Engagement as the core of social and digital media strategy in the fashion industry

The main purpose of this paper is to recognize and to underline the role of engagement as the core of a digital and social media strategy. Since many fashion brands haven’t exploited completely the potentialities that the continuously evolving digital media can offer, we have reviewed the literature in an effort to structure an approach to define an effective digital media strategy. Furthermore, we examined the Burberry case to identify the axes that addressed brand strategy and the role of engagement in its success. The main contribution of the paper is therefore an engagement-oriented approach to the definition process of a digital strategy that can be implemented by companies who intend to enter the digital business. The current scenario demands a continuously evolving mind-set and organization focused not only on reaching target audiences, but also on retaining them through a customer-centric strategy. The suggested approach might be adopted by companies belonging to various sectors, but customer engagement can be especially useful for visually-oriented sectors like fashion, where consumers are easily reached and already overloaded with content from many sources, and where a captivating and innovative digital marketing strategy can become a critical success factor.