Marks & Spencer Christmas 2011 TV Commercial

Posted on 20. Nov, 2011 by Matt Newell in Advertising

The Christmas promotional period has well and truly begun and we will be keeping an eye out for the key campaigns and innovations here on New Retail Blog.

To kick things off, here is this year’s Christmas commercial from Marks & Spencer, in which they continue their tradition of featuring celebrities in their holiday campaign. But there is a slight twist this year… In stead of featuring a range of British A-listers, the campaign features finalists from The X-Factor.

Given M&S have had a tough year (first half results reported an 8% drop in profits and a 0.7% decline in like-for-like sales) this is a smart evolution of the famous campaign. The X-Factor finalists would be significantly cheaper to secure than British A-listers but they will still provide the talent and the cultural diversity required to support the underlying strategy of ‘there’s something for everyone at M&S’.

Working with celebrities is always a double edged sword because any bad behaviour can rub off on your brand. And M&S are already re-cutting the ad to remove contestant Frankie Cocozza who was eliminated from The X-Factor for breaking competition rules.

Further to the TV commercial shown above, M&S have also produce a short behind the scenes film (shown below) specifically for YouTube where each of the The X-Factor finalists describe their style and sense of fashion, which provides a nice tie back to the brand’s fashion story.

For context, I’ve included examples of the M&S campaigns from 2010 and 2009 below.

M&S Christmas Campaign 2010

M&S Christmas Campaign 2009

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