M&S launches fun-filled Christmas campaign with knits focus

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Nov 8, 2019

As it continues to work on its turnaround, UK retail giant M&S has unveiled its Clothing & Home Christmas campaign “with stylish and great value knitwear as the star”.

M&S said it expects to sell more than 5 million sweaters this festive season and the campaign reflects its strategy “to broaden family appeal, with everyone including the family dog rocking knitwear”.

Like many retail peers, the company has previously invested heavily in celebrity-studded storytelling mega campaigns, but the trend this year is to scale that back with a focus on real people and fun, and this can be seen with M&S’s new creative.

The “fun-filled advert is a lighter tone,” we’re told. Called Go Jumpers, it’s set to the House of Pain track Jump Around and supports what the retailer said is its “powerhouse category”.

The 60-second film shows off 50 different jumpers from the biggest knitwear retailer in Britain, taking in a wide range of prices from £19.50 up to higher-end cashmeres. And the creative covers women’s, men’s and kidswear.

The ad premise is simple, M&S’s festive knitwear sparks “jumping around” across the UK – from friends in the local pub, to schoolkids at the bus stop, to a family chilling on the sofa. The office scene also sees one of M&S’s own store staff “jumping around” in a festive jumper. Monique, the Café Manager at the Marble Arch store, was selected from an employee casting drive.

The company said the new approach “reflects that M&S is changing to become more relevant, more often to busy families across the UK”.

The ad was created by ODD and directed by Jake Nava who also directed Beyoncé’s Single Ladies music video.

The overall campaign will also take in multiple platforms, “with more content created for an M&S campaign than ever before – both in-house, by social influencers and by customers who will be encouraged to share their attempts at dancing the shoulder roll as they #gojumpers in their M&S festive knitwear”.

It said that on social media, it will make over 150 million impressions – “an increase on last year that’s critical as the platforms have grown as selling channels”.

As justification for this, it said revenue from social is already up 200% versus last year, and its following has grown to 1.3 million on Instagram. 

Emails will also be used to reach its “most loyal customers” with 6 million receiving campaign emails each week.

And Go Jumpers imagery “will dominate billboards across the UK with out of home marketing becoming more important as busy family customers increasingly shop on the go – 70% of searches for M&S products on Google are already via mobile”.