Despite the established popularity of social media, many big brands have struggled to integrate themselves into the online culture in a relevant and genuine way.  Surprisingly one of the first mainstream fashion brands to do this with any real success has been the traditional British brand Burberry with their “Art of the Trench” campaign.

Designed to re-invigorate the interest of a younger and hipper audience in Burberry and in particular their iconic trench coat they invited online users to submit images and opinions on the brand’s range of trench coats through the site Artofthetrench.com – which features images of people wearing different designs of the coat. Users can navigate through them by altering the criteria, which includes gender, weather and popularity. Additional features of the site include a history of the Burberry trench coat, which dates back to 1910, with images and press cuttings from the time.

Sounds pretty boring so far… however Burberry had the foresight to work with Scott Schuman AKA The Satorialist  to take the first 100 pictures on the site, a smart move that truly engaged the online fashion and blogging community.  Its not a one off either as Burberry have already said they plan to work with more well known photographers and bloggers on this project in the future.

Scott created a video for the site where he discusses the project and his approach to it.

So far it seems to be working for Burberry, the “Art of the Trench” site got over 200,000 users in its first week with over 3 million page views, good news and hopefully one that will see other brands become more adventurous and creative with how they use the internet.