ITV & M&S: Cooking up three three years of food magic.

Challenges & Objectives

M&S Food’s iconic ‘This is not just food, it’s M&S food’ positioning had reinforced M&S as a quality food retailer. However, this enviable reputation for quality convenience food meant that M&S didn’t readily come to mind for everyday fresh food. This led to smaller basket sizes, and lower frequency of visits, compared to competitors. M&S were a victim of their own success.

M&S Food had become desirable, but distant. ITV needed to protect the brand’s magic, but change perceptions. We set out to broaden M&S Food’s appeal into other categories - such as fresh produce - without losing market leadership in ready meals.

Ideas & Implementation

This is not just a campaign… it’s an M&S campaign.

To keep the magic spark, we decided to bring back the iconic line, but update everything else to bring quality credentials to a wider range of food, and people.

M&S partnered with ITV and Mindshare in ITV in 2019, on three key media strands.

1. In 2019, we broadened M&S’s appeal by embedding it in family viewing. M&S partnered with Britain’s Got Talent to bring their food into homes during shared family viewing. The stars were then integrated into the world of M&S, Ant and Dec voiceovers were used in the product-promoting idents, and the judges’ voices took over the checkouts in store, along with promoting their favourite products.

2. In 2020, we helped maintain M&S’s quality and fresh food credentials by creating Fresh Market Update. Starring ITV’s weather presenter Lucy Versamy and M&S chef Chris Barber, the pair travelled the country showcasing the length M&S go to source great food. Research told us M&S customers ate between 6-8pm, so we created a habitual viewing moment integrated into the ITV weather. We used 72 creative treatments to highlight the week’s product focus.

3. In 2021, we grew M&S’s fresh food credentials through the ad-funded programme Cooking with the Stars. Find out more about the success of this partnership.