Nothing Neutral About It - Marks & Spencer

When Grey launched, we focused wholly on the irony of calling ourselves grey - at that time the word was short shrift for dull, boring, old, bland. In addition to our chief hashtags; #beautifullyageing #eleganteccentric both of which pretty much summed up all of our signed models as well as the demographic we wanted to represent, there was another: #unitedcoloursofgrey. Of course this was a play on the quite brilliant marketing of Benetton throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s which highlighted diversity at that time and often was achieved through arresting advertising concepts.

By 2015 this kind of advertising campaign was in short supply; partly due to brands taking too much control in advertising agencies, but also the result of the fractured state of media buying platforms. TV and cinema or 48 sheet posters in high streets were no longer reaching target markets. The Internet had moved in.

Back then, not only were the silver surfers wholly unrepresented, but so were a diverse ethnicity, gender and disability. To be honest the 80’s were more diversity conscious and celebratory. Fast forward to 2021 and here we were in the middle of a global pandemic, following a wave of super plus sized campaigns to redress the balance in body image and significantly the Black Lives Matter outrage that we still were experiencing racism across the globe, and within the media.

Our hashtag #unitedcoloursofgrey became much more poignant. Brands were waking up to a more woke market that demanded greater diversity.

For the past year most briefs that have come through the agency focus on representing diversity. How things can change in 12 months!

Grey signed up Mia Maugé with her beautiful skin colour and curly silver locks - never modelled previously but boy did she have nous.

The brands saw this too and when Marks and Spencer looked to launch their new Neutrals lingerie campaign #nothingneutralaboutit they had the perfect mix of ethnicity and body shape with women we both aspired to be like and with whom we could relate.

The campaign promoted their new range of neutral nude lingerie. Models are often requested to wear nude lingerie for castings but what if they weren’t Caucasian? No ranges really existed in mainstream high street shops.

So here we had a beautiful mix of ethnicity and age! Figures were not size 6, nor were they super plus sized but celebrated the spectrum of shape, tone and beauty of the female form. All the models looked fabulous in their lingerie and we loved how they mixed nude colours with skin tone too; with Mia wearing the darker colours while others went fully 'nude' - and no retouching of their beautiful skin textures either.

This campaign highlighted the united colours of grey on so many levels. We were so proud to be involved.

BTS (behind the scenes): As Mia sat in her lingerie, wrapped in a dressing gown waiting to go on set, we were in full production mode navigating the covid lockdown rules with the French Embassy, production company and brand on how we could fly her into Paris the following week for her next commission. Never a dull Grey moment.