Advertising and promotion is a problem or a gift for almost every company these days. A good and innovative product only is not enough. Companies have to put a lot of effort and money on the promotion of their new products. The budgets often spend on advertising sometimes goes out of proportions and the outcome is very insecure. It can happen that the objectives are not reached because of a failing promotion campaign. The other way around, the campaign can also lead to massive sales and a great development within the business.
This case is about Marks & Spencer and the ‘Twiggy’ campaign they used.
‘Your M&S’
The ‘Twiggy’ campaign was launched after a long period of falling sales which also had a bad effect on the trust of the investors. The upcoming autumn/winter fashion collection should be the point to turn the falling sales into profit. The management of Marks and Spencer was very excited about it. They just needed to convey this confidence to their customers.
The customers of M&S are very broad-ranged, so it will take a good campaign to reach them all with the right effect. In order to do so, M&S contracted four models. Every model differed in age and look. The idea behind this was to find four well-qualified women who were well positioned to address different parts of the target group. The campaign was a success and the sales started to rise again. By having an excellent product range and let them be represented by super models targeted at every age group in the market, M&S did a wonderful job. But what role has the Marks & Spencer’s advertising agency played in the creation of this ‘Twiggy’ campaign? In this case study we will investigate that.
The agency can provide many different services. Here are the ones listed that were useful for Marks and Spencer:
· Media planning;
· Designing the advertisements;
· Producing the advertisements;
· Help in identifying the target audience;
· Providing public relations activity;
· Proving direct marketing support.
The media planning team decided where the advertisements with the super model on it should be shown and they buy the media time. This team must have a great knowledge about the media in order to be effective. M&S advertised in magazines, with posters and used other media to come close to the customers. The advertisements with the models lead to the high rise of sales. Nowadays the media is the most common tool to promote your products and so the media planning team must have a great knowledge about it in order to advertise effectively.
The creative department of M&S develops promotional ideas through three main important things. They use copywriting (writing the words in the advertisement), distinctive typography, which is type style, and layout and attractive graphic designs.
The design of the advertisement contains two themes. There is a dark variant and a light one. The image Twiggy is on shows that she is a happy and smart woman who wears her clothes with treatment. You can see that the use of design is performed very thoughtful. The pictures show a typical British image; the models look happy and the colour of the clothes have a large attraction. When making this kind of advertisements it is all about the details. The details can make or break the meaning of the campaign.
Along with the designing people, there is a team that produces the advertisements. The production department has the task of producing a full page magazine advert or a billboard for example. In the case of M&S the design has all to do with the models. M&S hired Hampton Court Palace to shoot the advertisement. The result was a fifty-second commercial. It was up to the production department to arrange the appropriate equipment and to produce the commercial. The planning team helps determine the type of consumer where to target the promotion. M&S used four different models to reach the broad-ranged customer base. All models differ in age and look so there a lot of people who can identify with at least one of the models. Unusually, the choice of the models wasn’t driven by focus-group discussion or other research methods. This is not common in a campaign this size. The choice was all due to the agency of M&S.
Providing public relations activities is also a service that can be done by the agency. Examples are exhibitions, conferences or writing press releases. An announce that describes the start of a campaign was used by M&S. The numbers of sales are also promoted by press releases about Lesley Hornby (the real name of Twiggy). By giving her a good image, the promotion would do better too. There were not only articles about the model; also releases about the good name of Marks & Spencer were commonly used.
Marks & Spencer’s agency also provides a daily e-mail that is send to the consumers. This is a form of direct marketing. The internet also contains a lot of information about the clothes of M&S. Last but not least, M&S has a helpdesk to give the customers personal help or advice. In this way M&S manifest itself as a customer-friendly organisation.
Marks & Spencer did promotion campaigns with model. In the Netherlands we have C&A that did similar campaigns with famous people. The example used in this article is the promotion of ‘Frans Molenaar at C&A for men’. The model used for this campaign is famous singer Jan Smit. The singer thinks it is very important to have at least one good looking suit in your closet. He became the lead model for the new clothing range of C&A designed by Frans Molenaar. The clothing line focuses on men fashion and especially on suits and appropriate clothing.
Frans Molenaar and singer/model Jan Smit already shoot two commercials. In this commercial, Jan tells the customer that he loves suits. ´I like a more ´slim fit´ suit, he explains. Frans, the designer, thinks the choice of Jan Smit is very inspiring; he is a lead model for the well-dressed young man. All clothing with the preference of Jan Smit is labelled like ‘Choice of Jan’.
‘Business, not as usual’
To promote this collection, C&A used different types of media. Already explained is the TV commercial starring Frans Molenaar and famous singer Jan Smit. Other media used by the C&A agency are:
· National media;
· Satellite television;
· World Wide Web.
To reach all potential consumers C&A uses most commonly national media. Examples are advertisements in magazines and on billboards or posters. C&A promoted by posters at bus stops for instance. The advantages of this kind of media are the ability to reach a big audience and it has a proven record of success. Unfortunately is this way of promoting very expensive since airtime cost lots of money.
