Keeping it real

With profits of £2.8bn Tesco clearly knows its onions – and judging by its latest TV ad, its mushrooms as well.

If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look below. Sure it’s simple, but in terms of capturing the sentiments of your target audience is there a better ad campaign out there at the moment?

Just as families are beginning to feel the pinch, Tesco bucks the current trend to present supermarket ingredients as perfect mouth-watering celeb chef-endorsed cordon bleu essentials and instead ropes in good old Bob Hoskins to say it like it is:

“Value mushrooms at £1.47 they’re as cheap as you like but as ugly as sin, but who cares they’re going into a steak & kidney pie not a beauty contest...”

Genius. How can you disagree and so why pay more?

We all know the evils of the supermarket trade: squeezing farmers to the point of extinction; selling us loss leader bargains to tempt us through the doors; eating up the high streets at the expense of small traders etc.

But there are business lessons to learn aplenty, and this is a great one in branding and marketing.

Adapt to the mood of your customer and show you understand their concerns; jump at the chance to differentiate yourself from competitors; reassert your brand values with a well-priced product meeting your customers’ expectations without sacrificing quality.

‘Tesco – every little helps’ resonates loud at the moment and this ad ticks all the right boxes. Our guess is it’ll shift a fair few mushrooms as well…