Marks and Spencer 2015 Annual Report Download - page 32

Download and view the complete annual report

Please find page 32 of the 2015 Marks and Spencer annual report below. You can navigate through the pages in the report by either clicking on the pages listed below, or by using the keyword search tool below to find specific information within the annual report.

Page out of 132

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • 11
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
  • 17
  • 18
  • 19
  • 20
  • 21
  • 22
  • 23
  • 24
  • 25
  • 26
  • 27
  • 28
  • 29
  • 30
  • 31
  • 32
  • 33
  • 34
  • 35
  • 36
  • 37
  • 38
  • 39
  • 40
  • 41
  • 42
  • 43
  • 44
  • 45
  • 46
  • 47
  • 48
  • 49
  • 50
  • 51
  • 52
  • 53
  • 54
  • 55
  • 56
  • 57
  • 58
  • 59
  • 60
  • 61
  • 62
  • 63
  • 64
  • 65
  • 66
  • 67
  • 68
  • 69
  • 70
  • 71
  • 72
  • 73
  • 74
  • 75
  • 76
  • 77
  • 78
  • 79
  • 80
  • 81
  • 82
  • 83
  • 84
  • 85
  • 86
  • 87
  • 88
  • 89
  • 90
  • 91
  • 92
  • 93
  • 94
  • 95
  • 96
  • 97
  • 98
  • 99
  • 100
  • 101
  • 102
  • 103
  • 104
  • 105
  • 106
  • 107
  • 108
  • 109
  • 110
  • 111
  • 112
  • 113
  • 114
  • 115
  • 116
  • 117
  • 118
  • 119
  • 120
  • 121
  • 122
  • 123
  • 124
  • 125
  • 126
  • 127
  • 128
  • 129
  • 130
  • 131
  • 132

30
MARKS AND SPENCER GROUP PLC
DIRECTORS’ REPORT
PERFORMANCE OVERVIEW
One brand, multiple stories. That was our
mission this year: to speak in unison across
the GM and Food sides of our business,
across communication channels, and across
geographies. By uniting all narratives under
the ‘Only M&S’ umbrella, we reinforced our
strengths as a trusted and unique British
lifestyle brand.
We raised the bar with our advertising,
gaining strong brand recognition for our
renewed focus on product. In Food, we
showed that we are at the forefront of
discovery and creativity. We remained
focused on our core strength as a speciality
retailer – innovation. In Clothing, we
demonstrated that our ranges are fresh,
stylish and in sync with the current trends.
A FRESH APPROACH
Our new logo – M&S Est. 1884 – was
designed to show our brand heritage in a
contemporary and relevant way. Through
the logo, we are expressing our roots but
also showing that we are a modern brand
that has inspired the British high street
for generations. With 131 years of trading
under our belts, our heritage is a great
di erentiator and we are rightly proud of it.
We revamped all our publications to reflect
this new look, from our Home catalogue
to our Food to Order catalogue, and we
launched Womenswear and Menswear Style
Guides for the first time. The new brand
handwriting extended to M&S.com and
its daily publications hub, Style & Living.
As a modern retailer, we must provide an
inspiring digital or printed expression of
who we are on every platform.
THE CONNECTED CONSUMER
Our Christmas marketing campaign – The
Two Fairies – was a great example of how all
our channels can come together to tell a
holistic and believable story. The campaign
followed two fairies as they spread
Christmas magic and sparkle across the
land. It started secretly and quickly went
viral as we covertly carried out random acts
of kindness in schools, hospitals and stores.
Our @TheTwoFairies Twitter tag amassed
30,000 followers before we revealed that
M&S was behind it. The TV ad that followed –
an escapist fantasy that continued the
random acts of kindness theme – achieved
recognition of 68%. Customers liked the
warmth and wit of M&S’s first truly social
campaign.
Today, all our communications start with
a core idea that gets expressed across all
the consumer touchpoints: stores, online,
mobile, social media, print media, billboards
and TV. Our award-winning ‘Adventures in’
Food TV ads harnessed online videos to
get their message across. Today, a fifth of
our media budget goes on social media,
four times more than three years ago. This
approach reflects how people live today
and how they expect to engage with M&S.
SEASONAL AND FOCUSED
After last year’s Leading Ladies campaign
re-established M&S’s style credentials, our
approach to marketing this year has been
more product focused and richer in digital
video content. We sought to emphasise our
leadership in authoritative categories such
as knitwear, occasionwear and cashmere.
In Food, our January marketing focused
on our health ranges while our ‘Adventures
in Imagination’ campaign highlighted the
expertise, creativity and passion behind
our food ranges from around the world.
Customers will see even more of this
storytelling next year as our marketing
becomes more personalised.
STAYING RELEVANT R
We may have a broad church of customers
around the world, but by harnessing
technology and leveraging the power of
our Customer Insight Unit, we can talk
to all 33 million of our customers in a more
personalised way. There is always a risk
that brands will lose their relevancy, but
by engaging with our customers and
adapting to their needs, we will remain
pertinent to their everyday lives.
We reinforced our strengths as a trusted and unique
British lifestyle brand with a new approach that told the
many stories that make our products di erent.
PATRICK BOUSQUET-CHAVANNE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, MARKETING & INTERNATIONAL
1. The combined size of our social media audience
through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram and Pinterest is 2,606,000, up 22% on
the previous year.
2. M&S was one of the o cial sponsors of London
Fashion Weekend. The partnership demonstrated
our fashion credentials.
3. The ‘Cook with M&S’ app we launched this year
saw 250 ,0 00 p eople sig n u p in just fo ur m onths
and was featured as the #1 Food & Drink app in
the Apple App Store.
2. 3.
1.
OUR BRAND
OPERATING PERFORMANCE
W
Br
i