By Richard Price, MD of Clothing & Home

I don’t need to tell you that customers are feeling the squeeze on their income (we’re all feeling it, whether we run a home or a business) and they want to make every penny count.

At M&S we dress the nation – we’re the UK’s biggest clothing retailer – serving over 22 million customers everyday essentials from bras, pyjamas and schoolwear to wardrobe staples like denim and knitwear. So, we know that when it comes to clothing, making every penny count isn’t just about the price.

Great value also means great cost per wear, hand-me-down quality, the confidence that it will fit and also wash well… Ultimately, customers want clothing that is made well and made to last.

That’s why we use the trusted value equation:

Value = price + quality

As a predominantly own-brand retailer, we have the benefit of longstanding supplier relationships and unique to M&S innovations, that ensure a quality point of difference in fit and finish. Like a pair of pyjamas with StayNew™ technology for £15 or a quilted jacket with M&S patented Thermowarmth technology from £35 to 3 for 2 mix and match across carefully selected kids’ clothes.

It comes from upholding and being committed to improving sourcing standards too – our trusted value promise means customers can be confident that our products are sourced with care for the planet and for the people who supply them. It’s the £17.50 hoodie that’s made using responsibly sourced cotton, the £45 responsibly sourced feather & down puffer gillet or the supersoft jumper with recycled yarns for 20 quid.

Trusted value is part of our DNA. Our founders built the business on that premise – quality product and no tricksy pricing. From M&S’s origins at a Market Stall in 1800’s Leeds where the slogan was ‘Don’t Ask the Price, It’s a Penny’, or a set of brace buttons sold with the guarantee ‘once fixed, will never come off’ to our fabric technologists helping the Government develop a minimum quality standard for rationed clothing during WWII or holding exhibitions in the 1950s and 1960s around the idea of ‘quality’ merchandise at our then Baker Street head office.

Now, when it matters most, we want to give our customers confidence that we stand by that commitment, by launching Value You Can Trust. A campaign that is about what we do best – giving our customers a great everyday price without compromising on the quality and standards they expect.

It’s not a campaign where we are trying to launch something new or revolutionary – there’s no jazzy strapline, it’s not trying to be clever and we’re not trying to be something we’re not. It’s a simple reassurance to our customers that when they come to M&S you get value you can trust.

Watch our campaign video

ENDS