marks and spencer plan a case study

2010: Marks & Spencer, Marketing for Sustainable Consumption: Case Study

Marks & Spencer has put sustainability at the heart of its business.

Key insights

• For Marks & Spencer (M&S) going green has meant not just transforming every part of its business but trying to change the attitudes and behaviour of its 25 million customers.
• A carefully-planned, three-stage approach has worked by convincing, not cajoling, people to do the right thing and change behaviour.

M&S is one of the UK’s leading retailers, selling clothing, food and homeware. In 2006 the company became determined to put sustainability at the heart of its business. It set out to transform every aspect of the company, from sourcing products to relationships with suppliers, shoppers and the wider world.

To succeed, it would have to change the attitudes and behaviour of every one of its 25 million shoppers. Since its inception it has passed through three distinct steps. The first step, ‘Look Behind the Label’ raised awareness and approval of a whole range of initiatives — and the brand itself.

The second step, ‘Plan A’, involved a more thorough reappraisal of M&S, and set out a five-year plan involving 100 commitments. After only a year, it had reached many of its goals and achieved significant recognition from opinion leaders. But it still didn’t change the average shopper’s behaviour.

It was the third step, ‘Doing the Right Thing’, that accomplished this by ‘normalising’ the aims of Plan A and expressing them in a way that seemed right and proper to mainstream people. In a relatively short time the measured attitudes of a million shoppers had changed, moving from a passive, defeatist approach towards a more actively sustainable, optimistic one.

Facing a changing world

For well over a century, and long before words like ‘sustainability’ entered the vernacular, M&S had been quietly practicing a whole range of ethical business practices. For example:

• A hundred years of long-term, mutually-beneficial relationships with suppliers.
• Fifty years of smoke-free shopping.
• Forty-five years of energy-efficient thermostatic fridges.
• ‘A returns’ policy unmatched for generations.
• Free-range eggs long before most people knew or cared what the phrase ‘free-range eggs’ actually meant.

But times had moved on. By the early years of the 21st century things had reached the point where, without drastic action, it would be hard to imagine any kind of decent future for forthcoming generations. For M&S it was time to do something more about sustainability.

In 2006, it took a long, hard look at its ethical and sustainable activities as a whole, and set out to ‘move them up a gear’ and to gather support behind them. Its aims were to change the business from root to branch, and through this to help change lives and, in as far as it was able, to do what it could to help change the world for the better. This was never going to be a quick fix.

Nor, realistically, was it ever going to be something that could be fully achieved completely, or to everyone’s complete satisfaction. A journey is the best way of looking at it. By the end of 2009 it had been a journey that had passed through three distinct steps. Each step moved M&S and its partners towards a better place — although there was still a long way to go, and there probably always will be.

Listening to the customers A number of studies had been conducted into what consumers thought about sustainability and the environment, and, broadly speaking, they coincided. Generally, 20% didn’t care and weren’t interested. The rest (80%), said they did care — to some degree — and to some degree thought that being ‘green’ was the ‘good’ or ‘right’ thing to do.

However, only a minority (10%) actively went out of their way to do something about it. The main bulk said they might do something if it was easy and didn’t involve making sacrifices (35%) or that they didn’t see what difference it would make anyway (35%) (Figure 1). Making millions of shoppers less defeatist, and more willing, was never going to be an easy task.

Embarking on a long journey

Step One, 2006: Look Behind The Label

The first step was about raising awareness and encouraging approval. For socially and environmentally-aware consumers ‘Look Behind the Label’ drew attention to a range of things M&S was doing, from sourcing Fairtrade to environmentally-friendly textile dyes (Figures 2 and 3).

This programme resulted in increased awareness and approval of M&S initiatives, particularly among opinion formers and the ethically-aware.

Highlights included:

• Voted Britain’s Greenest Supermarket by consumers and most popular with socially/environmentally-aware shoppers.
• Evidence collected by Citigroup analysts suggested that ‘Look Behind the Label’ was the most successful campaign M&S had ever run.
• Compassion in World Farming’s Good Egg Award for free-range eggs.
• Top of the Marine Stewardship Council League for sustainable fishing.
• RSPCA Good Business Awards for best fashion retailer.

But the company felt there was more to be done. ‘Feel good’ awareness and approval among people who are already concerned about ethics and the environment was a good thing, but it didn’t always translate into tangible change in the world. What needed to be done was to move people from just feeling something to actually doing something — from awareness and approval to engagement and commitment.

Step Two, 2007/8: Plan A

The next stage was about engaging and attracting commitment. In 2007, after a process involving stakeholders both from inside and outside the business, M&S set out its new plan: 100 commitments, in five ‘pillars’, to be accomplished in five years. It was called Plan A because, the argument went, there was no Plan B. It was to encompass all of the big issues in the business and across the entire value chain. The end of all this would be a transformation of M&S itself, its business practices, its relationships with customers and suppliers and its dealings with the world at large. Few, if any, major retailers had ever done anything like this before.

The pillars of Plan A were:

• Climate change: to make M&S’s operations carbon-neutral.
• Reducing waste: to have zero waste going to landfill through reducing and recycling bags and packaging.
• Sustainable raw materials: to source the most sustainable and renewable materials available.
• Being a fair partner: to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the supply chain and their families and communities.
• Health: to help thousands of employees and customers choose a healthier lifestyle.

Plan A had to be much more than a ‘feel good’ campaign. It required engagement and commitment from M&S itself and from customers. It meant making difficult decisions. People who had become accustomed to getting as many plastic carrier-bags as they liked for free would suddenly find themselves having to bring their own shopping-bags from home (like their mothers used to do) or else pay 5p a bag. They would be expected to see the point of it, and think it a good thing, rather than a rip-off or a nuisance.

The achievements of the initial phase of Plan A were notable because it began the process of bringing about tangible change, including:

• Reduced 10,000 tons of packaging.
• Diverted 20,000 tons of waste from landfill.
• Saved 40,000 tons of CO2.
• Saved 387 million food carrier bags (an 83% reduction).
• Used 1,500 tons of recycled polyester (equivalent to 37 million bottles).
• Organic food sales 2007/8 up 40% compared to 2006/7.
• Saved 100 million litres of water.
• Generated £15 million for charities, including £1.6 million raised for Breakthrough Breast Cancer and £600,000 raised to educate 15,000 children in Uganda.

In addition, recognition from opinion-formers continued to grow. Not only did the company receive a whole range of environmental and ethical awards but it managed to get significant opinion-former involvement in the Plan A Climate Change Quilt project. Over 5,000 people contributed to the website, including message patches from Twiggy, Myleene Klass, Jemima Khan, Geri Halliwell, Tom Aikens, Philip Glenister, Noemie Lenoir, Zac Goldsmith and Sir lan Botham, as well as top executives from charities such as WWF and Oxfam.

