M&S festive campaign launches as Christmas shopping starts early

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 4, 2021

On a big day for Christmas campaign releases, M&S has launched both its food and fashion campaigns. The latter continues the ‘Anything but Ordinary’ theme with the retailer saying “the magical, musical advert shows off a range of clothing and encourages customers to make the entire season anything but ordinary”.

The campaign has launched across all customer channels – “from TV to TikTok” — and comes as “consumers are really ramping up their festive planning”.

M&S said customers are “well under way planning for Christmas – with nearly half of them expecting to have finished their Christmas gift shopping by the end of the month (earlier than usual)”, and Christmas-relevant products are “selling incredibly well already”.

The two campaigns “share the strategy of heroing the trusted quality value of M&S’s own-brand product offer, from cashmere to canapés. Food and Clothing & Home advertising space is purchased separately by M&S’s agency Mindshare, but the brand has united to launch the campaigns together for maximum impact”.

The clothing campaign created by ODD, shot by Autumn de Wilde and starring Madisyn Ritland, brings to life “a whimsical musical world with the star of the ad dancing through the iconic moments of Christmas – from shopping for presents to having fun in family PJs”. 

The creative will be executed across a range of channels – from print cover wraps to an activation at Waterloo station. M&S will also be taking over three large-scale sites bringing to life some of the “theatrical magic” with hand-painted murals. 

Within TV advertising, Video on Demand will continue to be key, and M&S will be the first UK retailer to use ‘Flowcode’ – an innovation that allows a QR code to be seamlessly worked into the advert.