This is not just POS. This is M&S POS.
In April 2019 M&S Food took the exciting decision to refresh its brand, bringing back the famous line, ‘This is not just…’ after a 12 year absence, with a full through-the-line campaign across TV, radio, print and digital. Visually, a whole new look and feel was given to the brand, with distinctive bespoke typefaces, a new style of photography and most notably ‘doodled captions’ to add a touch of wit and humour. To reflect this new direction, we completely redesigned the retail communications across every store in the estate.
Making food the hero
We art-directed a shoot to bring in a new style of photography, reminiscent of – but different to – the black style M&S has always been known for. Crucially the food is the hero, shot against dark textured surfaces, with contemporary props for a more modern feel. Imperfections such as crumbs, splashes and scoops play to the brand’s new strategic direction of being more accessible to everyone.
Adding a human touch
A key aspect of the new campaign is the humanised element, played out in the TV ads with people parodying the well known seductive voiceover. For the POS, we expressed this with handwritten doodled captions to express the proof points of the food, while a new hand-drawn typeface hints at human interaction.
A new tone of voice
Lastly, we made strategic recommendations on where and when to use the ‘This is not just…’ line, ensuring it retains its magic by not being overused in the in-store environment. And we rewrote every element of POS, loosening the tone of voice to become less serious and showing the brand as much more everyday and ‘one of us’.
All in all we redesigned over 200 templates which translated into over 1.5 million pieces of POS, redesigned the carrier bag, the van livery and all the M&S Café communication. To top it off, we created new guidelines to keep everyone who works on the brand, regardless of channel, on the same page. Now that’s what we call ‘not just any POS’.
Let's Talk Shop.
Get the monthly scoop from Whippet on notable happenings from the world of retail and beyond.
© 2021 Whippet
