It’s hard to imagine a time where a brand like M&S didn’t have a full presence online. But when we met them, that was exactly the case. It was 2010 and they were treating the brand online like a down and dirty retailer, not like one of the beloved brands of the nation. We came up with a new approach and positioning, demonstrating how digital could enable the M&S brand promise online, and personalise it even further, turning ‘Your M&S’ into ‘My M&S’.
We helped them develop their presence on all paid, earned and owned channels; taking them from a “non-presence” to a unmissable online brand.
Concurrently, we embarked on specific campaigns. The first campaign we did engaged customers with “Lingerie for Every Body”. Aimed to show that M&S understands and supports women, and to convey that whatever a woman's size, and whatever her curves, M&S have the lingerie to suit them all. A combined media strategy of content partnerships and contextual and behaviourally targeted network buys created a truly meaningful experience for customers.
We also combined media, creative, UX and design to create a helpful and inviting digital journey to take the stress out of Christmas planning and shopping.
The M&S website hosted “Your Christmas Helper”, a set helpful tools, such as: Gift Genius (select the personality type for a personalised gift recommendation), Size Detective (input type of clothes you want to select as a gift and will find out the persons size via e-mail), Dinner Planner (select a 3 course meal and obtain a printable shopping list), Wine Picker (select meal and be presented with a suitable carousel of wine) and Last Minute League (male focused tool to help choose a present in the last minute dash before Christmas).
All this was supported by highly targeted rich media ads with imbedded helpful tools, integrated media partnerships, a Facebook app, a mobile campaign and a hard working direct response strategy that would drive customers to purchase online and in store.
Overall we achieved a high success rate for M&S per campaign as well as building their online and social presence. So what started off as down and dirty, got transformed to help M&S clean up online.
IMPACT
in 1 year
25 campaigns delivered, 2.3 billion impressions.
We doubled the click through rate, achieving over 2.15 million clicks.
We drove more engaged customers to M&S.COM helping increase on-site engagement time by 50%, generating over £30m revenue.
Christmas Campaign:
M&S considered it their most successful digital christmas campaign to date.
It generated over 250k orders with a order value of £13.5m.
53% reach into the M&S core audience (55+ women).
5% point uplift on food purchase in store and 12% across gifting and clothing.