M&S and the meaningless middle

It’s that time of year again. Marks & Spencer are closing some more stores and someone’s announcing a rescue or revitalization plan. We seem to pass this stop on the line regularly, M&S bastion of the High Street forever crawling downhill in its excruciating and endless downward trajectory.

Corporate declines are like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, all have their own particulars, but walk along the High Street and what’s painfully obvious is that it’s the middle that’s being hollowed out, the not too cheap, not too fancy, ‘something for everyone but me’ middle.

Of course in retail the answer to every question tends to be ‘Amazon’. But it’s not just retail, airlines, car manufacturers, restaurants – in all these categories and more the carnage is happening right in the middle, that big old safe space where someone assumed the area beneath the bell curve would be greatest.

Yet on either side discounters flourish and luxury brands wallow in ever more exorbitant profits. Centrist politicians are shunned by electorates as voters flock to populist parties from all sides. We can safely agree that the middle’s not looking like a great place to be right now.

The problem is that the middle is a mirage. What best defines the middle is a deficit of meaning. As geographical and economic certainties have dissolved and the ease of access to ideas and images has proliferated the simple linear logic of ‘good, better, best’ has become redundant. Those brands whose positioning is dependent upon relative co-ordinates on a straight line now don’t have a positioning.

It’s not long ago that we were all getting excited about the prophetic idea of the ‘long tail’, where aggregated demand and supply would change the world. The prophets were half right in foreseeing some technomorphic shift missed the aftershocks. The map has changed and we live instead in a long archipelago, hopping between shifting islands of desire and demand from which we sail restlessly. The map hasn’t just changed, it’s forever moving and, as in any half familiar landscape, we the punters look for landmarks. 

Meaning is our modern beacon, a Pharos of clarity and direction. One brand gives us status, another emotional succour, whilst a third might just get things done quicker and cheaper leaving us space to invest in a fourth.

What M&S and all those other casualties limping along in the middle of the road are experiencing isn’t a crisis of supply chain or channel (free tip here M&S, I reckon shifting your punters online ain’t going to be the solution) but a crisis of meaning. Without meaning, purpose, simplicity they are lost to us as we seek things we understand.

Sturdy underwear and well placed knits aren’t the same as a meaning. Have a laugh and ask someone to tell you what M&S is, what it stands for. No questions asked refunds? First suits for a new job? Pre-prepared meals based on last year’s big foodie instagram trend? Collaborations with Alexa Chung and Marcel Wanders anyone? None of it’s very meaningful really is it? I see from a brief google that M&S has a brand purpose of ‘Making Every Moment Special’. At least it did in 2016. I suspect that a quite a few not so special moments might have passed under the bridge since then and some kind of perpetual rethink is under way. That’s the problem, a brand’s meaning is a simple precious thing and when you try to make it by covering every base you know you’re not even there. What if M&S was simply about the best service on the High Street? Too old and clunky for you? How about just the simple basics everyone needs? Does that limit your innovation opportunities? Well probably not as much as going down the pan will.

M&S and other brands lost in the middle need to grapple with something more profound that generic purpose statements. They need to think about the roles they play in people’s lives and find their meaning there. Buzzwords and relative positionings; incremental advantage and the warm glow of incumbency; none of these things will stop brands drifting slowly father and farther away from the punters out there who are happily hopping between meaningful islands of utility and image.