Marks & Spencer wins Brand of the Year accolade

Marks & Spencer has been crowned Brand of the Year at the Marketing Week Awards 2024, pipping shortlisted brands Greggs, Lucky Saint, McDonald’s and Octopus Energy to the prize.

The iconic British retailer has managed to stage an impressive turnaround following a period of decline. Three years into its transformation programme and M&S is firmly back on a winning streak.

The brand scooped the accolade after combining scores from our jury of brand and marketing experts with the results of a Marketing Week reader vote.

In its most recent half-year results for the six months ended 26 September, M&S reported a 17.2% rise in profit year-over-year. Food sales grew by 8.1% and clothing and home sales by 4.7%. In its last full financial year, which ended in March, the retailer said it had attracted 1 million more customers in that year versus the last.

M&S pledges to ‘upgrade digital experience’ to fuel growth

According to Kantar’s 2024 BrandZ ranking, which takes the financial value created by a brand in US dollars and multiplies it by brand contribution, M&S’s brand value increased by 38% versus the previous year taking it to $2.47bn (£1.85bn), leading it to rise 13 places in the ranking to become the UK’s 23^rd most valuable brand

M&S was also named YouGov’s ‘best brand’ of the year for 2024, after it achieved the highest brand health out of any UK brand across the previous 12 months.

This success, following a period of lull for M&S, did not come about through the brand simply waiting for things to improve on their own. Instead, it has undergone a rigorous process of transformation to get to where it is today.

The actions undertaken by the retailer have included upgrading its technology and ecommerce capabilities, upgrading its store estate, and, importantly, winning back consumers, investing to drive both quality and value perceptions.

Indeed, progress on this last goal has been so notable that the brand recently asserted its value perceptions are now better than they have been in over a decade for its food business. Driving value perceptions, while also not over-engaging in price promotion, has been a key focus for the clothing segment. This was a goal M&S met in the first half of its financial year, with CEO Stuart Machin saying clothing drove “strong full price sales in a promotional market”.

Not just a brand…

Investment into pricing has obviously been a key pillar of M&S’s successful push to improve value perceptions. Unlike many of its rivals, M&S has not introduced exclusive prices for loyalty members through its Sparks scheme, with CEO Stuart Machin saying the retailer preferred to steer clear of “tricksy” pricing.

Another pillar of driving increased brand health has been through investment in its brand. The retailer now makes two separate Christmas ads for clothing and home and food each year, as it looks to drive the different objectives of the two departments.

While M&S’s ‘This is not just food…’ slogan is surely one of the most recognisable brand lines in British advertising, the retailer has also built a well known cast of brand mascots. Percy Pig and Colin the Caterpillar are no longer just sweets and cakes, but distinctive brand characters for M&S, rolled out across many different touchpoints.

‘We’re going in the right direction’: M&S on brand reappraisal and the transformation journey

For the clothing department, led by marketing director Anna Braithwaite, a key focus has been style perceptions. In recent times the retailer has partnered with the likes of actress Sienna Miller and designer Bella Freud on style collections.

Speaking to Marketing Week recently, Braithwaite acknowledged the success the retailer had seen from initiatives like these.

“We’ve had a brilliant couple of years, but we have a long way to go,” she said.

This single-minded focus on continuous progress is typical across the M&S brand. It’s an approach that CEO Machin has repeatedly called “in the spirit of being positively dissatisfied”.

With this determination to improve further on what has already been or a remarkable (or Remarksable) transformation, M&S looks set to continue producing stellar results.

Russell Parsons, Marketing Week editor-in-chief, says: “The turnaround in Marks & Spencer’s fortunes is one of the business stories of recent years. There are many reasons for its transformation but chief among them is marketing excellence and great brand management across all of its businesses. In other words, a worthy winner of Brand of the Year.”