M&S partners with Future

British retailer, Marks and Spencer Group, (M&S), has teamed up with Future Publishing, a global platform for specialist media, to increase awareness of M&S’ Home range during the golden quarter of retail. The campaign titled, Make a Style Statement, built on the retailer’s high brand awareness with a strategic approach to raising the profile of its three core ranges – ‘Fired Earth collaboration’, ‘Cosy’, and ‘Christmas’ – to increase the style credentials of M&S Home overall.

Speaking of the campaign the publisher said, running from October 2022 – January 2023, the campaign targeted a modern and mainstream home interest audience and has been seen across Future’s leading Home and Women’s Lifestyle titles, including Ideal Home, Livingetc, Homes & Gardens, Style At Home, Woman & Home and Marie Claire.

Involving an extensive body of carefully curated content, the campaign combines media first editorial shoots and influencer talent, alongside new interactive articles, shoppable ad formats and innovative new print executions – all targeted to a stylish homes audience using Future’s premium first-party data to raise awareness and consideration of M&S Home and drive sales.

Furthermore, for the first time, Future shot bespoke magazine covers for Ideal Home and Style At Home featuring M&S Home products within a DPS roll fold and cover site “shop the look” promotions.

Month on month, the campaign exceeded expectations, Future added:

• The campaign delivered 185% of the reach KPI for its 12 social amplification packages, surpassing its target by 2.5 million impressions. The campaign also achieved an average engagement rate of 6%, exceeding the 1% benchmark and highlighting the success of moving imagery.
• On Pinterest, the campaign reached over one million additional users and delivered 162% of the KPI.
• The campaign also leveraged Instazines, which generated an exceptional engagement rate of 5.33%, over 10x higher than the predicted benchmark, and equating to more than 75,000 engagements.
• The digital advertorials for the campaign had an average dwell time of 2:13 minutes in contrast to a benchmark of 1:30 minutes and delivered almost 20,000 additional page views.
• The videos produced for the campaign collectively delivered over two million views – 336,000 views over the KPI – and achieved a strong average Video Through Rate of 18.53%, exceeding the 15.98% average.

These results evidence the value of premium publishers to help leading brands bring their ideas to life – and tap into high intent audiences primed to purchase – through rich first-party data and contextually relevant environments that encourage consideration and conversion.

Heather Young, editor, Ideal Home and Style At Home at Future comments: “As the number one home interest print publisher and homes network in the UK, with an audience of over 20 million adults, Future is perfectly placed to raise awareness of M&S Home and its style credentials. Future's homes brands, including Ideal Home and Homes & Gardens, enjoy unrivalled brand loyalty and recognition with house-proud homeowners, who trust their Editors when it comes to advice on key interior trends and how to achieve them.”

Vanessa Logan, head of brand marketing at M&S adds: “Future's publications were the perfect fit to dial up the style credentials of M&S Home. By making use of both Future’s experienced editorial approach and style-seeking interior-loving audience, M&S was able to tap into a multi-channel partnership opportunity focused on inspiring these modern readers to adopt three core home ranges. This partnership stands out from what has been done before with innovative media firsts including a dramatic six-page roll fold cover shoot for the Christmas range.”