Burberry’s new CEO and media training for luxury houses and clothing brands
It tells you something about the standing of Britain’s most prominent luxury brand that Burberry’s new CEO has generated such large amounts of media over the last few days. As suppliers of media training for fashion brands and for luxury houses, we’ve been particularly interested to follow the story.
Media Training for CEOs
PR companies and in-house media teams often call us for CEO media training in fashion and luxury houses. This might be to prepare them for interviews on their appointment, to discuss financial results, to announce a merger or acquisition or simply to make sure that they’re ready to speak to journalists at the unveiling of the latest collection.
As part of our media coaching for fashion brand executives we’ll work with their PR advisors to help develop a narrative. For Burberry and its new CEO Joshua Schulman, this is particularly important after years of struggle.
The downturn in the luxury market was “proving more challenging than expected”.
We applaud Burberry chairman, Gerry Murphy, for his honesty when he says that: “the downturn in the luxury market was “proving more challenging than expected,” and that the company’s recent earnings are “disappointing.” It’s important if you’re in a difficult situation to admit, as we emphasise in our media training for luxury houses. Trying to dodge the question or downplay it will simply encourage the media to chase you until you admit what we all know to be true.
On the other hand, though, you don’t want to get drawn into journalistic hyperbole. All of our media trainers are working journalists (operating under strict NDAs) and so they know the tricks of the trade. “This is terrible, isn’t it?” or “These results are pretty shocking, aren’t they?” might encourage a helpful interviewee to agree.
However, there are still pitfalls even if you’re disagreeing. “No, I wouldn’t say they’re terrible,” might mean that you’re rejecting the allegation but by repeating this negative language you’ve put it into a quote that the journalist can use. You’ve also emphasised the idea of “terrible” or “shocking” in the minds of the audience, even if you’re denying it.
Burberry’s new CEO and media training
The Burberry team might want to put their disappointing financial and trading performance into context. They could point out that for a number of reasons, the luxury sector generally is going through one of its periodic difficult spells. This emphasises that Burberry is not alone here , even if it’s been particularly badly hit, puts the situation into context.
Message testing and development sessions
This idea of contextualisation is a good way of handling difficult issues. We’re carrying out more message testing and development sessions for companies and contextualisation works well to explain why a company has made a difficult decision or has a policy that might be controversial. When we’re looking at issues such as sustainability and supply chain in our media training for fashion brands, we recommend using a phrase such as “This affects all clothing manufacturers,” in other words, it’s not just you who should be under the spotlight. You can then go on to explain which sensible actions and initiatives that you’re taking in this area.
One thing that we stress in our media coaching for CEOs is the importance of setting out a vision, or a “journey”, as it’s often referred to these days. Burberry is doing the right thing here by talking about “rebalancing” its offering and including “a broader everyday luxury offer.” It will also aim for “more of the timeless, classic attributes that Burberry is known for,” the company has claimed.
It’s interesting to note how much of the recent media coverage has acknowledged this idea of a journey or narrative. Discussing the record of recent designers at the house, Riccardo Tisci and, since 2022, the Daniel Lee, Guardian fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley writes: “neither Tisci nor Lee have found a way to join the dots between avant garde catwalk looks and what consumers want from Burberry.”
Media training and presentation training for CEOs
Journey, narrative, dots – call it what you will, but this sense of vision and of direction is essential for any CEO in any industry. It’s also vitally important that they, and their teams, can articulate it to the media and other audiences. That’s where our media training and presentation training for CEOs come in.
One final thought. As Mr Schulman takes charge of the company, which, of course, has a great heritage, he’s going to have to work with his PR team to develop some stories. Storytelling is an essential part of that narrative we mentioned but it’s useful in other ways. If he wants to tell us that Burberry is moving in a new creative direction then Mr Schulman and his team are going to have to identify a range of stories, case studies and anecdotes. These can both illustrate what this new direction looks like and prove that the company really is embarking on it
Media training for fashion retailers
When we provide media training for fashion retailers, we create role play situations where our media trainers will do what they often do in real life when they’re reporting. They’ll walk round a store with a CEO or senior manager showcasing and explaining the latest collections. They will point out details to our media trainers and explain the thinking behind each piece.
We worked with a major international retailer recently to talk about their talent recruitment and retention programmes. During this course we spent time helping them to identify specific case studies of employees – including some asylum seekers – that they’d recruited, trained and developed. Telling these stories attracts the attention of journalists, creates positive coverage, and gives the interviewee more control.
Media Training courses for luxury houses and clothing brands
Our media training courses for CEOs teach techniques to control interviews and steer away from difficult topics. We create all of our media training for fashion brands and luxury houses from scratch to meet the client’s needs exactly. Come and talk to us. You can follow us on LinkedIn here.
