More love for M&S and its collab with Sephora

M&S’s ingenious partnership with Sephora proves in-store shopping can be worth the trip, says Izzy Holden, account director, SHOOK.

I am VERY here for this partnership.

Anyone who knows me knows my love for M&S isn’t new. I’m also sure most of us can relate to that moment, somewhere along the way, when we went from simply shopping there to becoming weirdly passionate about it.

It makes sense. From viral food launches that I’m expertly educated on by Kathryn Turner: cookies, dips, strawberry sandwiches (I appreciate it, but still unsure), picky bits galore. The highly aesthetic homeware dupes of Soho Home and The White Company (IYKYK). Percy Pig mania. 

Plus, not forgetting the high-quality wardrobe basics that my friends and I actively recommend and buy (I happily waited two months to get my hands back on their linen trousers).

M&S has been smashing it for years, but this feels like a mic-drop moment.

Now, I’ll admit Space NK is still my kryptonite (my basket is permanently filled as an ongoing wish list), but bringing Sephora into M&S is genius. Adding more desire to visit, and even less reason to leave empty-handed.

For M&S, it brings in one of the most culturally relevant names in beauty, and an audience that still wants to shop IRL. 

Despite TikTok driving nearly half of Gen Z beauty discovery, more than half (52.3%) still prefer to actually buy their beauty products in-store. 

For Sephora, it unlocks access to M&S’s huge physical footprint.

From around 18 standalone UK stores to a presence in 100 M&S locations, it suddenly has access to high streets and communities across the country, with all the trust, credibility and convenience that comes with M&S.

And as a SHOOKER, I’m of course thinking about it through a ‘behaviour design’ lens.

Social scientist BJ Fogg’s model says if you want to create a behaviour, you need to pull on Motivation, Ability, and/or Prompt. Looking at M&S through that lens, with an example behaviour of getting people to see it as a one-stop destination, it's covering all three levers.

• Motivation, through a constant stream of trend-led products, partnerships and launches, it knows what its audiences care about.

• Prompts, through its online phenomenon of individual store accounts, employees, creators and customers constantly fuelling discovery.

• Then Ability, through the sheer ease of making it easier to access everything all in one place, and in more places.

Every part removes another reason to go elsewhere and adds another reason to make the trip.

That matters even more when we’ve spent years noticing and discussing the gradual decline of the high street and how retailers can persuade people away from their screens and back into stores. It seems M&S’s answer is simply making the trip feel worth it, and exciting, again.

Because if you can create enough reasons to get someone through the door, who knows what else ends up in their basket?

So, here’s to the countdown to spending a whole day in M&S - picking up my food shop, scanning for new items to try (hello, fiery pickles), grabbing my timeless basics, buying the Pinterest-board home items for my new flat that I definitely don’t need AND restocking my beauty bag with Sephora brands.

Day trip to M&S… anyone?