M&S food advertising

1970's

During the 70's a lot of women were now working and therefor had less time in the home.
Lifestyles where changing and M&S had to work with this change in order to keep up to date and give their customers what they wanted.
As far as food was concerned the main effect of women working was that there was less time to prepare meals, this is where products like the boil in bag rice and microwave meals began to stand out as innovative and useful.
Microwave's where becoming affordable appliances, that were sold in M&S stores, and this left an opportunity to further promote their use through the sale of products that worked with them.
Microwave meals where becoming an alternative to slaving away in the kitchen for hours over a meal for a dinner party. During this period the british public where becoming more adventurous with exotic foods because the options of travel where becoming so much more widely available, there was less emphasis on food being proudly british and people where open to trying new things. To follow this trend M&S's food products where starting to showcase their diversity, introducing products reflecting the flavours of china and india.
Advertising for the brand during this period was unambiguous, clearly displaying the M&S key principles focusing a lot on quality, price and easy of use. At this point still using the St.michael sub-brand. For example the American style beef burger ad.


2000's

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHFKE6PD_6U
M&S Christmas food 2006

I have chosen to make a comparison here because of the clear contrast of some themes. The 2006 ad has been geared toward tradition and british sourced food. Here M&S are trying to showcase their roots of very british origin, during a time of economic boom, where people where much more concerned with quality and appearance than in the 70's ad i previously looked at. This is evident in the luxury displayed in this ad.
It is interesting to see that the ideal of making life easy for the customer with these prepared meals is still evident, however the way they are marketed is completely different. In the 70's ads it was popular to seem to have created a meal with little effort, showcasing the technology used to produce it. However in this modern ad things have reversed and it is the appearance of quality and "home style" handmade cooking that is being emphasised.