Has The Guardian a store to settle?
Is Tesco marketing director Tim Mason letting success go to his head? Is he no longer taking note of his chain’s image? He may have been voted top marketer in these pages last week, and his chain may be gobbling up the UK’s retail market at a rate of knots, but the Diary has noticed that Guardian Newspapers, at least, seems to have it in for Tesco.
On January 22, The Guardian ran a lengthy story about the Norfolk town of Sheringham’s battle to stave off a large Tesco store. This was followed, on January 25, by an analysis of the supermarkets’ activities in the Observer Food Monthly, with Tesco appearing prominently.
What clinched it for the Diary, though, was this pic of a tip, from a feature on recycling in the Observer Magazine. How long, precisely, did the picture editor have to spend looking for a photo of a dump covered in Tesco fruit and veg? Such a waste – surely a chain as large as that could stretch to a compost heap.
