Marks & Spencer
Reshaping the future of Clothing and Home.
M&S’s Clothing & Home business had been losing market share against competitors for several years. Under the banner of business-wide transformation, accelerated due to COVID-19, Clothing & Home lacked a unified direction that could direct its transformation effort.
With a lack of customer-centricity and categorising users by demographic and geography, business leaders were not able to make effective decisions.
10
Values, demonstrating how teams should work together.
01
New vision for Clothing & Home to guide transformation.
03
Principles, communicated across the business to underpin new ways of working.
01 The challenge we faced
M&S’s Clothing & Home business has been losing market share against competitors, and financially underperforming against M&S Food for a number of years.
Under the banner of business-wide transformation, accelerated due to COVID-19, Clothing & Home were lacking a unified direction that could direct their transformation effort. With a lack of customer-centricity, categorising users by demographic and geography, business leaders were not able to make effective decisions. There had also been a series of failed transformations historically, leading to fatigue in the process.
Additionally the brand is impacted by a perception that products are targeted at an older customer. Some business lines had maintained strong performance, reliant on historic innovation, but were operating and innovating in silos.
02 Tacking the problem
We conducted interviews with 15 executive-level stakeholders to understand their aspirations for the brand, the business and their own business lines. This helped us understand high-level user needs of business leaders, that we could use to set a direction of travel.
Over four half-day workshops (remote due to COVID-19), we co-created a new, inspirational vision, values and guiding principles to galvanise transformation activity across Clothing & Home.
Underpinned by user research and interviews, the new ‘clarity of purpose’ puts the customer - defined by user needs, rather than demographic - at the heart of Clothing & Home’s proposition, whilst recognising the value colleagues (as brand ambassadors) and the supply chain (as key product stakeholders) can add to customer experience.
Through ‘Peace, War and Wonder’ we demonstrated how M&S can use customer and product insight, coupled with the brand’s ‘love-mark’ to innovate in the market and build a sustainable customer base.
03 Key skills we used
Strategy and visions
Guiding principles
Value delivery
User research
Wardley Mapping
Competitor Analysis
Market Opportunities
“Our new vision and guiding principles encapsulate everything we do as a team.”
Managing Director
M&S Clothing & Home
Ready to get started?