M&S is betting that a simple compliment could become its next big brand platform.
The retailer first tested ‘Love That’ last year as a weekly social series highlighting the products customers were loving most. The idea quickly resonated, generating more than 20 million views and revealing a clear appetite for celebrating the hero pieces in the retailer’s ranges.
Hosted by stylist Melissa Holdbrook-Akposoe (aka Melissa’s Wardrobe) alongside Capital Breakfast presenters Jordan North, Siân Welby and Chris Stark, the series captured the spontaneous moments when shoppers spot something they like and say exactly that: “Love that.”
Sharry Cramond, marketing director for fashion, home and beauty at M&S, explained that one of the very first things her team explored with the project was asking customers a simple question: what do you want from M&S?
“And they said, ‘What we want to know are the hero lines, the must-haves, what’s going to go viral?’ Customers were very clear. They wanted to know about the key pieces,” Cramond explains.
The name came from the language shoppers were already using.
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“We called the series ‘Love That’ because it’s a compliment that we were hearing again and again. People were going into stores looking at the ranges, going, ‘I love that, love that.’ It’s a compliment that’s mainly said woman to woman, and it’s usually followed by, ‘Where’s it from?’”
Encouraged by the response, M&S has now evolved ‘Love That’ into a broader brand platform spanning TV, social, retail and celebrity partnerships.
At the centre of the latest phase is the appointment of Gillian Anderson as the retailer’s first-ever chief compliments officer, a role designed to elevate everyday compliments into a cultural moment for the brand.
“We decided that ‘Love That’ was going to become our equivalent of ‘This Is Not Just Food,’” says Cramond. She previously helped bring back the famous food strapline after joining M&S in 2018 as marketing director for food. Now she hopes the new platform can have a similar impact for fashion.
The campaign is rooted in emotion. “We did research with our partners on how getting a compliment can actually change your day, not just from the person receiving the compliment, but from the person giving the compliment too,” Cramond explains.
For M&S, there was no better person to embody this message than Anderson, who combines style with multi-generational appeal. “From younger people, the Gen Z who love her in Sex Education, to the OG fan or the Gen X lover from X-Files,” Cramond adds.
And Anderson immediately understood the campaign’s emotional resonance. “When she read the script, she said that she loved it because she understood the power of giving a compliment, which is quite a powerful thing. We need to encourage more people to give compliments. When they give the compliment, they feel better too.”
The brand chose to reveal the actor’s new role on LinkedIn on March 10, after chief executive Stuart Machin shared the news with colleagues via a Teams call. “The reaction from customers and colleagues has been unbelievable,” Cramond shares.
Designed to touch all points of the customer journey, the campaign is “very much” here to stay and is being incorporated across emails, carrier bags, packaging, TV campaigns, and celebrity ambassadors. “To build a new brand line doesn’t happen overnight. We have to be very consistent,” Cramond says.
Beyond the practical integration of products, the campaign also reflects M&S’s belief in the emotional power of compliments. “There’s so much kindness in the power of a compliment. ‘Love That’ helps us demonstrate, on a functional level, what the key items are, the hero pieces, but it also just has so much emotion and kindness to help us develop that emotional connection. M&S is the most loved and trusted brand in Britain. We take what we do very, very seriously.”