M&S makes two key hires to run Jaeger and fashion marketing

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 8, 2021

M&S has made two key appointments in its fashion business with Fiona Lambert joining as MD to “lead the repositioning of Jaeger as an independent brand within the M&S Family”. And Anna Braithwaite is joining “to drive changing customer perceptions of the M&S Clothing & Home Brand with [a] focus on quality, style and value”.

They’re part of the wider Clothing & Home leadership team under Richard Price and both will play “an important role in M&S’s Never the Same Again programme, which is focused on being more relevant, more often to customers both now and post-Covid”.

Lambert starts later this month in charge of the Jaeger brand that will operate as a separate business within the company.

She “has vast experience in defining and transforming brands, including the launch of George at ASDA – and its revival further down the line – and the creation of its Home brand from scratch, from the product and packaging to the customer profile,” we’re told. She’s also held posts at Next, Dunelm and River Island.

Her aim is to “lead the brand re-positioning of Jaeger, supporting the expert team to revive the heritage in a relevant, contemporary, and commercial way”.

Meanwhile Braithwaite will be Director of Clothing & Home Marketing. The company said she “brings vast experience of delivering brand change with pace and impact. She will lead the streamlined marketing team made up of creative and channels experts striving to inspire, extend reach and change brand perceptions by showing up with energy, confidence and style. 

She’ll focus particularly on the retailer’s hero categories (such as denim) and opportunities for growth (such as kidswear and casualwear). 

It will be a while before she joins with the company saying her arrival will come this summer. She’s currently Global Brand Director for Non-Food at Tesco and leads on sustainability there, having previously headed up Marketing for the supermarket’s F&F fashion label.

She also spent over 10 years at John Lewis and “has changed perceptions of major brands including relaunching Jacques Vert, Hobbs and F&F”. While at Tesco she overhauled the brand and launched the ‘I only popped in for’ campaign.