去年五月，博柏利（Burberry）首席执行官安吉拉•艾伦茨从伦敦总部飞赴美国加州，去会见一位她认为对公司前途至关重要的人——他就是Salesforce.com的首席执行官马克•贝尼奥夫。二人在半月湾的丽嘉酒店见了面，他们站在大厅里交换了整整15分钟的意见，然后才落座。艾伦茨向贝尼奥夫阐释了她的愿景：建立一个公司，让任何想接触博柏利品牌的人都能拥有获得它的渠道。要实现这个目标，她所需要的仅仅是一个数字平台而已。

    贝尼奥夫在纸上画了一幅草图，向艾伦茨解释如何通过运用Salesforce、SAP、Twitter和Facebook等软件和社交网络工具把博柏利变成一家“社交型企业”。（贝尼奥夫还在草图上写下了“安吉拉+马克=喜欢”的字样。艾伦茨把这张草图用像框保存起来，挂在自己的办公室里。）艾伦茨说：“我对他说，我终于遇到了一个说话比我还快、精力比我还旺盛的人。”

    这两个人看起来似乎不太搭调——一个是风风火火的科技企业家，一个是优雅的奢侈品公司CEO，而且她的企业具有156年的历史。不过自从6年前艾伦茨执掌博柏利以来，她就一直在大胆地革新博柏利的形象和业务。现在她的新政已经取得了非常漂亮的收效：博柏利的年销售额已经达到了30亿美元左右，比2007年的水平翻了一番还多。而且自从艾伦茨就任后，博柏利股票回升了近300%，而同期英国富时综合股指仅上长了24%。

    艾伦茨认为，要使博柏利继续保持增长势头，就必须吸引更多的年轻消费者和海外消费者，这部份消费者喜欢网络交流，而且经常在网络上分享信息和购物。因此她决定制订一个全面的科技战略，充分利用Facebook和Twitter等社交工具，同时整合Salesforce和SAP等公司的企业软件。

    由于担心伤害品牌的高端形象，奢侈品行业一向不愿和高科技走得太近，艾伦茨的网络战略使博柏利成了这个行业的异类。科技类咨询机构L2公司的莫琳•慕兰表示：“他们做的事是时尚行业其他公司都没有做过的，也就是坚决把重点放在数字化创新上。”

    在博柏利公司的伦敦总部，员工们个个衣着光鲜时尚，没人会把这儿跟一家科技创业公司混淆，但总部大楼里却的确弥漫着一股创业公司那种新锐进取的味道。公司总部70%的员工年龄都在30岁以下，而且公司鼓励他们在工作时间使用Facebook和Twitter。今年51岁的艾伦茨更是带头尝试硅谷的新技术。

    Last May, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts flew to California from her London headquarters to introduce herself to an executive she thought could be critical to the future of her business: Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. When the two met at the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, they stood in the hall batting around ideas for 15 minutes before even sitting down. Ahrendts explained her vision: to create a company where anyone who wanted to touch the brand could have access to it. She just needed a digital platform to make it happen.

    Benioff sketched a diagram of how Burberry could become a "social enterprise," overlaying technology like Salesforce (CRM), SAP (SAP), Twitter, and Facebook (FB) atop the entire company. (Benioff signed the drawing "Angela + Marc = LIKE," and Ahrendts keeps the framed original, pictured below right, in her office.) "I told him, 'I think I finally met someone who talks faster and has more energy than I do,' " she says. "We just connected."

    The two might seem an unlikely pair -- the brash tech entrepreneur and the polished CEO of a 156-year-old luxury retailer -- but Ahrendts has been boldly reinventing Burberry's image and operations since she arrived at the British company six years ago. Her moves have paid off handsomely: Annual sales of some $3 billion are more than double 2007 levels, and the stock has returned nearly 300% since Ahrendts' arrival, while Britain's FTSE All-Share Index is up 24%.

