Marks & Spencer has unveiled a major new campaign, called “Doing the right thing”, to remind customers of its ethical credentials halfway through Plan A, its five-year, 100-point sustainability plan.

The campaign kicked off with national press ads featuring a “manifesto” setting out the retailer’s commitment to the highest ethical credentials.

Follow-up advertisements will feature messages and imagery about M&S products and their sustainability, health and eco credentials including: ‘We don’t sell poor quality meat. It comes at too high a price” and “Fairtrade cotton. Look good on the outside, feel good on the inside”.

M&S recently reported back at the halfway point of Plan A with 39 of the 100 commitments already achieved. Of these, 24 commitments have been extended to cover even more ambitious targets. In clothing , the M&S and Oxfam Clothes Exchange has encouraged 875,000 M&S customers to donate used clothing to Oxfam, stopping over 3 million garments being sent to landfill, while the 5p charge for single-use food carrier bags has cut the use of bags by 83 per cent in 12 months.

Steve Sharp, executive director for marketing at Marks & Spencer, said: “Plan A has put us in a leading position when it comes to environmental and ethical issues, which we know customers care about increasingly.

“When we ask our customers what they think about our Plan A campaign, they say, ‘Well that is M&S just doing the right thing. That is what we would expect from M&S.’ This is exactly what we are going to play back to them. ‘Doing the right thing’ is a no-nonsense, user-friendly expression of why we do what we do.”

The advertising campaign follows the successful “Look behind the label” campaign which ran in 2006, and was the first major campaign by any retailer to focus on the way products are sourced and made.