Even Ant and Dec couldn’t lift Morrisons gloom

Outlook

Morrisons trialed the scheme in stores across the northeast (Getty)

It says it all that even Ant and Dec couldn’t sell Morrisons to sceptical shoppers. The cheeky smiles of the ubiquitous pair have been enough to make instant hits of whatever light entertainment formats they have been associated with.

Yet they proved ineffective in their quest to sell the beleaguered supermarket’s wares to the people that watch their TV shows. Those people seem to prefer snacking on Aldi’s kettle crisps and drinking Lidl’s lager while they do so. And who can blame them?

So now it’s up to the staff to save the sinking ship. It’ll be their smiling faces we’ll be seeing this Christmas. They come a lot cheaper, and they’ll probably be willing to smile until their faces ache because it is their jobs that are at stake, rather than just another six-figure fee to chuck on the pile.

The latest set of figures give an idea of the scale of their task. The best the company could say was that the pace of its decline is slowing, which just about says it all.

But there is a story to tell for the staff conscripted to star in the ads. Morrisons makes a lot of its own food. It owns bakeries, abattoirs, fisheries. Remember the horsemeat scandal that shook consumers’ confidence a couple of years ago? Well, the meat didn’t turn up in any of Morrisons’ own-brand products (although the same was true of Sainsbury’s), and as a result sales surged, albeit only briefly.

The grocer might be unique in being a food maker as well as a food seller, but it is something that the group is singularly failing to capitalise upon.

Perhaps Christmas will change that. But it’s hard to be confident when the chief executive comes out with statements like this: “The business is moving at pace on the long journey towards improving the shopping trip for customers.”

That was said after price-matching was scrapped in favour of a nebulous “everyday-value proposition” – one that is said to be getting closer to Aldi’s and Lidl’s, but that still can’t match theirs.

The German pair’s staff can smile for the cameras too. And they have every reason to.