    To keep Burberry growing, Ahrendts recognized she needed to woo younger and more global consumers, who communicate and share information -- and shop -- in the digital world. She set out to develop a comprehensive technology strategy, one that utilizes obvious tools such as Facebook and Twitter, and also incorporates enterprise software from companies such as Salesforce and SAP.

    The approach makes Burberry a standout in the luxury business, which has historically shied away from technology for fear of eroding its aura of exclusivity. "What they've done, that no other organization in the fashion industry has done, is put a relentless focus on digital innovation," says Maureen Mullen of tech think tank L2.

    The employees scuttling around Burberry's Horseferry House in London are too well dressed to allow the company's headquarters to be mistaken for a tech startup, but the building does exude the same kind of feel. Seventy percent of the employees at Horseferry are under 30 and are encouraged to peruse Facebook and Twitter during work hours. Ahrendts, 51, spearheaded the office's free-lunch perk à la Silicon Valley.

    艾伦茨常常说到的一句话是，公司的年轻员工就是向她解释当今数码世界的“翻译”。艾伦茨自己也非常乐意接受新事物，她经常从自己的三个孩子那里发现现代科技的最新进展。她也是公司里第一批用上苹果iPad的人之一，而且她还给各个办公室以及所有的主要商店都配备了这种设备。（因此博柏利开发了一个iPad皮套产品也就不足为奇了。）最近《财富》（Fortune）杂志来到博柏利的总部进行采访，在采访过程中，艾伦茨通过Skype与印第安那波尔州立大学（Indiana's Ball State University）的一些博柏利奖学金获得者通话——这座大学也是艾伦茨的母校。她让学生们阅读一篇关于社交游戏公司Zynga首席执行官马克•平卡斯的文章，还说如果他们搜索不到这篇文章的话，可以在她的Twitter上找到相关链接。

    科技在博柏利公司的员工沟通方面也扮演着重要角色。艾伦茨和首席创意官克里斯托弗•贝利会定期对员工进行网络广播，最近他们决定将频率从每季度一次提高到每月一次。博柏利的办公室里还播放着艾伦茨在亚特兰大的一次领导力会议上的讲话。企业资源高级副总裁雷格•辛达尔打趣道：“我们把自己拍自己的样子拍了下来。”

    博柏利已经从诺基亚（Nokia）和微软（Microsoft）的Xbox部门挖来了不少技术人才。但它在科技使用上真正的成功之处在于它几乎在从时装秀到员工沟通的每件事上都应用了有机的数字化方法。首席创意官贝利称：“‘我们记得做数字化了吗？’这种问题永远不该出现。”

    博柏利公司使用了Salesforce.com的“聊天”平台——你可以把这个平台当成一个企业版的Facebook。艾伦茨称，这个工具已经成功地加速了整个企业的沟通。比如有些体格较大的男性顾客觉得某款西装不大合身，博柏利商店里的销售团队是第一批注意到这个现象的人。博柏利总部通过“博柏利聊天”平台得知了这件事，然后设计团队在针对这个问题做出了相应的调整。

    与此同时，博柏利也在充实自身的企业软件系统，艾伦茨认为这最终能改善顾客的体验。SAP技术的全球集成已经快完成了。另外在五月中旬的SAP商业同略会上，艾伦茨和SAP的共同CEO孟鼎铭宣布，双方将合作开发一款应用程序，它能将博柏利的所有产品和顾客信息都集成在销售人员的手上，使他们只需查找一个顾客的姓名，就可以看见这个顾客的相关信息，包括他的全球交易史，以及与博柏利相关的社交媒体活动。

    企业软件可能没有奢侈品那么光鲜夺目，不过博柏利却铁定了心思要为这些看似平凡的“后勤”系统投资。艾伦茨表示，博柏利已经向科技伙伴开放，成为一个各种研发活动的实验室，以使公司的运营方面做到像公司的销售情况一样令人羡慕。执行副总裁兼首席财务官史黛丝•卡特莱特说：“由于这是奢侈品行业，过去人们往往觉得创意对这个行业才是最重要的，因而投资主要流向了那个方向，而不是流向后端。不过现在我们已经做得非常平衡了。”

