Selling out of cod fillets

 

In the mid 90s I helped create the campaign below for Waitrose. The brief was simple but challenging: get Sainsbury's customers to do their weekly shop at Waitrose by correcting the perception of high prices. But without losing the reputation for high quality. So we chose basic, everyday products such as cod fillets, margarine and milk and proudly showed the price. The creative leap was rather than show the products themselves, we showed where they came from. This proved their provenance (something as important then as it is now) in a way that reinforced quality. The first ad was the one below for cod fillets. On the day it launched every Waitrose store sold out of cod and the campaign went on to run for many, many years.

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