They as such invested £200 million in their own ethical campaign, and they now implement it, while in the same time, criticizing other companies for having renounced their initiatives in the wake of the economic crisis. Marks and Spencer promoted messages such as the ones below:
"Above all, doing the right thing is doing it today, because our planet can't wait until tomorrow"
"For some retailers, green went out of fashion as quickly as it came in"
These messages carried out through the ethical marketing campaign of Marks and Spencer are presented by Mark Sweney in a 2009 article in the Guardian, entitled "Marks and Spencer trumpets ethical initiatives in ad campaign. M&S's national ad campaign pushes £200m ethical plan and chides rivals for retreating from commitment to green issues."
Aside from presenting the messages criticizing the other economic agents for withdrawing from the initiatives of environmental responsibility, the article points out that the campaign of Marks and Spencer would also reveal the company's commitment to sustainable solutions for its buyers and its commitments to high quality items. Additionally, the article briefly presents some efforts made by the Advertising Standards Authority to reduce the incidence of artificial claims of ethical and environmental campaigns. The regulator has been met with numerous situations in which the campaigns were announcing environmentally friendly products, that in essence proved to not be so. Still, the article does not present the stand of the Advertising Standards Authority in the case of the Marks and Spencer campaign, but this is probably because investigations are only launched in the aftermath of accusations.
All in all, the article presented in the Guardian...
At the level of the company and its ethical campaign, a first improvement that could be added is represented by the elimination of the attacks towards other companies. Marks and Spencer should create not only an environmental campaign, but an ethical one too, in which they do not attack others; in the end, this attack reflects on the very image of the company and the impact is a negative one.
Aside from this, other improvements that could be integrated in the British retailer's campaign include the creation of more powerful values to sit at the basis of the campaign, and the communication of these values. All in all, what they should remember is that companies become successful because of what they do, not what they say (Vaccaro, 2010). They should as such engage in more action, rather than attacks.