But there was more to be done. Plan A had created extremely high levels of engagement and commitment among both staff and internal audiences and ‘Green Crusaders’, while it made people in general feel better about the company. However, what it didn’t do was to get enough mainstream customers to change their attitudes and behaviour significantly. A lot of people still didn’t understand Plan A. They suspected that the 5p carrier bag policy was a cunning way of benefiting M&S — despite the fact that the profit was donated to an environmental charity. More needed to be done to change mainstream attitudes and behaviours.

Step Three, 2009: Plan A: Doing The Right Thing

This was about going mainstream and getting to those people who weren’t the active, committed Green Crusaders and who felt happier being comfortable, fitting in and doing what’s generally considered to be normal, acceptable and right. But ‘normal, acceptable and right’ is a moving standard. Twenty years ago people sat with their children in buses and train carriages filled with a thick fog of cigarette smoke and no-one thought twice about it. Twenty years ago, people bought battery eggs, and anyone who made a fuss about free-range was thought to be a bit odd.

2008 awards and recognition for Plan A

• World Environment Centre Gold Medal for International Corporate Achievement in Sustainable Development 2008
• British Renewable Energy Awards Pioneer Award
• Property Executive Sustainability Award for Excellence (Pollok Store)
• Retail Interior Award — Green Store of the Year (Bournemouth)
• RSPCA 2008 Awards — Cosmetics winner; Ongoing Commitment to Change Award; Fashion Winner; Best Large Retailer and Food Winner; Best Supermarket Award

2009 awards and recognition for Doing the Right Thing

• Joint winner 2009 Consumer Focus ‘Green to the Core’ supermarket league table
• Retail Leadership Award 2009, Greener Package Awards
• Fashion Commitment Award 2009, RSPCA Good Business Awards
• 2009 Winner Environmental Investigation Agency’s supermarket refrigeration table
• 2009 Winner Pesticide Action Network UK supermarket pesticide league table
• 2009 Most Ethical Retailer, Cosmopolitan Magazine Awards
• High Street Recycling Champion 2009, Letsrecycle.com Awards
• Environmental Initiative of the Year in the 2009 International Wine Challenge Awards
• Top 100 in Ethisphere World’s Most Ethical Companies
• Regular analysis from CIU department showing M&S as the most ethical/green retailer

M&S needed to find out how to:

• Normalise Plan A. That meant re-framing or re-positioning the commitments so that they would be seen by the public at large as the ‘default’ choice of normal, right-thinking people like you and me, rather than the active hobby-horse of rainbow-clad people with dreadlocks who lived in yurts and constructed their own wind-turbines out of bits of old bicycles.
• Talk about the benefits. It had to be made into a win-win situation, not seen as a puritanical sacrifice. Ethical food and ethical fashion should stimulate someone’s desires first and their conscience second.

The ‘normalising’ idea, when it came, came from consumers themselves. In research, the same phrase kept coming up time and time again: Doing the Right Thing. As in, “l just want to do the right thing.” There are any number of people who might, or might not, decide to take part in something called ‘Plan A’, but there are very few people who don’t want to be seen to ‘do the right thing’.

To put it another way, the thrust of the argument behind the campaign changed from objectivist (“It’s a fact that we need to deal with these issues.”) to approbationalist (“All right-thinking people think this is a good thing to do, and they’d feel good about you for doing it.”).

This made it feel a lot more friendly and normal. Then there was the job of making it seem not just normal and friendly but desirable, and for this there was a deliberate communications policy of always using ‘Doing the right thing’ in combination with examples of the benefits and pleasures offered by M&S quality (Figures 4 and 5).

This third stage resulted in the following achievements:

• Began the process of changing mainstream attitudes and behaviour, resulting in a less defeatist attitude, with a million more shoppers willing to do something (Figure 6).
• Continued reduction in carrier-bag usage, doing away with 400 million bags and raising £1.2 million for its partner, environmental regeneration charity Groundwork.
• Over a million people donated M&S clothes to Oxfam and collected their voucher. 3.2 million M&S garments were recycled and £2 million raised for Oxfam.

M&S set out on a journey whose aim was to build a better business that improved lives, changed attitudes and behaviour and made the way we live better and more sustainable. Although it is a journey possibly without end, the first three steps achieved remarkable results.

The Oxfam Clothes Exchange programme This was the UK’s largest clothes recycling initiative. Customers were encouraged to donate their old M&S clothes to Oxfam, in return for which they got a £5 voucher. People felt virtuous for having done the right thing, pleased with their £5, and good about M&S quality after learning that the clothes they donated had a high value to Oxfam on account of being so well-made and long-lasting.

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Marks and Spencer’s Emerging Business Case for Sustainability

Five years into its sustainability efforts, marks and spencer has demonstrated “a strong business case for sustainability, with £185m in net benefits from plan a made available to be reinvested back into our business.”.

• Climate Change
• Sustainability

Leading Sustainable Organizations

Marks and Spencer has demonstrated “a strong business case for sustainability, with £185m in net benefits” since 1997 available for reinvestment.

Wheelock Place, Singapore. Image courtesy of Flickr user alantankenghoe .

Five years ago, the UK retailer Marks and Spencer announced what it called Plan A , a commitment to tangible steps to make the company more sustainable. T-shirts for associates featured the slogan, “There is no Plan B.”

As it says at the Plan A website today, “We launched Plan A in January 2007, setting out 100 commitments to achieve in 5 years. We’ve now extended Plan A to 180 commitments to achieve by 2015, with the ultimate goal of becoming the world’s most sustainable major retailer.”

The company’s new 56-page “ How We Do Business Report 2012 ” [PDF] details what the company has achieved in the past five years.

Marks and Spencer has also prepared a separate report called “ The key lessons from the Plan A business case .” [PDF]

Of its goals, the company has achieved 138 of its 180 commitments, with 30 ‘on plan’, 6 ‘behind plan’ and 6 ‘not achieved,’ according to the report. Among the report highlights:

Marks and Spencer has a convincing business case for sustainability. The company, says Marc Bolland, CEO, can “demonstrate a strong business case for sustainability, with £185m in net benefits from Plan A made available to be reinvested back into our business over the last five years.” Operational savings include a 28% improvement in energy efficiency per sq ft.

Achievements include becoming carbon neutral, sending no waste to landfill and sourcing 100% of the wild fish it sells “from the most sustainable sources available.”