    Ahrendts likes to say that the members of her young employee base act as her interpreters for today's digital world. But Ahrendts herself is an early adopter, often discovering the latest tech advancements through her three children. She was one of the first in the office to acquire an Apple (AAPL) iPad, and she has since outfitted staff across corporate offices and all mainline stores with the device. (Not surprisingly, Burberry makes a line of iPad cases.) During a recent visit by Fortune to Burberry's offices, Ahrendts Skyped with a group of Burberry scholarship winners at Indiana's Ball State University, her alma mater. She told the students to check out an article about Zynga (ZNGA) CEO Mark Pincus. If they had trouble tracking it down, they could find the link on her Twitter feed.

    Technology plays heavily into employee communications too. Ahrendts and chief creative officer Christopher Bailey do regular webcasts for her workforce, and recently decided to up the frequency from quarterly to monthly. Her talk at a leadership conference in Atlanta in May was streamed at Burberry's offices. Reg Sindall, executive vice president of corporate resources, jokes that at Burberry "we film ourselves filming ourselves filming ourselves."

    Burberry's real tech cred (it has attracted employees from Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft's (MSFT) Xbox division) comes from its organically digital approach to virtually everything it now does, from fashion shows to employee communications. "It should never be on a list: 'Have we remembered to do the digital thing?'" says Bailey.

    The company uses Salesforce's Chatter platform -- think of it as a corporate version of Facebook -- a tool that Ahrendts says has accelerated communication throughout the entire operation. Sales teams in the stores, for example, were among the first to notice that larger male customers were unhappy with the fit of one style of suit. Headquarters heard about it via "Burberry Chat," and the design team made some alterations.

    The company is also beefing up its corporate software systems, which, Ahrendts says, will ultimately result in better customer experiences. A global integration of SAP technology is almost complete, and at SAP's Sapphire Now conference in mid- May, Ahrendts and SAP co-CEO Bill McDermott announced a new, jointly developed app that will put all of Burberry's product and customer information into sales associates' hands, allowing them to look up a customer's name to see a profile that includes global transaction history and social media activity as it relates to Burberry.

    Enterprise software may not be glamorous, but the luxury retailer is committed to investing in such seemingly mundane "back office" systems. Ahrendts says she's opened Burberry up to its tech partners as an R&D lab of sorts, in an effort to make the operations side of the business as admired as the front end. "Because this is luxury and where people have grown up, in the past people have thought that perhaps creative needs to lead the way, and therefore what investment there is needs to go there, rather than into the back end," says EVP and CFO Stacey Cartwright. "We're very balanced."

    2006年，艾伦茨刚从美国服装品牌丽资克莱本（Liz Claiborne）跳槽至博柏利。当时，博柏利在全球各地都授权了经销店，但作为一个全球性品牌却缺乏一个具有凝聚力的形象，而且业绩也比不上奢侈品市场的平均水平。（2006年，博柏利的批发和零售销量只上涨了2.2%，而当年奢侈品市场总体销量上涨了13%。）艾伦茨到任后购回了授权许可证，然后开始为品牌寻找正确的定位。

    艾伦茨和贝利认为，在博柏利的前途问题上，公司的“英伦风”遗产和标志性的外套必须扮演一个关键的角色（艾伦茨常说博柏利是从一件外套起家的）。不过同时他们决定把目标瞄准“八零后”，这个群体往往被其他奢侈品公司忽略，但它的确是一个新兴的市场。博柏利公司的市场调查显示，发展中国家的高净值客户的平均年龄要比美国和英国等国年轻整整15岁。

    但是到底应该如何与这个年龄段的人沟通呢？“他们的语言是什么？”艾伦茨问道：“我们面面相觑，异口同声地说：‘数码’。”于是博柏利开着本着这个原则做事。艾伦茨解释说：“我们自然而然地问自己，在我们做的每一件事上，如何能让它做到更好的沟通，如何让它更加数字化？”

