M&S is enjoying a boost in sales from Gen Z shoppers as it doubles down on investment in social media channels, with M&S’ Director of Online and Omnichannel, Stephen Langford, revealing that the retailer is “now spending as much on social platforms as we are on TV.”
As the retailer seeks to broaden its appeal beyond its traditional older demographic, it is leaning into the success of viral hits on social media and creating more dedicated social content.
M&S has moved to revamp its brand in recent years, implementing a plan to “reshape for growth” in 2022 after a difficult period that saw it drop out of the FTSE 100 between 2019 and 2023.
Now, the retailer appears to be going from strength to strength, after CEO Stuart Machin declared in May that M&S is “in the strongest financial health since 1997”.
M&S’ Gen Z success
M&S has said it is “moving with the times” by doubling down on social media and video channels like TikTok and YouTube, with its investment in social content up 79% year-over-year.
However, it hasn’t abandoned TV by any means, with the first episode of a new TV show created in collaboration with ITV, ‘M&S: Dress the Nation’ airing next week. M&S is using clips on its TikTok channel to market the new programme.
All signs suggest that M&S’ moves to appeal to younger shoppers are paying off. In late August, the retailer announced that it would be trialling a new store format: a ‘curated’ boutique-style store selling only clothing, due to launch in London’s Battersea Power Station. M&S’ fashion uplift has been credited to its success with Gen Z – in May, CEO Stuart Machin revealed that M&S delivered a “record 38% market share” in lingerie, with 30% of its lingerie customers now aged under 30: double the proportion who were buying at the same time in 2023.
Sharing the news on LinkedIn, Machin wrote, “We’re just at the beginnings of a new M&S”.
M&S has backed up its social push with a renewed focus on online, making performance improvements to the MarksandSpencer.com website to bring about faster loading and strip back links. In its full year financial results for 2023-4, M&S set a “long-term objective” of carrying out half of its Clothing and Home sales online, up from 32% presently.
M&S’ online sales grew by 7.8% in 2024, and the retailer noted in its 2024 Annual Report that after a slow start, growth accelerated “as the effectiveness of online marketing started to improve, particularly in womenswear”.
M&S has also shared that it is using generative AI to write 80% of product descriptions in order to get items listed online more rapidly. The retailer has further touted its use of AI capabilities across media partners such as Meta, YouTube, and Google.
M&S is “playing catch-up” with loyalty and personalisation
AI is also key to a new personalisation tool launched by M&S in the past week. The ‘Style Types and Outfit Explorer’ feature in the M&S app presents users with a quiz to determine their style preferences, sizing and body shape, before offering AI-generated advice on what items to buy. Online director Stephen Langford revealed that 450,000 M&S customers have so far tried out the tool, choosing from an estimated 40 million outfit options.
Langford noted that M&S still needs “a human in the process” for its AI-generated advice, which is sense-checked by the retailer’s in-house stylists.
The M&S app accounts for 44% of online orders as of May 2024, and in its 2023 strategic report M&S outlined an aim for its app to “provide a personalised “shop front” to the M&S brand and Sparks loyalty membership and connect the store and online worlds”.
M&S’ Stuart Lachin told press in May that loyalty and personalisation are becoming more important to the retailer, but that M&S is “playing catch-up” in this area.
“The good news is we’re clear on what we need to do,” he said. “Our priorities are using data to provide more personalisation for customers, improving the online and the app experience, and we need to modernise our core technology infrastructure.”
Econsultancy empowers large organisations to elevate their teams’ capabilities and confidence in marketing and ecommerce.
Comments