Customers have embraced a chance to give back. The company launched a so-called ‘shwopping’ initiative (the word combines “shop” with “swap”), encouraging customers to bring in used clothes when they buy new ones, and one-day “Wardrobe Clear-Out” events, with clothes donated to Oxfam second-hand clothing stores. Total number of garments donated: 11 million. Money raised for charity: £20 million.

Sustainability is integrated into financial reporting and review. M&S produced its sustainability report with its Internal Audit team and Ernst & Young. The Board and Audit Committee reviewed Plan A progress every six months.

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Case study: Marks & Spencer

Marks & Spencer’s Plan A made the business an extra £50m in the 12 months to 31 March 2010. The programme is now four years old and aims to reduce the retailer’s environmental impact while trading ethically and helping consumers become healthier. This involves meeting 180 self-imposed targets by 2015.

Click here the read the cover feature: CSR – This time it’s profitable Click here to read about Unilever’s CSR programme

According to head of sustainable business Mike Barry, the financial benefits from Plan A are the result of modest gains accumulating in various areas of the business. He says the nature of corporate finance means that without a concerted effort to review M&S’s processes as an entire organisation these small changes would not have been made or the cost reductions realised, even though they are often the result of making relatively simple efficiencies.

“Plan A has been enormously powerful to link together relatively small sums of money that we save in many different stores, products and supply chains. On their own, none of them would have got the attention that they actually merit without the Plan A wrap-round.”

Some aspects of Plan A cost M&S more, for example sourcing Fairtrade products, but Barry says any extra expenditure is covered in other areas. “We will face some higher costs for certain products, but within the overall Plan A business case we can subsidise any additional costs on product from savings elsewhere in the business. The overall cost to the consumer is zero,” he adds.

There is also a need for investment in the supply chain if M&S is to fulfil the social aspects of its CSR commitments. But these investments also contribute to the retailer’s long-term profitability or at least become cost-neutral, Barry claims.

He says that in Bangladesh, for example, M&S is working with factory owners to ensure workers there are paid enough to support themselves. “Although that leads to higher wages, we also improve the productivity of those factories through training and that has released the cash to pay the workers more. They get the outcome that they want without costing us or the suppliers any more money.”

Plan A has also been a vehicle for moving M&S into new business areas, notably M&S Energy, which now supplies more than 500,000 households. The service offers gas and electricity through Scottish and Southern Energy, and pledges to return one unit of low-carbon hydroelectric energy to the National Grid for every unit used by customers.

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The Marks & Spencer eCommerce case study serves as an inspiration to every eCommerce marketer. The old saying: “It’s better late than never,” comes to mind. It’s a tale of failures and comebacks. That’s what makes the Marks and Spencer eCommerce story so interesting.

eCommerce 101: Why you need to create a seamless shopping journey

The history of a retail giant.

• The Marks and Spencer eCommerce strategy for scaling growth

eCommerce growth lessons for every eCommerce Manager

• Marks and Spencer business stats you should know
• Breaking news about Marks and Spencer

In Conclusion

The company arrived late and unprepared for the online scene. In fact, Marks and Spencer weren’t selling online until the mid-2000s. Consequently, lagging behind the competition, the company announced an 8.1% drop in sales and resulting share price dip in July 2014.

Following drastic drops in revenue, the CEO and other senior figureheads pointed the blame at Mark and Spencer’s eCommerce platform. The company’s website relaunch, two years in the making, was a bust.

Customers complained that Marks and Spencer’s relaunched website had dysfunctional and un-clickable checkout buttons (as the below video demonstrates), difficult-to-use search filters for size, limited product availability, items disappearing from shoppers’ baskets during checkout, delivery forms excluding major cities, and so on. In simple words, Marks and Spencer was far away from eCommerce checkout best practices .

As a result of poor eCommerce experience, by 2018, the retail giant was considerably behind its competition. 

Only 18.5 % of its clothing and home sales were online. With an annual growth of 5%, Marks and Spencer wasn’t going to come close to its 2022 growth target of 33%. Store closures were soon announced.

However, the losses resulted in designing and implementing a series of aggressive Marks and Spencer eCommerce growth strategies. Like a phoenix rising from the dust, Marks and Spencer eCommerce would soon become a model of how to scale online sales.

ECommerce managers can take away a lot from Marks and Spencer’s eCommerce bumpy road to (finally) succeeding in online retail.

In this post, we will go over a plethora of lessons on retail, website usability, and design. We will also explore how revamping the Marks and Spencer eCommerce strategy gave the company a second chance.

It all started in 1884, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. This is where the fate of two men collided: Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer. 

Michael Marks, a Polish-British businessman and entrepreneur, bought goods from Dewhirst and sold them in nearby villages. As his business grew, Marks became known for one of the stalls he established in Leeds that offered every product in it for a penny. There, he placed a poster next to the stall saying, “Don’t Ask the Price, It’s a Penny”

Meanwhile, Thomas Spencer was an aspiring British businessman who was a cashier at I.J Dewhirst’s wholesale company. 

Marks originally asked I.J Dewhirst to go into business with him to open a store, to which Dewhirst declined and recommended Marks ask his cashier, Thomas Spencer. Spencer thought over Marks’ proposal and decided that investing £300 for half the share of the business was worth the gamble. Thus, the first Marks and Spencer store was born.

The store they opened in 1884 started off selling high-quality clothing and home products. In the last decade, food has also been added to the Marks and Spencer inventory. 

Nowadays, there are 950+ Marks and Spencer stores across the UK alone. You will find the British multinational retailer headquartered in Westminster, London. The retail chain is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

How the Marks & Spencer empire almost collapsed

Although Marks & Spencer’s profits peaked in the late 1990s, by the 2000s the company was in crisis. Several factors contributed to the decline of its profits.

First, the company’s supply chain strategy was in need of an overhaul. Marks & Spencer won the hearts of Brits by using local suppliers. However, as the UK suppliers’ costs continued to rise, the company’s profit margin suffered while the competition turned to importing from low-cost countries.

By the time the business decided to start importing, the switch came too late.

The holdout had been for nothing. Marks and Spencer would lose a core part of its appeal to the British public, and it already had paid the high price of staying with British suppliers too long.

Another factor that contributed to the decline of the brand is that Marks and Spencer was late to the game of accepting different forms of payment. Up until 2001, the company refused to accept any other credit card besides its own Chargecard.

Soon after, the brand started closing unprofitable stores. As recently as May 2018, Marks and Spencer confirmed that over 100 stores will close by 2022. 