    她拿自己的孩子举了个例子。几周前她的侄女来她家玩，艾伦茨让女儿转告她，一个小时后一起吃饭。女儿没有拿起电话，而是跟她在Facebook上聊天。“她知道她在Facebook上，因为她们从来不会把它关掉，”艾伦茨说：“不打电话，不发电子邮件。那就是她们的语言，那就是她们的交流方式。”

    根据咨询公司Stylophane的数据，现在博柏利在Facebook和Twitter上的粉丝要比任何其他奢侈品牌都多。博柏利大概把一半的媒体公关预算都花在了数码媒体上，但它也承认，要计算这些资源带来的回报并不是一件容易的事。

    事实上，博柏利在社交媒体上的许多努力并不是为了迅速刺激销量。比如它有一个artofthetrench.com平台，这个网站主要是让人们分享自己的照片，展示自己穿风衣的照片。艾伦茨解释道：“我们经常用最有标志性的产品做一些创新的事。”另外，公司网站“博柏利世界”也不仅仅是一个电子商务网站，甚至也不仅仅是一个博柏利门店的数字化版——虽然许多零售商可能认为在线战略就是这么一回事。

    博柏利正在推进网站的多媒体体验。现如今它的网站上又增添了一个“原声音乐”部分，可以点击观看一些尚未成名的英国音乐人的MV（当然他们都穿着博柏利的衣服）。同时消费者也可以观看剪辑精美的活动视频，比如最近网站上有一段台北门店的开业典礼，它在表演和编排上都充分考虑到了在线视频观众的需求。

    When Ahrendts arrived from Liz Claiborne in 2006, Burberry, which had licensed its name around the globe, lacked a cohesive image, and was underperforming the luxury market. (Retail and wholesale sales were up just 2.2%, vs. the sector's roughly 13% the year she arrived.) Ahrendts started buying back the licenses and moved to find the right positioning for the brand.

    Ahrendts and Bailey recognized that the company's British heritage and its iconic outerwear (Ahrendts likes to say the company was born from a coat) had to play a key role in defining the company going forward. But they also decided to pursue millennials, a group its peers were ignoring. It was an emerging-markets play as well, with the company's research showing that high-net-worth individuals in the developing world were 15 years younger than in markets such as the U.S. and Britain.

    But how to communicate with this new demographic? "What is their language?" asks Ahrendts. "And that's when we looked at each other and said, 'It's digital.' " Burberry started filtering everything through that lens. "We just naturally started asking ourselves on every single thing we did, how do we make it more connected, how do we make it more digital?" Ahrendts explains.

    She points to her own kids as an example. A few weeks ago when her niece was in town visiting, Ahrendts told her teenage daughter to have her cousin meet them for brunch in an hour. Rather than pick up the phone, she chatted with her on Facebook. "She knows she's on Facebook because they never turn it off," says Ahrendts. "Doesn't call, doesn't e-mail. That's their English. That's how they communicate."

    Today, Burberry has more Facebook and Twitter followers than any other luxury brand of those tracked by consultancy Stylophane. The company spends about half its media budget on digital but concedes it isn't easy to calculate a return on the resources poured into Burberry's technology.

    To be sure, many of Burberry's social media efforts aren't designed to spur immediate sales. Take its artofthetrench.com platform, a compilation of photos that people have sent in of themselves wearing trench coats. "We always do something innovative with our most iconic product," explains Ahrendts. Likewise, Burberry's website, dubbed Burberry World, is more than an e-commerce site or even just a digital representation of its stores, which is how many retailers think of their online strategy.

    Burberry is pushing to make its website a multimedia experience. Today it features an "acoustic" section with music videos from undiscovered British artists (dressed in Burberry clothing, of course). Consumers can also view beautifully edited clips of events, such as a recent production tied to a store opening in Taipei, staged and choreographed with the online video audience in mind.

