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Advertising Marks & Spencer

M&S’s restructured Clothing & Home team ditches broadcast spend in digital-first campaign

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By Katie Deighton, Senior Reporter

September 3, 2018 | 3 min read

Marks & Spencer’s Clothing & Home division has unveiled its first work as a standalone marketing function, choosing to abandon broadcast TV spots in favour of digital for a product-focused campaign.

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M&S Must-Haves

‘Must-Haves’ highlights on a swathe of Autumn essentials from across the womenswear, menswear, kidswear, home and beauty departments. It was created by agency of record Grey London.

The hero film, which plays out to David Bowie’s Modern Love, is a montage of well-dressed women admiring other well-dressed women’s outfits around London.

The new marketing team hopes the work underscores its fresh strategy that is ‘more seasonally relevant, more inspirational and more agile in utilising digital channels to target customers’. The latter is demonstrated in the campaign’s media plan.

The brand has not booked any traditional TV spots, however will push its TVCs through targeted video-on-demand. Additionally, ‘Must-Have’ products will be pushed through Instagram and Facebook’s Shoppable feature, while campaign creative will run throughout autumn on Instagram TV and via a Facebook ‘Must-Haves’ photo frame.

M&S has also teamed with Google Inventory Advertising, allowing customers to search what is in a brick-and-mortar store when they’re nearby. Press and digital out-of-home will accompany the online work.

Nathan Ansell, Clothing & Home marketing director at M&S, said: “M&S is using new ways of engaging with our customers and the digital focus with ‘Must-Haves’ is the result of customer insight, collaboration across our business and creative thinking. It’s executed across a highly targeted range of digital channels and excitingly is our most digital campaign to date.

“Must-Haves is all about product and is designed to show M&S as a stylish and affordable choice for high- quality, seasonal wardrobe essentials - with so much more to come we can’t wait to hear what our customers think.”

The retailer restructured its marketing team in April following the breakdown of its ‘one brand’ strategy. ‘Must-Haves’ is the first work to come from the Clothing & Home function, which now operates separately to the Food business, and forms part of its strategy to move one third of sales online.

The initiative also builds on the ongoing ‘Love it for Less’ campaign.

M&S: advert-top-1 by Grey

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