The path to international expansion

The Marks & Spencer company values incorporate a policy dating back to the early 20th century of only selling British-made goods creating loyal customers. However, the brand recognized the need to grow domestically as well as internationally.

For this reason, in 1960, Marks and Spencer opened its first Asian store in Kabul, Afghanistan, followed by multiple cities in Europe. The international growth lasted through the 1980s.

While the stores in Paris remained profitable, many other international cities were not a complete success story. A total of eighteen non-profitable shops in Europe were sold in 2001. In Canada, the brand was viewed as a stodgy retailer catering to seniors and expatriate Brits. Efforts to modernize the brand came too late, and store closures soon followed.

In China, after Marks and Spencer once again failed to win over the local consumers, it hired Maria Roday, a former alumnus of Inditex with a reputation for nailing the latest consumer trends, as the new general manager for the Chinese market.

Marks and Spencer learned a valuable lesson from their international expansion: When expanding your brand, adapt your marketing strategies to appeal to local consumers.

The Marks and Spencer eCommerce Strategy for scaling growth

By 2009, pressures from profits and sales loss led Marks & Spencer to initiate a restructuring plan.

They took measures such as closures of low-profit stores to cut costs, along with discontinuing several of the brand’s low-profit lines. CEO Marc Bolland rolled out a new strategy aimed to strengthen brand image and increase profits. The brand would modernize its physical stores and focus on revamping its eCommerce platform.

Facing challenges with changes

If there is one thing Marks & Spencer took away from their international expansion failures, it is that you must appeal to your local consumers’ preferences . Bolland called for major change starting with the rollout of a new design for physical stores in May 2011 that would be based on demographics such as affluence and age of the stores’ locations. 

In response to shopper surveys on the difficulty of in-store navigation,  Bolland implemented a new store “navigation scheme”. Easier shopping means happier customers. Happier customers spend more money. The brand’s clothing division had an 11% market share in the UK by 2013. In 2018, following the retail innovation trends, M&S tested in its Amsterdam store a real-life clothing rail which was a success because it added an online feature to an in-store experience. Providing a seamless user experience, both online and in-store has now become a top priority for M&S.

Breaking ties with Amazon

Marks & Spencer’s eCommerce platform was also due for a major overhaul. Until 2011, online operations for Marks & Spencer were conducted solely via a partnership with Amazon. As the brand set a goal to revamp its image and increase multichannel sales by 2014, it also took the initiative to build and manage its own eCommerce platform. 

Their newly redesigned website cost around £150m , however, despite such a costly price tag, it proved to be a disaster. For all of the attention to detail in making the shoppers’ journey seamless and hassle-free in brick-and-mortar stores, the brand totally neglected to apply the same strategy to its eCommerce platform.

An example is that Marks and Spencer forced existing customers to re-register on the new site. This major misstep confused and annoyed customers. Also, simple changes such as replacing the ‘add to basket’ option with ‘Your bag’ left Marks and Spencer shoppers confused. Further impacting online conversions was the site’s non-clickable and malfunctioning path to checkout. 

If at first, you do not succeed, try, try again…

Marks and Spencer saw online sales drop 8% in the first quarter of 2014 following the re-launch of their website. At first, Bolland refused to acknowledge the shortcomings of the website and their impact on online conversions. He said that the new website is “a journey, not something customers recognize in a morning”.

However, by 2015, Bolland admitted the flawed eCommerce design, leading Marks and Spencers to make “ thousands of changes ” in the first year following its launch.

Following all of the tweaks and turnarounds, the brand’s ultimate eCommerce goal and strategy shifted. Marks and Spencer aimed to better understand its customers’ needs and deliver a more personalized shopping experience both online and in-store.

The result was Marks and Spencer developing an online platform that combines key capabilities of eCommerce, content management, search, and analytics to create a customized multichannel customer experience. 

It had some teething problems from the start. Yet, by acknowledging mistakes and learning from them, Marks and Spencer was able to grow and put the company on the path toward eCommerce success.

The Retail Tech Transformation

Marks and Spencer eCommerce continues to grow and set trends. In 2018, the brand became a digital-first chain, aiming to improve customer experience in their stores and to create the basis for more growth using commercial technology.

The Marks & Spencer plan to increase sales by more than £1bn by offering shoppers an  intelligent virtual assistant . To achieve that, the brand expects to invest £25m to implement this new technology. 

An intelligent virtual assistant offers online customers a personal shopping assistant that uniquely interacts with them throughout their online shopping journey.

Marks &^ Spencer is the first retailer to offer this feature. Since its launch in March 2018, over a quarter of a million customers have reaped the benefits of a customer-centric and smooth shopping journey on Marks and Spencer eCommerce platform.

Marks & Spencer: Plan A  

Another way that Marks & Spencer is ramping up their brand’s image is with Plan A. Launched in 2007, this eco and ethical program focuses on sustainable retail challenges. 

By using business practices such as being the world’s first and only carbon-neutral major retailer, Marks and Spencer wins the hearts of its customers. 

The company also holds its suppliers to the same expectations: meeting high quality, safety, environmental and social standards. Furthermore, it signed off on a business-wide Human Rights Policy in 2016 and became a signatory of the UN Global Compact.

As Marks and Spencer continues to expand internationally, Plan A has helped the brand redeem its image with local suppliers and shoppers alike by communicating its commitment to consciously sourced products and fair trade.

Lesson #1: Better late than never

Similarly to Zara, Marks and Spencer is a great example of this. They successfully “migrated” or embedded their logistics strategy and Supplier Management to their success online. It’s important to realize your core competitive advantage early on, invest in them, and leverage them across all sales channels.

Lesson #2: Stick to your core mission

Similar to  Zara , Marks and Spencer is a great example of this. They successfully “migrated” or embedded their logistics strategy and Supplier Management to their success online. It’s important to realize your core competitive advantage early on, invest on them, and leverage them across all sales channels.

