2017 highly commended: M&S, customer Insight - case study

Christmas.

An over-crowded marketing landscape. The ‘Superbowl’ of UK advertising. And M&S’s nemesis for the past five years.

But in 2016, reviving clothing sales was M&S’s number one priority. M&S had worked hard to ensure it had the right product, in the right place at the right time.

Marketing now needed to draw women back to the brand so that they’d come to the store with glass half full expectations.    

We could so easily have tumbled into the morass of ‘Christmas emotion’.    

But, armed with a compelling, resonant and ownable insight, we transformed M&S’s marketing approach.      

In fact, we reinvented an icon. A modern, stylish, confident & knowing Mrs. Claus, fit for modern, stylish, confident & knowing 21st Century women.    

The campaign struck a powerful chord with middle-aged, mainstream women – an audience that has been woefully overlooked in the march to Brand Feminism.    

And it helped transform M&S’s fortunes:      

Sales of ‘General Merchandise’ (M&S’s non-food business, dominated by womenswear) grew for the first Christmas in six years.   

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