After working with the pitch team I took the day-to-day lead on the account.
The Brief
Morrisons needed a new direction to counteract increased competition in the food retail market from discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, which were stealing share from the big four at a rapid pace. Morrisons therefore needed to create a point of difference.
The Insight
Morrisons makes more of its own food in-store than any other supermarket, and from our research we found that Morrisons staff were more helpful than competitors – so we wanted to build the brief on those two aspects.
The Idea
Morrison ‘makes it’. We wanted to show how Morrisons staff add value to the food they sell so that those ‘food moments’ that you experience with your family can be so much more than just eating a meal.
For Christmas we wanted to take a different stand from the typical big-spending TV ad, by creating 3 normal ads highlighting real moments at Christmas.
In digital we wanted to take those food moments even further by explaining the deep emotions that foods can conjure, and why through our memories it's so much more than sustenance. People choose food based on emotion, so we wanted to create a website that allowed them to find recipes based on what they were feeling. This became the comms platform for all digital and PR work (before being subtly copied by Tesco's ‘food love stories’ six months later).
The Results
Morrisons has shown great resilience against market pressures and has been the only one of the big four to grow in sales during the campaign period.
The Christmas campaign was one of only a few have positive ROI in the supermarket industry, coming out of Christmas with a significant YoY % increase.
Digital - The Emotion Cookbook