Lesson #3: Build on your offline competitive advantage

Marks & Spencer business stats you should know

• There are a total of 1,463 M&S stores worldwide
• M&S currently has 979 stores across the U.K. including 615 that only sell food products
• Estimated M&S profits for 2019 are approximately £10.4 billion , of which 89% came from the British market
• Marks and Spencer food is its biggest selling category. Sales reached £6 billion in 2018
• Marks and Spencer eCommerce revenue hit £ 836 million for 2016/17
• M&S brands include Limited collection, Per Una, North Coast, Portfolio, Indigo Collection, Autograph, Marks and Spencer, Classic Collection, and more

Breaking news about Marks & Spencer

• November 2020 – M&S posts first loss in 94 years – Read more here
• May 2020 – Marks & Spencer reopens 49 branches in UK – full list of stores now open – Read more here
• May 2020 – Marks and Spencer extends 30-minute home delivery service – Read more here
• April 2020 – M&S shopping rules: Retailer clarifies lockdown changes to stores and refund policy – Read more here

Discover more resources about FMCG retailer s

• Sainsbury’s Marketing Strategy: Becoming the Second-Largest Supermarket Chain in the UK
• ASDA’s marketing strategy: How the British supermarket chain reached the top
• Tesco Case Study: How an Online Grocery Goliath Was Born
• The Ocado marketing strategy: How it reached the UK TOP50 retailers list
• ALDI’s marketing strategy: The key growth ingredients of the FMCG titan
• Walmart Marketing Strategy: Decoding the Success of the US Multinational Retailer
• Analyzing Lidl’s Marketing Strategy: How the Discount Supermarket Leader Scaled
• FMCG Marketing Strategies to Increase YOY Revenue

Resources about other renowned fashion retailers

• How ZARA Dominates the Ecommerce Fashion Industry
• Why ASOS is the Absolute UK Ecommerce Success Story
• New Look: The Marketing Strategy Behind the UK Fast-Fashion Retailer
• Farfetch Case Study: Analyzing The Strategy of the UK Fashion Unicorn
• SUPERDRY case study: The marketing strategy behind one of the top UK clothing retailers

The Marks & Spencer eCommerce case study has many layers. All the layers demonstrate various tactics every eCommerce retailer can “borrow” to replicate its success and growth rates. 

Let your takeaway from this post be the core lesson learned from Marks and Spencer: It’s never too late to join and conquer the online market. Know that, in eCommerce, there really is no such thing as “too late” as long as you are willing to grow from your mistakes and move forward.

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Case study - marks & spencer sustainability program, early findings, marks & spencer case study.

• Marks & Spencer launched their sustainability initiative "Plan A" ten years ago.
• At the time it was launched, Plan A contained 100 commitments designed to tackle five key sustainability issues : climate change, waste, resources, fair partnerships, and health.
• In 2017 Marks & Spencer launched a second iteration of the sustainability plan which they called Plan A 2025 . Plan A 2025 strengthens the commitments made in the original Plan A, and contains 100 new targets .
• The Plan A 2025 Commitments document by Marks & Spencer lays out 10 overarching goals, the three pillars of the plan, and detailed information on specific goals and actions the company will take to reach each of its targets.
• The three pillars of Plan A 2025 include: "Nourishing our W e l l b e i n g ," "Transforming Lives and Communities," and "Caring for the Planet We All Share."
• Each pillar of the plan contains its own specific goals . For example, under the pillar "Caring for the Planet We All Share" Marks & Spencer commits to targets including : halving net food waste by 2025, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% (relative to 2006-7) by 2030, and 90% by 2035, and sourcing all 50 key raw materials used in production from ethical and sustainable sources by 2025.
• Marks & Spencer lays out the general cycle of its sustainability initiative as: listen and respond in ways that inspire customers; strategize, plan, and innovate; develop and design; source and buy with integrity; brand and sell; and finally, serve and engage in a way that is in touch with customers' needs and desires.

Communication and PR

• Very detailed information on Marks & Spencer's sustainability plan is available and prominently displayed on its company website . The Sustainability section of the website contains details about the plan and its goals, and links to PDF documents which contain a wealth of detailed information on specific targets, steps, and progress reports relevant to the sustainability plan.
• Marks & Spencer has also made more than 10 different press releases regarding Plan A since 2018. Most of these press releases focus on specific progress updates for Plan A 2025 or new initiatives aimed towards increasing sustainability.
• Marks & Spencer's has done well in communicating sustainability as one of its core brand values: Ecosystem Marketplace recognized Marks & Spencer and as a leader in corporate responsibility, and Sustainable Brands reported that Marks & Spencer's sustainability plan was notable for its specific commitments, detailed timeline, and science-based goals and procedures.
• The Plan A 2025 Performance Summary from 2018 shows that of the 100 targets, 2 have been achieved, 48 are on plan, 13 are behind plan, and 37 have not yet been started.
• In the first year of Plan A 2025 , Marks & Spencer made sustainability steps which included: the launch of a line of denim jeans which it describes as one of the most sustainable clothing items it has ever produced, became the first major retailer to source all its dairy products from RSPCA approved farms, worked with and listened to the needs of 10 pilot communities in order to develop plans for improving education, e m p l o y a b i l i t y and social w e l l b e i n g , and worked as a founding member of the UK Plastics Pact which contains specific commitments for reducing the amount of plastics used in particular items.
• Although many goals have yet to be achieved, Marks & Spencer notes that many goals are satisfactorily on schedule for the eight-year plan, and that it is working to develop strategies that will allow it to meet all 100 targets over the course of the plan.

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Marks & Spencer's aspiration to become omnichannel

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Martin Koehring is senior manager for sustainability, climate change and natural resources at Economist Impact (part of The Economist Group). He leads Economist Impact's sustainability-related policy and thought leadership projects in the EMEA region. He is also the head of the World Ocean Initiative , inspiring bold thinking, new partnerships and the most effective action to build a sustainable ocean economy.

He is a member of the Advisory Committee for the UN Environment Programme’s Global Environment Outlook for Business and is a faculty member in the Food & Sustainability Certificate Program provided by the European Institute for Innovation and Sustainability.

His previous roles at The Economist Group, where he has been since 2011, include managing editor, global health lead and Europe editor at The Economist Intelligence Unit.

He earned a bachelor of economic and social studies in international relations from Aberystwyth University and a master’s degree in diplomacy and international relations from the College of Europe.

Go back to 2009, and Marks & Spencer (M&S) looked to be in some trouble as it announced the appointment of a new boss, Marc Bolland. The 150-year-old British retailer was still the biggest clothes seller in the country, and its (relatively upmarket) food sales were healthy. But the problems were mounting, reflected in a slide in general merchandise (including fashion) sales, and indeed in the company’s reputation for value and quality.

Mr Bolland responded with a three-year plan, including a major investment into becoming an omnichannel retailer. Results still look shaky—in the three months to June 2014 clothing sales fell by 0.6%, with online sales down by 8.1% following a lightly marketed relaunch of the company’s website. But the future looks much brighter, with a drive into omnichannel promising not just an increase in online sales but also a much broader, more modern, in-store experience.