As part of their promotion, the organisation uses satellite television. C&A had to investigate the channels that are often watched by their target group and at what time. Satellite television has a large number of channels to help target the right audience. The commercial with Jan Smit is an example of the use of satellite television as a medium to promote.
At the website of C&A you can find information about the different fashion and collections. Of course you’ll also notice the advertisement at the site. They also have a own web shop where customers can buy clothes. The collection of Frans Molenaar for instance is sold at www.wehkamp.nl too. Through the World Wide Web, C&A is able to interact with the consumers and so motivate them to buy the new clothes.
You can compare the two cases of Marks & Spencer and C&A. Both make use of famous people to promote their new fashion range. The strategy both organisation use has been proved to be successful, explicit at M&S where the sales raised again after a long period of falling numbers. The types of media used by the agencies are also very important. The campaign and the commercials must be effectively communicated to the customers. This concludes that the role of advertising agencies play a key role in the promotion of products.
M2.
There are two ways of organising the promotional activity for a business; outsourcing or in-house. Since promotion is a crucial part of the marketing, businesses may choose to outsource the work to an advertising agency to help them develop effective promotional campaigns. Some organisation rather have an in-house approach, in this case the employees will do the work.
The table below shows the (dis)advantages of either a professional agency versus an in-house team.
Professional agency | In-house team |
Advantages | Disadvantages | Advantages | Disadvantages |
Not every business has proper internal resources to develop and implement promotional activity. Outsourcing those activities to an agency ensures the company that all elements of the promotional activity are coordinated and so are efficient. | Businesses who want to outsource their promotional activities must have a significant amount of money. The well-known agencies will charge lots of money for their expertise. | The costs to employ an agency are very high, so it might be a lot cheaper to keep the work inside the organisation. Outside agencies are very expensive to use. Even a small agency may charge £400,- a day for their expertise. | Outside agencies are often way more experienced than the businesses itself. Especially when it is the first time for them to create promotional activity. The agencies are more specialised and have more connections and knowledge of that industries. |
There is also the option to use limited-service agencies rather than full-services ones. These tend to specialise in a particular aspect of the promotional activity. Options are for example to focus only on media buying or developing sales. These limited-service agencies are cheaper than the full-service ones. | The agencies rarely have only one client. The more business are involved, the more mistakes and conflicting demands can occur. Next to that, the agency is not fully committed because the products they promote aren’t owned by them. | The limited-service agency also gives scope for doing some work in-house. These businesses than could go to a limited-service agency for particular expertise. This method is cheaper than hiring a full-service agency and so the business will save money. | The disadvantage of combining in-house work and the use of a limited-service agency is that the business then has to spend more time coordinating activity and ensuring a consistent message is conveyed to the customer by all the people involved in the project. |
Specialised agencies generally have a number of groups in their creative team and consequently every time when a new approach is needed can be asked to develop the advertising. | Most activities can be planned in advance, but in some situations the organisation have to respond quickly to unexpected circumstances. When using an outside agency, it is difficult to communicate this fast enough to be remain effective. | The major advantage for using in-house facilities is ease of working with the promotional team who is in the same building. This makes the communication a lot more effective. | In-house teams may find it difficult to keep generating create ideas. They may simply run out of effective advertising ideas. When this happens, it is difficult to dismiss them all. |
The advertising agency of M&S had an essential contribution to the success of the ‘Twiggy’ campaign. The main aspect that made the activity the successive campaign was the use of four super models. These four models, Erin O'Connor, Laura Bailey and Noemie Lenoir and ´Twiggy´, promoted the new clothing line of M&S. The promotional activity of M&S conveyed the excitement of the agency about the new autumn/winter fashion range, to the customers. Twiggy proved the inspiration. One of the people of the M&S advertising agency recently launched a successful TV advertisement for the food section of M&S. This commercial featured the now infamous exploding chocolate pudding. But now they had to launch a major clothing TV campaign from the retailers estimated budget of thirty million for the marketing.
Also the graphic design of the advertisements, in the form of billboards and posters, was significant for the M&S advertising agency. In the upper section there is a picture of the four models wearing the new fashion line. The use of colour and the attitude of the models are attracting people and make them buy the new products. This development is related to ‘designing the advertisements’.
Next to that, the agency identified the market properly; the advertisements made by M&S were significant for the success of the campaign. The agency ensured that the broad-ranged target group could identify itself with at least one of the used models. They did this by selecting models with all a different age and background. The advertising agency had a special contribution by this fact given.
Combining the design of the advertisement, identifying the target market and anticipate on that and the media planning made the campaign to a successful one. The falling sales were rising again and M&S made a good profit out of it. The advertising agency of M&S had a special contribution at the Twiggy campaign as you can read in the above section. Some businesses will choose to outsource the promotional activity rather than do it in-house. Other organisations will decide the other way around. Both decisions can be effective, depending on the effectiveness of the different aspect of the campaign.
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