The business story of the year in the UK is shaping to be the laying waste of the high street and bigger supermarkets by a combination of online shopping and penal business rates (some £27bn a year).
Here and there though there seems to be an exception and Morrisons, seemingly stuck in the last chance saloon a few years ago, has revived mightily under old Tesco hand David Potts. Whether or not this continues depends on a multitude of factors, not least impact of a combined Sainsburys/Asda which will become the UK’s biggest supermarket chain and current leader Tesco’s restless efforts, latterly a mooted purchasing tie-up with Carrefour.
Even the biggest retail nerd would be hard pressed to recall a better than average Morrisons ad but Publicis London, on the case for a few years now, seems to have finally cracked it with this, a hymn to Morrisons’ British farmers, fishermen and practiced staff. And they’ve done it on the cheap too, with some nice still photography.
Lidl has been essaying the same approach, as has Waitrose, but this seems to nail it. Maybe a sign, in relation to struggling Waitrose anyway, that Morrisons has more confidence in what it’s doing.
MAA creative scale; 7.5.
