Are Marks & Spencers off their trolley?

I read with great surprise that Marks & Spencers have dropped their famous ads for food “it’s not just food it’s M&S food” or otherwise known as “food porn ads” because of the sexy portrayal of the food.

This campaign has been one of the most successful campaigns ever, not only winning awards but increasing sales significantly for the brand. Sales increased by 288% of the hot chocolate pudding after the ad and sales of panacotta increased by 1207%. And this is only for the individual products, the extra footfall of customers walking through the door to buy the chocolate pud must have had an effect on overall sales.

Aside from revenue success, I think that these ads marked a change in the M&S story, when it left behind the difficult years and turned towards the future.

Finally, the concept was just so clever, simply because it wasn’t trying to be clever. Just featuring good food, with great filming and using emotion to sell, instead of blinding consumer with a whole load of different messages about the multiple benefits of the product as us marketers love to do.

So why oh why on earth would you ditch this campaign? Yes it has been around for a few years but so as “have a break have a kit kit” but Nestle aren’t daft enough to throw it in the bin because the marketing staff are a bit bored with it.

Even worse, the new ads to replace them will aim to “concentrate on food quality, provenance and ethics.” Yawn yawn yawn. And the message will be “Just because”.

Just because what? Just because…the new marketing director wanted to make his mark? Just because… the new CEO is coming soon and we need to look innovative? Just because….we fancy a bit of change? Just because…ditching on of the most memorable and revenue generating campaigns in recent history seemed like a good idea in the pub the other day?

I think this is a classic case of marketers forgetting what makes a brand famous (see David Taylor and Brand Gym since this is one of his favourite subjects) and binning far too early the core of a campaign instead of updating it. Tragic.