Waitrose is beginning to look a bit more like Waitrose in adam&eve Christmas contender

Hasn’t been the greatest of years for Waitrose, a disastrous app-driven loyalty scheme that had about the same effect on Waitrose customers as the mini-budget budget had on financial markets and gaps on the shelves thanks to another whizz bang computer howler (now largely solved it seems.)

If Waitrose were a PLC rather than a mutual, shareholders would be demanding to know how much had been spent on the pricey consultants (five on the loyalty scheme.) Waitrose, along with Morrisons, is losing share as the high street price war intensifies.

So maybe a time to return to its traditional customer base, middle class and older consumers who ca pay a bit more (members have got their free coffee back.)

Waitrose’s pitch has always been its supposed commitment to ethical farming and that drives its new Christmas effort from adam&eveDDB although this time it’s not so much happy turkeys (although they’re there) but hard-working farmers.

“It’s the care we put in that makes Christmas this special,” says Waitrose, a trifle lumpily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8x_mPuYzhxU

Not a radical departure then as in A&E’s finely-judged charity effort for big brother John Lewis. But it does the festive job and Bing Crosby’s Christmassy tones over a sopping wet farmer is a nice touch.

MAA creative scale: 7.