Waitrose new brand advertising campaign speaks to food lovers

The new campaign, aims to reach out to food lovers everywhere and promote the enjoyment of eating socially.

The 60-second TV commercial, which will run for four weeks, features a huge picnic scene on a giant blanket spread out on a hillside and will convey the pleasure of quality food. The ad will also feature a completely new brand strapline - 'Everyone deserves quality food. Everyone deserves Waitrose'. This message reflects the retailer's desire to invite more people to try Waitrose and to enjoy better quality food.

Richard Hodgson, Waitrose Commercial Director, said: “Our ambitious growth plans involve maintaining and building our position as the market leader in quality food retailing. This new campaign is designed to ensure our messages are more customer focused with the explicit aim of inviting more people to engage with the Waitrose brand.”

The ad will form part of an integrated marketing campaign around the 'Everyone Deserves Waitrose' theme which will also include press advertising, outdoor advertising, cinema ads, direct mail and website content. The press ad will feature a bold manifesto, which articulates how Waitrose is different to other food retailers.

The giant picnic blanket which forms the centre piece for the television ad was specially commissioned by Waitrose from Melin Tregwynt, an ancient woollen mill in North Pembrokeshire, Wales. The high quality blanket, which is equivalent to the size of four tennis courts - 40 metres x 44 metres and weighs one tonne - has been certified for a new Guinness World Record* as the largest picnic blanket in the world.

Following the filming of the ad in Durban, South Africa, the blanket was donated to the Waitrose Foundation, a project dedicated to improving the lives of South African Farm Workers who grow and pick fruit for the supermarket. Farm workers at Westfalia Farm, an avocado growing farm in the Limpopo Province, will turn the blanket into over 400 individual quilts with workers being paid for each quilt they make. The quilts will then be donated to crèches across Waitrose Foundation farms and distributed to the workers of the Foundation farms for use in their homes.

Created by Ken Hoggins and Danny Brooke-Taylor at Miles, Calcraft, Briginshaw, Duffy (MCBD), the ads were directed by Jim Gilchrist. The campaign is complemented by the song 'Up the Country' by Canned Heat and a voiceover from Sanjeev Bhaskar.