M&S pins hopes on clothing turnaround with overhauled marketing to mirror food ads
The retailer has struggled to covert sales in its clothing division, but is hoping closer alignment with its food marketing strategy will mark the start of a resurgence.
M&S has hailed a “consistent” tone of voice as the driver of this fresh positioning. Its food business has been built on conveying a perception of quality, something it is looking to emulate with clothing by talking up its “expertise, creativity, quality and passion”.
The campaign – its most extensive to date – will run in 50 markets across TV with no fewer than six-different ads as well as print and digital under the refreshed strapline: ‘Only one store does it like this.’
It comes as M&S boss Marc Bolland comes under increasing pressure to turn around the ailing clothing business; even more so after the departure of the womenswear boss – 26-year veteran John Dixon – last month.
Despite what appeared to be a resurgence earlier this year, non-food sales fell 0.4 per cent over the 13 weeks to 27 June. In contrast, food sales were up 0.3 per cent.
“We wanted to find a distinctive and consistent voice for M&S that creates a more joined up journey and way of talking to our customers about the unique qualities of food and fashion and bring our food and fashion wolds closer together,” explained Patrick Bousquet Chavanne, executive director of marketing and international at Marks and Spencer.
“Our award winning ‘Adventures in Food’ campaign has been praised all over the world for the way it celebrates our expertise, our creativity, our quality and the passion of our people in a stylish and cutting edge format. Customers told us these are all the qualities we should be shouting about for our fashion business as well.”
Developed by RKCR/Y&R, the new ‘Art of-‘ campaign has sought to convey the same message as food with fast-paced, close up product shots and sequences that mirror parts of the manufacturing process.
It promotes both women’s, men’s and children’s clothing across whole product categories with the ‘style and quality’ push, itself a new tact having previously attributed such qualities to individual lines Autograph and Limited. For these sub-brands, internal research found that perception of M&S as a whole was boosted by as much as 6 per cent off the back of the campaigns.
Bousquet-Chavanne claimed this approach has made for a much more flexible, and hopefully effective, wave of activity.