites and as ads.
During the campaign there was 253,000 search results for "Burberry Kisses" on Google.com. Within the first 10 days of the campaign going live, 13,000 cities sent a kiss and a total of 109 million miles were traveled by kisses as of June 25 2013.
