Elle Newman

In August 2013 M&S launched the leading ladies campaign to launch the autumn-winter collection. The celebrities they chose to you were olympic gold medalist Nicola Adams, Nurse of the year Helen Allen, Tracy Emin, Helen Mirren, Katie Piper, Monica Ali, Grace Coddington, Karen Elson, Jasmine Whitbread and Ellie Golding. They were chosen for their ‘strong sense of personal style’ and inspirational achievements. The adverts feature a combination of the women in quintessentially British locations such as the London’s Tower Bridge and the British countryside wearing clothing from the range. For the last few years, M&S sales have been falling dramatically and they wanted this campaign to signal a new era for M&S. The campaign was launched online, print and on the TV, the campaign used women of all different ages and sizes as it wanted people to focus more on the women’s achievements rather than their looks. A few of the campaign images are shown below.

M&S also carried on with this campaign in 2014, when they launched the campaign again this time with different faces. The new faces were Lulu Kennedy MBE, Rachel Khoo, Alek Werk, Rita Ora, Emma Thompson, Doreen Laurance and Annie Lennox. The shoots were again in typically British settings and had the same message to celebrate women from diverse backgrounds and professions all united by their personal style and inspirational achievements. Patrick Bousquet Chavanne M&S’s executive directors commented in the companies press release:

‘These dynamic leading ladies represent the unique and diverse women of a modern Britan. They are united in their extraordinary achievements but confident in their differences. Marks and Spencers is a democratic brand which is relevant to women of all ages and strands of life, it is, therefore, natural for M&S to celebrate women in this way.’   

I like the concept of this campaign but I’m not a fan of its execution. I think the idea of having women with achievements and women that people recognise and look up to is a really good idea, however, I don’t like that they used the same shoot idea the ‘Britishness’ element twice for both years. The second launch in 2014 did significantly worse than the 2013 campaign, and I believe this is because it was too similar and not new, people had already seen it, so it didn’t have the same impact. Which as a result they didn’t continue with it after 2014, which I think is sad as the idea itself was really good just the end product in the fact they didn’t utilise all the marketing mix and the clothing itself let the campaign down. This campaign is a perfect example of how if you don’t use the 360-degree marketing strategy campaigns can go wrong.