In many ways the core problem was one of identity: in fashion, M&S was unsure whether it was competing against new arrivals such as Primark, appealing to a young, price-sensitive audience, or against the more upmarket John Lewis department store, appealing to richer, older folk. The search for younger, trendier buyers on top of the traditional older clientele fed a plethora of sub-brands, which simply confused shoppers. The quality of both merchandise and stores was mixed, with some heavy discounting to appeal to the youngsters. The product range and supply chain were both too complex. And the website was outsourced to Amazon, based on an old platform ill-suited to modern retailing.

Mr Bolland has spent heavily on sorting out the problems, refreshing the product range and the stores to reinvent M&S as a mid-priced competitor to John Lewis—accepting that the average age of M&S customers is around 50. As part of this the company has spent some £150m launching its own website and moving towards omnichannel. On the company’s own figures, only 6.7m of its 34m annual customers shop with M&S both in-store and online. Some 8.3m shop only in-store. And, rather remarkably, some 19m—56% of the total—only shop in-store with M&S, but shop with competitors online. #_ftn1 " name="_ftnref1" title="marks and spencer plan a case study">[1] If M&S can make its huge customer base shop online as well as in-store—and join things up to make it easier to buy items spotted in a shop over the website—then sales could surge.

To gear up for the launch of its own website, M&S recruited technical and online experts. “This gave us internal development capacity,” says Amanda Glover, senior corporate PR manager at M&S, adding that it is now easier to update, extend and upgrade the new platform. M&S also appointed a single person to take charge of omnichannel retailing. The website went live at the start of 2014, after having learnt some lessons from online specialists such as eBay, including the use of newsletters and collections to grab customers’ attention and loyalty. Initially, the results were disappointing, with online trading falling after a slightly clumsy relaunch. The new website was only lightly marketed, and existing customers had to re-register on the new site, causing confusion and a short-term fall in usage.

Nonetheless, the new website works well enough; it can be easily updated and developed and is central to M&S becoming more convincingly multichannel as it gears up for a genuinely omnichannel future. Distribution has been rethought, with e-commerce orders (including "click and collect") from a single giant warehouse as part of a wider rationalisation of the company’s fragmented distribution chain. And some flagship stores are embracing multichannel, with assistants wielding tablet computers so that they can use the website to offer in-store customers a wider product choice and kiosks to allow people to self-serve online.

This development has not turned M&S into a state-of-the-art omnichannel retailer yet—there is no sign of beacon technology to guide people around purchases and the store, for example, and many of the smaller stores use only parts of the new approach for lack of space. But enough has been done to forge a multichannel future for M&S, including the use of online technology to increase international sales in markets (for example, some of the smaller EU countries) where it lacks a store presence.

#_ftnref1 " name="_ftn1" title="marks and spencer plan a case study">[1] "Marks & Spencer launches online drive", The Telegraph , May 1st 2014. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/10802873/Marks-and-Spencer-launches-online-drive.html

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21 Marks & Spencer: Improving Supply-Chain Sustainability

• Published: March 2021
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The case of Marks & Spencer illustrates how a company has used a sustainability scorecard that awards provisional, bronze, silver, and gold ratings to participating suppliers to promote its sustainability programme. The scores are based on environment, human resources and ethical trade, and lean manufacturing. Suppliers undertake self-assessments of the scorecard at least once a year, which are subject to audit and assurance. The programme has delivered substantial savings through waste reduction and environmental efficiency amounting to over £600 million since 2007.

Introduction

Over the past decade, Marks & Spencer (M&S)—a major British retailer of household items, food products, and clothing—has increased its focus on fostering sustainability throughout its supply chain. In response to both business needs and a growing customer demand for sustainable practices, M&S has aimed to show leadership in minimizing its environmental impact.

Founded in 1884, M&S is now a public limited company with over a thousand stores across the world, 852 of which are located in the United Kingdom. It has over eighty thousand employees and revenues of over £10 billion. In the United Kingdom, there are 368 firms that supply directly to M&S and employ over 119,000 people. These sites include 302 food factories and thirty-eight drinks factories. With the goal of increasing transparency, product quality, and worker well-being throughout its supply chain, M&S instituted a Sustainability Scorecard system in 2010 to measure impact and incentivize best practices. This metric continues to help M&S achieve positive performance by promoting good relations with suppliers and customers.

Ecosystem Pain Point

Over 90 per cent of M&S’s social and environmental impact occurs within the supply chain and outside its own operations. Even though 98 per cent of M&S products are sold under its own brand, M&S does not manufacture any products itself and relies instead on its suppliers. For this reason, M&S has to take a special interest in developing relationships with its suppliers and collaborating with them in the area of sustainability.

This collaboration can yield a range of benefits for M&S. For example, sustainability-based innovations such as optimized packaging design, a reduction in transit packaging, and load-sharing during transportation can lower costs. Alternative product designs or formulations can create improved products. Environmental and social risks can be reduced through better sourcing of materials and high labour standards in supplier factories. And supply and reputational risks are lowered when there is greater transparency across the whole supply chain.

However, there are challenges associated with implementing new approaches to supply chain sustainability. As an industry report explains:

Most companies in the grocery sector initially approached supply-chain sustainability from a need to ensure compliance and to minimize supply and reputational risks from across the supply chain. Whilst some industry-wide initiatives, such as Sedex (Supplier Ethical Data Exchange) have been successful in providing an effective framework for this risk management approach, this can result in defensive behaviour by suppliers and can reinforce relationships that are characterised by a ‘tick-box’ process for ensuring compliance. 1

In order to offset potential risk, M&S needed to create new ways in which to align suppliers with M&S’s broader sustainability goals.

Business Strategy: The Sustainability Scorecard

The supply chain forms a critical part of the overall M&S Sustainability Programme—which they call Plan A. In 2010, M&S established a Sustainability Scorecard that aims to align suppliers with the company’s sustainability objectives by tracking the progress of their own sustainability activities. 2 This scorecard enables M&S to award Provisional, Silver, Bronze, and Gold ratings to participating suppliers. The scores are calculated based on three pillars: environment, human resources and ethical trade, and lean manufacturing.

Overall, M&S aims to ensure that there are good working conditions throughout the supply chains and that products are sourced with integrity. Resource efficiency is associated with supply efficiency and reduced costs associated with raw material, energy, and waste. And M&S aims to incentivize and facilitate better and leaner practices amongst suppliers.

