Mediaedge:cia
Morrisons
TV enables Morrisons' sales to shine

Five years after completing its £3bn takeover of the beleaguered Safeway Group, Morrisons needed an ad campaign that would put it in the same bracket as Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda.

The use of popular and topical celebrities in supermarket ads pitted Morrisons against its biggest rivals, who are also fond of using famous faces in their campaigns, and introduced some glitz and glamour to the world of supermarket advertising.
For Morrisons, a newly expanded brand competing against companies that were not only older and better known but had bigger marketing budgets, it was important its ads were in the same league.

However, an unavoidable truth was that customer research revealed a negative perception among shoppers, who described their Morrisons shopping experience as "cold and impersonal".
They said they missed the knowledge of local butchers, fishmongers and bakers and were keen to know where the food they were buying had come from.

Morrisons saw the opportunity to become a "food specialist for everyone" and introduced a Market Street concept, with an ad campaign fronted by TV personalities such as Denise Van Outen and Richard Hammond.

A 60-second spot debuted in the centre break of Coronation Street in July 2007, with Van Outen introducing the Market Street idea. Other celebrities were subsequently introduced, focusing on the additional "fresh" elements that make up Market Street, in the form of 40-second cut-downs advertising fish, the bakery, salads and sandwiches.

The effectiveness of Morrisons' TV advertising improved each year and helped boost the retailer's market share from 11.1 per cent in 2006/07 to 11.8 per cent in 2008/09. Morrisons' TV-based strategy also increased the company's turnover from £12.5m to £14.6m and its customer numbers from 479 million to 511 million over the same period.