tesco

Here’s the newish Tesco ad (sorry, I’ve been away, so its launched kind of passed me by):

My first thought was ‘Lurpak’: some lovely shots of food, a celebration of a actually giving a shit about food, normal people using food to make other food, a voiceover that explains how amazing and important food is…

Of course it’s tonally different(ish): this is a bit more middle of the country, appealing to people with a Fab ice lolly as much as food thermometer, but there are still plenty of food porn shots to make you think of a certain brand of premium butter (maybe that’s how/why Wiedens won the pitch).

And I guess the strategy is a bit more obvious than where we’ve been before: people think Tesco is a pile ’em high purveyor of exceedingly cheap kids clothes, books, toasters etc., so let’s zig a bit and remind everyone that we actually sell, y’know… food. And we care about food, because we’ve shown some lovely food lovingly shot (we also sell the Basic range so we don’t care that much about food, but we’re very big and we have to cater to the less well-off and all that).

It’s pretty likeable, but I think I was expecting a little more from the first big-ass brand ad of this client/agency collaboration. Tesco went to W&K and got a nice W&K ad, nothing more, nothing less. When the Christmas work came out there was a sense that it was a bit so-so because the agency hadn’t really had time to bed down the relationship. Now it feels a little like this is it. And that’s fine, but it ain’t going to Grrr us into starry-eyed affection.

PS: small point in the VO: ‘It’s not just fuel; something to fill a hole’ seems at odds with it’s ‘the tummy tamer; the get-up-and-go giver’.