Just like Tesco's, Sainsbury's has departed from its traditional price/ product focused executions. But unlike Tesco's "Food Love Stories", which clearly has life after the initial execution, questions remain over the longevity of Sainsbury's #fooddancing campaign?

The ad is the first execution by newly appointed W&K London and shows food lovers dancing in their kitchen as they prepare dishes. It is set to a specially-created background track Food Dancing (Yum Yum Yum) by UK artist MysDiggi that will be released on Spotify.

Now, there are some things that I really like about the campaign. It's different for one. It's nice to see another retailer moving away from a traditional approach to advertising. Watching people dance around to a catchy number, certainly brings a smile to my face especially as I can relate! I have been known to shake what my mother gave me while cooking up a storm in the kitchen. W&K have clearly looked at our behaviours when we prepare a meal and picked out a very fun and engaging one to champion. I also like the fact that given the fun and shareability of such content their pleas for people to use the hashtag on social media probably won't fall on death ears.

That being said, their are a few things that I do take issue with. Firstly, who is MysDiggi? Now, I know the hope with the song is that ‘Yum Yum Yum" will be a viral hit. But the year's of "gangnam style" and "crazy frog" are behind us (thank god) and it takes a lot more than a catchy tune to go viral. You need the right influencers, distribution and often an artist that's known!

And what's with the "fake" authenticity? The film is deliberately shot in a low-fi, hand-held style, to give an authentic perspective, as though captured by the individual featured. But I can't help but think, why didn't you just get them to film themselves in the first place. The quality is already low so that issue with UGC is irrelevant in this case. For me, if you want to be authentic, you should be authentic. You try to fake it it defeats the point. 

But my biggest question is how will this live for the next 6 months? The Sainsbury’s director of brand communications Mark Given says: “ #fooddancing...is a big part of living well" and at the end of the spot it even says "#FoodDancing is living well". So maybe this part of an overarching strategy to provide insight into what the strapline actually means. If that is the case, I can't what to see further articulations of the "Living Well" strapline.

Rating: TBD

Special offers, price points, premium ranges - traditionally, these are the areas in which supermarkets compete. Indeed in recent years the price-focused ads of Morrisons and those of Lidl and Aldi have been very effective in enticing customers away from the established powerhouses that are Tesco, 

Sainsbury and Waitrose. But, this me-too form of advertising is fast becoming tiresome and it is all about short-term, key "trade moment" gains. They are not brand building or perception changing. The only one in this category to do that was Lidl with #lidlsurprises. However, after x amount of iterations of the same campaign, their messaging no longer has the same potency. Well, last month we saw Tesco take a lap of faith and talk about something else and boy was it refreshing!

Revising the way it talks about food in its advertising, Tesco has moved away from heroing particular products or promoting individual items to instead highlighting its quality credentials and the passion and care that goes into the meals its customers prepare. It is no longer about championing their food and their brand, instead it's all about championing the customer's story.

Merely setting the parameters and context ("Food Love Stories"), Tesco's is allowing the customers to tell their own brand story in an authentic and emotive way. Using real-life stories makes it more relatable and allows you to emphasis and connect more with the campaign and, in turn, the brand. 

The power of UGC has been recognised for many years now but seldom do brands use it well or imaginatively. Asking consumers to use your hashtag and post a picture with them using your product isn't going to win fans or awards anytime soon. But setting up a platform for consumers to get peer to peer tips, advice and inspiration is a great way to engineer brand love. To this effect, Tesco has launched a content hub with ingredients and recipe cards for the featured meals, which will also be available in its large stores to ensure that customers can engage and be involved with this campaign beyond the OOH. 

While I do enjoy the refreshing nature of this campaign, in order to achieve the objective of highlighting the quality of Tesco's products, some work may need to be done to the next iterations. At present the focus is very much on the story behind the meal and not on the quality of the ingredients going into it. But I am sure this will be addressed in the future. For now, I am just going to enjoy the great recipes that are being featured!

Rating: 9/10