Morrisons has unveiled its new Christmas TV advertising campaign for what could be a “make or break” festive season for the Bradford-based grocer. The ad will air for the first time during the prime-time Coronation Street slot on Friday evening and chief executive Dalton Philips said he was confident that the chain would beat its rivals on price for festive food and drink.
The UK’s fourth-largest supermarket chain announced in April it was cutting prices on 1,200 lines at a cost of £1bn over three years, but needs a dramatic turnaround in it fortunes to avoid another disastrous Christmas like last year’s, when it lost out to the discount retailers Aldi and Lidl.
Again featuring TV personalities Ant and Dec – this time sporting £12 Christmas sweaters – the main 60-second advertisement is set to the festive tune It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas’and focuses on the retailer’s in-store teams of butchers, bakers, fishmongers and greengrocers helping customers to “make Christmas special”.
To simplify its Christmas range, Morrisons has slashed lines by more than 10%, cutting back its range of Christmas puddings from 15 to 10 products, for example, and reduced other ranges where there is duplication. It has also tweaked its annual Christmas collector scheme, this year giving shoppers the chance to get £25 off their Christmas shopping in just six weeks by collecting coupons after a minimum £40 shop. Morrisons has run a Christmas Bonus scheme for seven years, and last year over 1.3m UK customers took part in it.
Dalton Philips said this year’s festive season would be the first bolstered by Morrisons’ convenience shops, its recently launched Match & More loyalty card and online shopping – still limited across the UK but extending in two weeks time into the north-west. Around 2m customers have signed up for the Match & More card since its launch in October.
Philips said: “We are keeping our prices very low and we are also making things easier and simpler for our shoppers, with an emphasis on the quality of our fresh food.” To help achieve this, the grocer is appointing 1,800 new “availability” champions – or a “gap squad” - in 300 stores to ensure items are quickly replenished on shelves, along with 1,000 “fresh food inspectors” to ensure that items such as sprouts are “squeakily fresh”. However, the roles will be filled by existing staff.