    拿台北的这次活动来说，它一半是宴会，一半是时装秀。贝利用庞大的360度多媒体视效展示了模特身着博柏利服装走秀的过程。另外在线视频里还有当地名人入场以及宾客们用手机拍照的样子。背景音乐是英国歌手Marina and the Diamonds的那首《Numb》。

    根据最新统计，这段视频在YouTube上获得了13万次点击量——这是很了不起的，因为它从本质上讲只是一个广告，人们不必非得看它。在伦敦总部的一次会议上，艾伦茨还表示，不知能否在台北门店里播放这段视频。也就是说，能不能把一个现实活动的数码版拿回到现实世界里播放？

    博柏利的数字化举措已经越来越超出了品牌建设的范畴。用户可以通过博柏利网站的“真实T台”（Runway to Reality）收看时装秀的实况转播，然后订购他们刚刚在视频里看到的时装，然后在六到八周内就能收到订购的衣服。

    消费者并非唯一感受到博柏利的数字化变革的人。就在贝利还在为时装秀做准备的时候，博柏利已经把一些客服人员送到了伦敦，针对新产品进行培训。他解释说：“我们的业务模式突然开始变化了，因为现在我们得在一款时装的实物尚未诞生之前就开始对销售人员进行培训。”

    当然，构建一种并非完全交易导向型的网络广告具有很大的风险。奢侈品营销和品牌咨询公司Greenhill+Partners的杜克•格林希尔表示：“在人们看完了网络广告后，他们想的应该是：‘我要买那件衣服’，而不是‘这个视频真酷，不过我不记得那个产品了。’”

    虽然艾伦茨对数码如此热情，不过她从没忽视让博柏利得以立足的根本——服装和配饰。当艾伦茨检查男装团队刚刚设计出的一款短风衣式外套时，整个房间里充满了兴奋之情。艾伦茨说：“不管你怎么叫它，你都希望它能像风衣一样经典，让人想去拥有它。”说完她就启程赶赴下一个会议了。毕竟艾伦茨已经证明了一点，就像她的科技伙伴一样，她知道如何快速行动。

    译者：朴成奎

    For the Taipei event, which was one part party, one part fashion show, Bailey had built a massive, 360-degree multimedia display that showed a movie of models in Burberry clothing. The online video stitched together footage of the arrival of local celebrities, scenes of guests snapping photographs of the movie on their smartphones, and other clips, all against a stirring soundtrack ("Numb" by Marina and the Diamonds).

    The video had more than 130,000 views on YouTube at last count -- impressive considering it's essentially an ad that people choose to watch. In a meeting back at headquarters Ahrendts wonders if Burberry should play the video inside the Taipei stores. In other words, how could the company bring this digital representation of a physical event back into the physical world?

    The company increasingly is pushing its platforms beyond branding. Burberry's Runway to Reality lets viewers watch a live stream of its shows, order what they just saw, and receive their purchase in six to eight weeks.

    Customers aren't the only ones experiencing changes as a result of Burberry's tech push. While Bailey was preparing the show, the company flew members of its customer service staff to London to train them on the new products. "The business model suddenly starts to change because we now have to train our sales associates on a collection that doesn't physically exist yet," he explains.

    There's a risk, of course, to creating a digital presence that isn't completely transaction-oriented. "You have to walk away from the online experience thinking, 'I need to buy that shirt' -- not 'That's a really cool video, but I don't remember the product,' " says Duke Greenhill of luxury marketing and branding consultancy Greenhill+Partners.

    For all her enthusiasm for digital, Ahrendts never loses sight of the very "analog" products that make Burberry what it is: clothing and accessories. The room practically crackled with excitement as she inspected the short trench coats that the men's wear team had in the works. "Whatever you call it," she said, "you want it to be as memorable as the trench. Just own it." With that she jetted off to her next meeting. After all, Ahrendts has proved that, just like her tech partners, she knows how to move fast.