Beale's best in show: Waitrose (Miles, Calcraft, Briginshaw, Duffy)
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Your support makes all the difference.Waitrose used to use the strapline "Good food, honestly priced". It was elegantly pithy and hit at two key "truths" Waitrose fans believe about the store: that its food is better quality than rival supermarkets, and that you get what you pay for. It was a great line with some wonderful, distinctive ads to bring it to life.
But then Waitrose called an ad pitch at the end of last year. The agency of record, Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, repitched for the business and against the odds kept the account.
Of course you don't hold a pitch, choose the same old agency and stick with the old strategy. So out went "Good food..." and in came a new line and approach.
The new line is less elegant, less pithy, less perfect: "Everyone deserves quality food. Everyone deserves Waitrose." It's supposed to signal a broader appeal for the supermarket, to draw in customers who presumably thought before that they didn't deserve Waitrose.
Anyway, the new ads almost make up for the needless change in line. They are full of warmth, colour, style. The TV ad sums it up best: a giant picnic in the sunshine, made perfect by Waitrose food. There's some lovely touches on the directing: the pleasure of ripping apart a hunk of soft break, of rolling on a picnic blanket. If only Waitrose sold sunshine.
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