Marks & Spencer executive director of marketing and international Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne hopes to cook up a storm with a new food TV ad campaign, which is designed to be its most exciting in the 10 years since its famous ‘Not Just Any…’ series.

Marks and Spencer executive director of marketing and international Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne

Set to the upbeat pop track Rather Be by Clean Bandit, with striking imagery and without a voiceover, the latest ad is in contrast to the luxuriously slow, seductive music and soft voice of actress Dervla Kirwan used in its previous ads.

Instead, M&S is letting the food speak for itself, showing off its new trend-led range such as a runny scotch egg, Asian summer rolls and slick cuts of meat that consumers are increasingly eating and seeing on TV cookery programmes.

It seems fitting that a Frenchman is overseeing the process, tapping into his country’s culinary and fashionable reputation.

He says he wants to differentiate M&S from the “price-focused supermarkets” by playing on the “sensual and surprising aspects of food”.

Such a focus is not new for Bousquet-Chavanne, who has spent most of his career working with fragrance and beauty brands at the Estée Lauder group, which includes premium brands such as Mac, Clinique, Tommy Hilfiger and Crème de la Mer.

He was highly regarded in the business, spending two decades at the top after joining Estée Lauder in 1989 as vice-president and general manager of Aramis International, before running Estée Lauder’s worldwide travel retailing business.

In 2004, president and chief executive of the Estée Lauder group William Lauder credited Bousquet-Chavanne for the “rebirth” of the Estée Lauder brand.

He said then: “He is a visionary and tenacious business leader.”

Between 1998 and 2008 Bousquet-Chavanne served as president of international, directing the expansion of all Estée Lauder company brands across 130 countries.

He then went on to do something quite different, becoming co-chair of gaming firm Yoostar Entertainment. Its product allows users to put themselves into movie or television scenes to perform alongside the films’ original actors and post the video on social networking sites.

CV

July 2014 – present, Marks & Spencer, executive director of marketing and international

May 2013 – June 2014, Marks & Spencer, executive director of marketing and business development

September 2012 – May 2013, Marks & Spencer, corporate director strategy implementation and new business development

2008 – 2012, Yoostar Entertainment Group, co-chairman

1989 – 2008, Estee Lauder Group, various roles, including the group president of international but latterly president specialty brands and designer fragrances

His creative flair and proven ability to build heavyweight brands internationally encouraged M&S to add international responsibilities to his portfolio in July after he initially caught the retailer’s attention when he advised on M&S’s Your Beauty concept in 2012 and joined the business.

But he is yet to fully make his mark on M&S from a marketing perspective, according to Espirito Santo analyst Tony Shiret.

The Christmas 2013 advert provoked a Marmite-style reaction when some loved and others hated the theme of the Mad Hatter’s tea party, featuring M&S models David Gandy and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

M&S was attempting to compete with John Lewis for the top Christmas ad spot but Shiret says it was “gimmicky”.

However, Shiret says that it could be that Bousquet-Chavanne’s vision is more evident in the new food ad.

“The food offer has got plenty of DNA,” says Shiret. “It has not really been affected by some of the loss of positioning that has happened in non-food.”

Building M&S’s fashion credentials may be a bigger test for Bousquet-Chavanne. He is a dapper man with an eye for style, but M&S’s fashion offer let it down in recent years despite the high-profile womenswear marketing campaign, Leading Ladies, which has run over the past two seasons under Bousquet-Chavanne’s watch and has featured celebrities such as singer Rita Ora and actress Emma Thompson.

Now he is trying a different approach. This season the fashion and food marketing campaigns are tied together under the ‘Only M&S’ tagline, to provide customers with a more consistent message about the brand.

In doing so, Bousquet-Chavanne hopes that the new campaigns will make him M&S’s leading man.

Marks & Spencer aims to ‘raise the bar’ with new food ad campaign