At least once a year each of the direct suppliers’ sites works through the scorecard’s framework and completes self-assessment questionnaires. 3 As a case study by the Financial Reporting Council describes, suppliers take the process of generating and auditing these scorecards seriously:

A critical part of the process is audit and assurance where it must both satisfy itself that the required standards are being met and avoid alienating its suppliers by being too strict…The company has opted to give a window for when audits will take place, so that the suppliers know that the assurance team will arrive at some point within the space of, say, a month. The period is short enough to limit the disruption but long enough to prevent bad practice being temporarily hidden. 4

In this way, M&S addresses the need to collect excellent data without overburdening suppliers. The practice of providing suppliers with a ‘window’ during which the audit will take place helps foster goodwill and promote accountability, without disrupting production.

Buyers take these scores into account. Furthermore, only products from Silver and Gold factories are eligible for recognition as having ‘Plan A product attributes’ for sale to consumers. By 2020, M&S plans to source 100 per cent of products from sites that are scored Silver or Gold. In recognition of their efforts, Silver and Gold suppliers are awarded certificates at the M&S annual commercial conference. 5

Environment

The first element of the scorecard considers the environmental measures. These measures focus on energy use, water use, waste, and carbon outputs. This part of the scorecard includes environmental impact assessment, risk assessment of key raw materials. It also shows a sustainable procurement plan and tracks the percentage of renewable energy at site.

M&S has identified waste as a specific issue, both in production and in packaging. The current goal is to source 25 per cent of food from suppliers who operate zero-waste factories. As the company’s Plan A Commitments report describes:

Different parts of M&S supply chain face different challenges on waste. Food supply chains create more waste, but much of this is currently recycled. M&S works with food suppliers to help them recycle their remaining volumes that still go to landfill, by using the most carbon-efficient approach available, for example anaerobic digestion or composting. We’ll also work with our suppliers to minimize food packaging write-offs. 6

As this example of the food supply chain demonstrates, there are many opportunities for increasing sustainable business practices all along the supply chain. Offering increased access to recycling helps M&S align its suppliers with its ongoing sustainability goals by tackling the challenges of food waste.

Human Resources and Ethical Trade

A second key aspect of the scorecard is human resource management and ethical trade. This section includes employee representation, staff turnover, workforce cohesion, and external accreditation for employee bodies. As the company reports: ‘We want our food to only come from factories demonstrating leading standards in training, workforce and community engagement, health and safety and employment practices.’ 7 The scorecard system helps advance M&S’s human resource and ethical trade goals.

The company’s Global Sourcing Principles draw from key international documents and standards, including UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, the UN Human Right to Water and Sanitation, the Children’s Rights and Business Principles, and the UN Global Compact. By aligning the company’s requirements with these international standards, M&S is able to encourage engagement and streamline the compliance burden for its suppliers. 8

Lean Manufacturing

The third element of the scorecard is lean manufacturing. Here, the scorecard tracks whether suppliers use formal tools for cross-functional problem solving, employ value-stream mapping to illustrate and analyse the manufacturing process, and identify key suppliers for improved relationships.

Participatory Approach

M&S seeks to encourage suppliers to take ownership of the sustainability agenda. Rather than imposing targets and monitoring compliance, it has chosen to collaborate with key suppliers and to work with them to create a number of model factories. Although some of the lessons from the model factories initiated supplier changes through Plan A commitments, the larger focus was, and continues to be, demonstrating the business case for action. M&S views this as a powerful incentive for galvanizing change across the supply chain.

In addition, M&S encourages its suppliers to use an online knowledge platform which provides advice, case studies, and toolkits for making practical changes within factories and on farms. 9 These materials also highlight the business benefits of implementing those changes.

The scorecard framework is supported by a Supplier Collaboration Programme. This has three main areas of focus: facilitating supplier exchange meetings, where suppliers can share their learnings; providing skills training and development opportunities for suppliers; and delivering financial benefits and improved ways of working.

There is further encouragement through other incentives and collaborative programmes such as the annual supplier awards programme and networking sessions. The ‘awards recognize and showcase suppliers that have made tangible and demonstrable improvements in areas such as process innovation or product sustainability’ and the supplier networking sessions take place every two to three months. These sessions focus on areas of the performance scorecard in which suppliers experience difficulties. In these sessions, suppliers that have made progress on specific challenges are encouraged to share experiences and outcomes with their peers, and M&S technical experts are also on hand to share operational knowledge and expertise. M&S also makes a point of not requiring suppliers to share how much they have saved and how much of the savings results from M&S’s involvement. This approach stems from the belief that suppliers may be concerned that M&S’s buying departments would use the information to negotiate on price. Moreover, since the relationship between supplier engagement and decisions to adjust business practices is not always clear-cut, these sessions function primarily as opportunities to identify best practices. The networking sessions help provide a platform for discussing challenges, free from the concern that such disclosures would have a negative impact on the supplier’s relationship with their buyer.

The Benefits of the Scorecard Approach

The scorecard enables M&S to understand and manage its supply chain better. This approach helps incentivize best practices. As summarized by Hazel Culley, Sustainability Manager, the programme brings to the fore many previously unnoticed aspects of the supply chain:

It’s great to be able to see the real change that’s happening; for example, when we started out only seventy of our sites had staff surveys—now more than two hundred do. We’ve also seen great environmental improvements including over 40 per cednt of our sites sending no waste to landfill and 25 per cent volume is now from sites that have reduced energy by 20 per cent. 10

More broadly, through the suppliers’ self-reporting M&S gains insights on the energy, material, waste, and carbon performance measurements for those factories; suppliers’ risk assessment of their raw materials; suppliers’ employee representation, gender ratio, employee turnover, and employee survey results at those supplier sites; and the production capabilities of its suppliers. These insights allow M&S to better select and interact with its suppliers for product innovation and other improvements in its products.

Performance

Overall, the Plan A programme, of which the scorecard is a component, has delivered significant saving through waste reduction and environmental efficiency. In the 2014/15 business year, these savings totalled £160 million. The programme has saved £625 million since 2007.

M&S views the value of the programme as extending beyond these savings. As reported in a case published by the Financial Reporting Council:

The company does not seek to measure the financial impact of Plan A in terms of margin, corporate earnings, and brand value. It considers this is a number that cannot be calculated, but it believes that the impact of Plan A in terms of the trust it generates with customers, as well as on the morale of its workforce and that of its suppliers, will make the company more resilient and more adaptable, enhancing its sustainability in a rapidly changing world. 11

As the report indicates, putting an increasingly sustainable supply chain into practice creates benefits for both M&S and its suppliers. The Sustainability Scorecard initiative bolsters brand value by enhancing relationships among the main business, suppliers, and customers.

Examples of Supplier Achievements

As a result of the Sustainability Scorecard programme, M&S created value and savings across its supply chain:

Through the introduction of vacuum packing for fresh meats, an unnamed company calculates it saved £16.3 million in 2011/12.

