Understanding culture surrounding food
The challenge
The role of food in our lives is constantly evolving. Quadrangle helped reposition and promote the M&S Food brand, building on what customers expect from M&S and encouraging them to consider M&S Food when buying, preparing and eating food.
Our solution
Partnering with a leading semiotics expert, we mapped how the attitudes and expectations towards food have evolved over the past 10-15 years, from the desire for perfection in dining to seeking meaningful connections to food. We married this understanding with a quantitative survey that identified brand assets M&S distinctly owned in the category.
Through a series of co-creation sessions, we brought client and customers together to assess what worked and what needed changing.
The outcome
Based on our recommendations, M&S Food developed several new branded concepts for testing.
We demonstrated that M&S has its own, unique manifestation of humour and value in shoppers’ minds, which formed the basis for a playbook of ‘dos and don’ts’ to inspire future development. Our work also helped to guide thinking behind the famous M&S Food ‘This is Not Just Food’ advertising campaign.
We helped M&S with:
- Strategy
- Brand definition
- Positioning
What was involved:
- Semiotics
- Quantitative research
- Co-creation
Specialisms that helped:
- Running customer closeness events
- Being collaborative, flexible and open in our approach
- Combining behavioural data with research data
- Embedding research and insight into strategy
