This is not just consigned to the dustbin

A big day for M&S today as the legendary “this is not just…” food advertising slogan has been consigned to history.

Not before time either. It was a brilliant campaign and epitomised the early success of Stuart Rose’s reign at M&S, but the problem with it now is that it merely serves to reinforce the perception that M&S food is expensive.

M&S is also relaunching both its fashion advertising too, getting rid of all the established celebs except Twiggy, and introducing Jamie Redknapp as the face of its menswear, which isn’t a bad call. I’m sure they’ll be paying him well but he’ll deserve every penny in return for being paraded on billboards dressed in Blue Harbour.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the new campaigns look like. The press release makes it sound that M&S recognises that its ads need to work harder to really sell the product and the value (in every sense of the word) it offers. They will also be interesting because they will in all probability be Steve Sharp’s last major relaunch of M&S’s advertising before he calls it a day, and he’ll be keen to go out on a high after producing work which set the pace for retail advertising for such a long time.

Of course Marc Bolland might want to rip it all up and start again when he starts in May, and I’ve been meaning since last week to post about Stuart Rose’s salary as non-executive chairman. Investors are said to be unhappy with the £875,000 he’s going to be paid and I’m not surprised, as M&S has done nothing so far to explain why he deserves to be the highest paid chairman in the FTSE 100 when he steps down to a non-exec role in the Summer.

Down the years Rose has been on the end of some niggly nit-picking from M&S’s investors, and this feels like him sticking his fingers up back to them.

David Michels might say the company did its homework and benchmarked the sum against other companies, but then he should explain why having gone through this process, the remuneration committee decided he should be worth so much more than, say, Tesco’s chairman David Reid, whose company’s profits dwarf those of M&S.