Worldwide Fruit, an M&S food supplier, was named supplier of the year in 2012 for its achievements in reducing electricity consumption by 14 per cent a year and water demand by 75 per cent.

Brandix, a designated M&S eco-factory, was named clothing supplier of the year in 2012 for reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent, energy usage by 46 per cent, and water consumption by 58 per cent.

AMC Grupo Alimentación Fresco y Zumo, a fruit supplier, introduced a closed-loop manufacturing methodology for fruit squeezing. This led to zero fruit waste, with 90 per cent of fruit waste being used elsewhere in the business.

Courtauld, a clothing supplier, developed a new bra made from 100 per cent recycled polyester, with improved durability and guaranteed non-yellowing. 12

As these supplier achievements show, the scorecard initiative has the potential to align suppliers with M&S’s sustainability goals in mutually beneficial ways.

Looking ahead, M&S aims to source 100 per cent of products from at least Silver-level suppliers by 2020. In addition to meeting its internal standards, the company plans to have a sustainability story for each M&S product. This way, it can demonstrate the origins of its products and highlight the benefits of its new supply-chain model.

Additionally, M&S plans to expand its Plan A initiatives to include a wider range of sustainability programmes. To this end, M&S will launch a five-year, £50 million Plan A innovation fund to support new ideas in the business. 13 An additional future goal will be to help suppliers create 200 Plan A factories and have ten thousand farmers join the initiative. 14 Taken together, these programmes aim to catalyse innovation along M&S’s sustainable supply chain and to continue fostering good relations between the company and its suppliers.

Stanley ( 2013) .

Bhattacharya ( 2016) .

‘Sustainability Scorecard: Capacity Building Initiatives’, corporate.marksandspencer.com, https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a/our-approach/food-and-household/capacity-buildinginitiatives/sustainability-scorecard .

‘Our Plan A Commitments 2010–2015’, Marks and Spencer Group, March 2010, http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a/85488c3c608e4f468d4a403f4ebbd628 .

Hazel Cully, ‘Silver and Beyond––Foods Sustainable Factory Programme’, https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/blog/stories/silver-beyond-food-factory .

Plan A, corporate.marksandspencer.com, 25, http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a/85488c3c608e4f468d4a403f4ebbd628j .

Plan A, corpororate.marksandspencer.com, 28, http://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a/85488c3c608e4f468d4a403f4ebbd628j .

‘Global Sourcing Principles,’ Marks and Spencer Corporate, November 2016, https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/documents/plan-a-our-approach/global-sourcing-principles.pdf .

‘Case Study: Marks and Spencer––Supply Chain Standards’, Financial Reporting Council, https://www.frc.org.uk/Our-Work/Corporate-Governance-Reporting/Corporate-governance/Corporate-Cultureand-the-Role-of-Boards/Case-Study-Marks-and-Spencer-%E2%80%93-Supply-chain-stand.aspx .

Stanley (2013).

‘Our Plan A Commitments 2010–2015’, corporate.marksandspencer.com, March 2010, https://corporate.marksandspencer.com/plan-a/85488c3c608e4f468d4a403f4ebbd628 .

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What we can learn from the Aldi and M&S battle over Colin and Cuthbert

By Joel Smith , Peter Elkin and trade mark lawyers, Hogan Lovells 2022-02-04T16:27:00+00:00

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Marks & Spencer’s famous Colin The Caterpillar

Aldi and M&S have finally put an end to their caterpillar cake wars. No-one knows the exact details of the truce, which emerged this week . Colin and Cuthbert shook hands on a confidential settlement, and both parties appear satisfied with the conclusion. M&S said it was “pleased” at the outcome in enforcing its IP rights, while Aldi claimed Cuthbert was “getting out early on good behaviour”, in an echo of its tongue-in-cheek trolling on social media.

From a legal perspective, this dispute follows a long line of incidents from the so-called “chocolate wars”, where leading brands such as Cadbury, Nestlé, Ritter Sport, Lindt, Hotel Chocolat and Mondelez have sought to protect various elements of their products, such as the shape, colour and get-up of their goods and their packaging.

The cases include failed attempts by Cadbury to protect the colour purple on the packaging of its chocolate bars, Nestlé’s bid to protect the shape of its Kit Kat bar and Lindt’s attempt to stop imitations of its gold bunny.

Aldi’s rival to Colin the Caterpillar, named Cuthbert, is back on sale

Not all cases have failed, though. Ritter Sport has had recent success in protecting its square chocolate bar shape in the German courts, and Mondelez convinced Poundland to change its Twin Peaks chocolate bar design to less resemble a Toblerone.

The above disputes raise interesting legal issues of what can and cannot be registered as a trade mark. Here are our key lessons for brand owners:

Register . Trade mark applications are cheap to file and maintain and provide strong legal protection. Brand owners should apply to protect a wide range of colours, shapes and get-up surrounding products and  packaging in the key territory markets. Owning a registered trade mark will only strengthen any court case and show others that you are serious about brand protection.

Evidence . To support these applications, brand owners should track, document and keep details of the use of colour, shape and design in their products. Critical evidence includes advertising/marketing spend, social media traction and customer reviews, all directed at demonstrating consumer recognition.

Isolate . Marketing campaigns based exclusively or primarily on a product’s shape, colour or get-up would be powerful evidence to support trade mark applications. The key aim is to establish that consumers rely on these elements to recognise the product, rather than a brand name – for instance, knowing a Kit Kat or Toblerone is offered by Nestlé/Mondelez based on the product’s shape alone.

Accurate : Take care to consider whether a product’s description could be misleading. Cadbury’s chocolate bar ‘SwissChalet’, which included a picture of a Swiss mountain and chalet on the packaging, was found to misrepresent that the chocolate originated from Switzerland. Thousands of other terms (such as Champagne, Cornish Clotted Cream and Yorkshire Wensleydale) are protected based on their geographic origin (now under separate rights called protected geographical indications), so brand owners should check and seek professional advice when referencing well-known localised goods.

PR . Formal legal proceedings are public, so carefully consider the public’s reaction to any claim. Form a strategy for managing the public’s perception and present a clear and accessible justification for bringing the claim. Brand enforcement is necessary, but should also be a net positive in driving the overall business. For instance, see the recent dispute between Oatly and Glebe Farm .

Settle . The possibilities for nuanced and creative solutions are far greater when a matter is dealt with privately between the parties rather than in court. Of course, formal legal proceedings are necessary, if the other side is unrelenting or uncompromising, but an out-of-court settlement is often the best policy for preventing further disputes. 

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