Marks & Spencer will face shareholders on Wednesday, with hopes of presenting a lift from its breakout social media star, Kathryn Turner, writes Felix Armstrong.

Ditch the fake blood and vampire fangs: Britain’s viral Halloween costume this year featured a white shirt, a blue sweater vest and a blonde wig. Kathryn Turner, Marks & Spencer’s director of product development, has become a runaway social media star in recent months, and the retailer has quickly capitalised on her newfound Tiktok fame. 

Turner, dubbed this year’s top ‘gay Halloween’ costume, has soared in popularity in recent months after taking her followers inside M&S Food’s latest products, including candyfloss-flavoured grapes and chocolate and pistachio sandwiches. 

Since relaunching her social media profiles in May, Turner has garnered 281,000 followers on Instagram and a further 319,000 on TikTok, far more than the official M&S Food channel’s 270,000. She has worked at the retailer since 1995, and her breakthrough food creation was Tubby Toast, inspired by the children’s TV show Teletubbies, which first hit the shelves in 1998. 

But M&S’s latest social media star, whose fans include Nigella Lawson and Ian Wright, is not alone. The retailer has encouraged its staff to grow their individual profiles online, and the company says its employees run about 600 Facebook pages and 100 TikTok accounts offering viewers the inside scoop on its products. 

M&S Food is “performing very strongly and gaining market share,” he added. “It’s always a mistake to equate social media success with commercial progress, but this will have played its part.”

The grocer notched 10.7 per cent sales growth in the four weeks to October, according to the latest NIQ data. The analytics firm attributed this boost directly to Turner’s online presence. 

“M&S’ strong performance has been supported by growing social media interest in its product launches, with director of product development Kathryn Turner attracting attention on TikTok, reflecting the retailer’s ability to turn product buzz into shopper demand,” NIQ’s data experts said.

Clothing arm in need of a lift

Marks & Spencers has long been pushing to widen its Gen-Z audience after hiring Maddy Evans, formerly of Topshop, in 2023. The retailer hopes to provide more proof when it publishes its first-half results on Wednesday. 

At the company’s annual general meeting this summer, chief executive Stuart Machin told shareholders that the retailer has worked hard to develop its offering for younger customers, through collaborations with influencers like Amelia Dimoldenberg, declaring that it has successfully “dumped the frump”. 

The retailer celebrated its 100th anniversary in July by staging a catwalk show at London Fashion Week, in the latest sign that M&S is finally becoming cool. But Machin has reassured investors that he will not stray too far from the middle-class families which have long propped up the brand, saying his mother had reminded him its clothes were at risk of becoming “too skimpy”.

Hyman cautioned, however, that Turner’s efforts are mainly benefitting M&S’ food arm, while its clothing and home businesses are “finding life more challenging,” despite these efforts to dump the frump. 

This side of the company has been slower to recover from the cyber attack which ravaged the retailer in April last year, knocking £131m from its balance sheet. Sales in food, home and beauty fell by 7.7 per cent in the year to March, while food sales jumped by seven per cent.

The retailer told shareholders in May that its non-food arm was worse hit by the “temporary pause in online trading and systems access, which disrupted stock flow and restricted availability”. 

But analysts said M&S has made solid progress since last year’s cyberattack, and its share price has gained nearly 30 per cent in the last six months. As it tries to bring its clothing business up to speed with its food arm, the retailer may have benefited from a surge in sales of white shirts and blonde wigs this Halloween.