Ad campaign takes credit for M&S recovery

Marks & Spencer’s recovery is due in no small measure to its enormously successful advertising campaigns.

Glamorous ads featuring 1960s icon Twiggy and models Erin O’Connor and Lizzie Jagger have been credited with making M&S womenswear fashionable again.

Meanwhile, the firm’s food ads with their much-parodied voice-over: “This is not just food, this is M&S food” said in incredibly sexy husky tones led to an astonishing 3,500% increase in the sale of chocolate puddings.

It was not always thus. M&S, formed in 1894, was a company that had eschewed television advertising believing it was such a household name it could carry on through reputation.

But following a profits peak in the late nineties, M&S started to lose touch with its customers who increasingly saw it as stuffy and old-fashioned. Profits slumped from more than £1bn (€1.49bn) in 1997 and 1998 to £145m (€216.3) for the year to March 31, 2001.

Three years ago, M&S launched a television ad campaign featuring a naked woman running up a hill that did not really work.

David Wethey, chairman of Agency Assessments International, said: “M&S was one of the famous companies that didn’t believe in advertising.”

He said the main problem with the naked woman ad was that nothing had changed in the stores.

“It was an attempt to change the image without changing the product,” he said.

When chief executive Stuart Rose took over in 2004 to help stave off a takeover bid from Sir Philip Green he introduced the firm’s Your M&S catchline and increased the firm’s advertising spend massively.

Marketing manager Steve Sharp has worked alongside James Murphy of M&S’s longterm ad agency RKCR/Y&R to mastermind the turnaround.

Figures from Nielsen Media Research show that in the last year M&S spent £61,659,629 (€92,017,418) on advertising. This was an increase from £45,104,679 (€67,311,726) the previous year.

M&S is slowly creeping up to that of supermarket giant Tesco which at £71m (€105.9m) is the UK’s biggest retail advertising spender.

And the spending spree has paid off.

Last week, M&S won the coveted advertising award – the Grand Prix, at the 2006 IPA Effectiveness Awards for its ‘Your M&S’ campaign by RKCR/Y&R.

The agencies’ trade body the IPA said the award “recognises the campaign’s success in turning around the fortunes of the high street brand and in helping to drive over 18 million additional customer visits”.

The St Michael trademark which was first used in 1928 was dropped in 2000 and the Your M&S logo now appears on carrier bags, window displays and in-store signs, as well as featuring in the group’s advertising campaigns.

In August, Marks & Spencer’s ethical campaign Look behind the label was hailed by a City brokerage firm as the most successful it has ever run.

The campaign, launched in January with window displays in 420 stores, focuses on the way M&S sources and makes its producs, highlighting everything from its use of toxic-free clothes dyes, salt reduction in ready meals to animal welfare.

It was the first major campaign by any retailer to concentrate on the way products are sourced and made and its success reflects the consumer trend for a more ethical way of living combined with a healthier lifestyle.

Citigroup said the campaign has embedded the concept of M&S as a responsible retailer.

“The evidence collected by the company indicates that this was the most positive campaign the business has ever run, and measured, on brand perception,” Citigroup said in a broker note.

Mr Wethey said this has been an “incredible success story”.

He said bringing Twiggy on board was a “stroke of sheer genius” but the ads have worked because the stores have changed dramatically.

“It’s a very different retail experience to what it was,” he said. “The company has pulled itself up from its boot straps.”