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By Stephen Foster on May 23, 2013
Before Steve Sharp (left) joined Marks & Spencer as marketing director in 2004 – as part of Stuart Rose’s management team hired to fend off a takeover bid from Philip Green – M&S barely used to advertise. It had hired, I seem to recall, the Davidson Pearce agency (subsequently absorbed into BMP) as its agency [...]
Posted in Agencies, Analysis, Clients, Creative, Finance, News | Tagged a&e/ddb, amv/bbdo, bbh, James Murphy, John Lewis, m&S, Marc Bolland, marks & spencer, Philip Green, rkcr/y&r, Steve Sharp, Stuart Rose, Twiggy
By Stephen Foster on May 9, 2013
Food porn, dont’cha miss it? Back in the 90s, or thereabouts, Marks & Spencer was famous for its orgasmic food ads and now Sainsbury’s and trusty agency AMV/BBDO appears to be rehearsing the genre in this new campaign. Well it’s for muesli for Christ’s sake. Anyway it’s very nicely done. Sainsbury’s lost its ‘brand ambassador’ [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, News | Tagged amv/bbdo, food porn, Jamie Oliver, marks & spencer, new TV campaign, Sainsburys, y&r
By Paul Simons on January 16, 2013
With all of the worrying news on the UK retail scene (Comet, Jessops, now HMV) it makes me wonder to what extent management of these companies genuinely listen to what the great unwashed actually think. I fully understand the energy needed to turn around a business – I’ve lived through a few – but that’s [...]
Posted in Analysis, Clients, Creative, Finance, News, Research | Tagged BT, ggt, IBM, Lou Gerstner, Marc Bolland, marks & spencer, research, retail, simons palmer, Sir Ken Morrison, Voltaire
By Paul Simons on January 11, 2013
The news was predictable albeit the detail about UK retail trading was not so easy. Would Tesco pull back share, would M&S turn the corner, would HMV survive? Then camera chain Jessop goes bump in the night before we’ve taken down our Christmas decorations. How come John Lewis cleaned up and posted record sales? Lots [...]
Posted in Analysis, Clients, Finance, News | Tagged christmas, customer service, jessops, John Lewis, marks & spencer, Morrisons, online, peter jones, Sainsburys, Tesco, uk retail
By Stephen Foster on November 7, 2012
Times are hard at Marks & Spencer as former Morrisons and Heineken boss Marc Bolland labours to attract more customers despite spending hundreds of millions on store refits (hardly evident in London as far as I can see). What the company, the biggest UK general retailer, clearly lacks is an idea and this is startlingly [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, Finance, News | Tagged boots, christmas 2012, George Davies, greatest hits ad, Marc Bolland, marks & spencer, mother, rkcr/y&r, Sir Stuart Rose, Twiggy
By Stephen Foster on July 10, 2012
For a pillar of the British high street Marks & Spencer has a notoriously wobbly history. Back in the 1980s it briefly topped £1bn in profits under Sir Rick Greenbury, only to nearly implode as it was undercut by rivals (chiefly long-term nemesis Next) and wasted shareholders’ money buy buying Brooks Brothers for £500m and [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, News | Tagged British high street, heineken, Kate Bostock, m&S, Marc Bolland, marks & spencer, Morrisons, next, profits collapse, rkcr/y&r, Steve Sharp
By Angie Dean on April 11, 2012
It’s going to be a ‘Summer to Remember’ according to Marks & Spencer and agency RKCR/Y&R and clearly it is, as we’re all going to sitting around waving Union Jacks, running in egg and spoon races and finishing off the day by setting fire to the nearest woodland. Oh yes, it’s the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, News | Tagged celebrities, Jamie Redknapp, marks & spencer, queen's diamond jubilee, rkcr/y&r, summer to remember, tv campaign, Twiggy
By Staff on March 8, 2012
British food brand ‘Look What We Found!’ is going national with a new campaign from agency east, directed by Marks & Spencer ‘food porn’ director Charlie Stebbings. Look What We Found (where do they get these brand..) is owned by Tanfield Foods and markets premium soups and ready meals from food produced by small British [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Creative, News | Tagged british farmers, Charlie Stebbings, east, food brand, look what we've found, marks & spencer, small farmers big taste, tanfield foods, yeo valley
By Staff on December 7, 2011
As if Havas CEO David Jones wasn’t busy enough he’s found time to write a new book, Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business is Better Business. Here he explains why he wrote it. Six years ago, I was asked to speak at an Advertising Age Ideas Conference about redefining creativity. The key point of my [...]
Posted in Agencies, Clients, Finance, Media, News, Politics, PR | Tagged Bart Becht, BP, corporate social responsibility, david jones, deepwater horizon, dior, egypt, GE, havas ceo, James Smith, Jeff Immelt, John Galliano, Kenneth Cole, marks & spencer, new book, one young world, Paul Myners, Paul Polman, Reckitt-Benckiser, shell, Sidney Toledano, social media, sustainability, Tony Haymard, unilever, who cares wins
By Stuart Smith on December 7, 2011
Chris Barraclough, writing in Marketing magazine, is right. While the marketing community obsesses about Marks & Spencer lingerie ads, Size Zero models, Twitter trending and the monetisation of Facebook, it is almost entirely oblivious to some criminality of Dickensian proportions besmirching its name. Criminality? We’re talking big banks here, and yet another ‘mis-selling’ scandal, although [...]
Posted in Clients, Finance, News, Politics, PR | Tagged bank of scotland, barclays, Chris Barraclough, commission, help the aged, hsbc, investment bond, marketing magazine, marks & spencer, mis-selling, nhfa, nursing home fees agency, Royal British Legion, Stuart Smith, twitter, £40m fine
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