Sprouts or no sprouts? Tesco celebrates diversity with quality-focused Christmas ad

Tesco is looking to celebrate the different ways the nation does Christmas in its 2018 festive campaign, while showcasing the quality of its food and drink “at its highest potential”.

Whether you’re in the 66% of people who go for sprouts, the 8% who add ketchup to their dinner, or whether the booze begins to flow at 8am or 8pm, the idea behind the campaign is encapsulated in the end line: ‘However you do Christmas, everyone is welcome at Tesco’.

Created by agency BBH London, the main 60-second TV spot, which hits TV screens this evening (Tuesday 6 November), shows a number of families and friends embarking on a variety of seasonal get-togethers and debating their differences.

Each point of view is delivered from a different person in a different household, making up one continuous debate, while a festive version of Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way plays in the background.

“At the core of it was a very simple idea: at Christmas, the country unites with their family, friends, loved ones; it is a moment of great unity, togetherness, joy and abundance,” Tesco’s marketing boss Alessandra Bellini tells Marketing Week.

“But what we discovered when you look underneath it and you ask people how they do their Christmas, you find out everyone does it in their own way.”

To find out more about that diversity, Tesco conducted research into its customers to shed light on their Christmas habits and traditions.

According to the results, 2.5% of Brits put brown sauce on turkey, 38% love a Yorkshire pudding, 75% begin the day with smoked salmon, only one in three people actually like Christmas pudding but almost everyone buys one, and there are 1.5 million new vegans this year.

There is a clear focus on the quality of Tesco’s products over value this year, with the main TV spot, which will break during ITV’s Pride of Britain, making no mention of price or promotions.

However, Bellini says this will change as the campaign evolves.

“The people that like to plan ahead are starting to think about where to do their shopping, so it’s more around the gifting and decorations and the type of quality of food they are looking for,” she says.

“Then as you go nearer the time, the battle heats up around price and promotion as well and it becomes much more focused. We follow the mindset of the customer.”

A number of 30-second TV ads will run alongside the main spot to show particular clusters of foods such as desserts or mains, while 10-second spots will focus on specific products. The campaign will also run across print and out-of-home.

Bellini says while each channel has a specific role, when it comes to creating engagement and a connection with people, TV is still a “very important medium”.

Tesco will also be doing sampling in-store to “showcase the quality of Tesco products”, as well as putting on Christmas markets in the car parks of its biggest stores towards the end of the season.