M&S have a culture war problem...
This is about how they decided to refocus their advertising strategy in 2017.
www.thedrum.com/news/2017/03/23/ms-advertising-rethink-will-not-see-it-target-mrs-ms
After hiring a new creative and digital agency in Grey six months ago, Marks and Spencer (M&S) is taking its advertising in a new direction, basing its strategy on “attitude”, not age.
The high-street retailer has had its fair share of us and downs in recent years, and while its food business continues to perform strongly, general merchandise is lagging. It’s now one year since chief executive Steve Rowe introduced a five-point plan to reverse its fortunes and, more importantly, reignite passion for the brand among its seven million ‘Core’ customers.
Dubbed ‘Mrs M&S’, this segment was categorised as females aged over 50, but it also needed to go after the 22 million ‘Occasionals’ (aged under-35). However, as Rob Weston, global brand and marketing director at M&S said, “categorisations of 40, 50, and 60-year olds is just meaningless. What matters is the attitude”.
“There will come a time when M&S is going to have to choose someone to represent the brand on a single page, and just by the nature of that we’ll exclude more people than we include,” he explained.
“So you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If we choose a younger model we get told on social media that we’re forgetting about our core customer. And if we use an older model we get told that we’re reinforcing our 'mumsy' image. That’s a hard thing to break, but it’s what we’re trying to do.”
It expands a bit more but in essence this is a pure marketing decision about trying to appeal to a younger audience by promoting 'attitude' whilst counting on the fact that core market has shopped there for years and will simply continue to do so.
It should be seen in this light; they don't care about women they care about advertising and sales.