Bringing ‘The Home of Food Lovers’ to Life

Background & Objectives

A cross-media campaign for food lovers

From 3 June to 17 June 2026, Waitrose ran a 15-day campaign across cinema, Outernet, online video and linear TV. The campaign targeted food lovers and aimed to build awareness, strengthen Waitrose’s ownership of ‘the home of food lovers’ and increase consideration.

Create cut-through and boost awareness

Boost awareness and maintain Waitrose salience, particularly among Food Lovers

Own the positioning

Build stronger association with ‘the home of food lovers’ and reinforce perceptions of quality, passion for food, taste, trust and personal relevance.

Turn relevance into consideration

Increase top-level purchase intent and the likelihood of shopping at Waitrose.

The Solution

One campaign across four channels

A coordinated cross-media plan ran across Cinema, immersive OOH, online video and Linear TV, creating repeated opportunities to see and absorb the campaign

Outernet formed part of a coordinated 15-day campaign across cinema, online video and linear TV. Each channel reinforced the same food-lover story, creating repeated opportunities for audiences to connect with Waitrose’s passion for food.

Across Outernet’s large-format screens, The Gastronaut creative used high-impact food imagery to make ‘the home of food lovers’ feel tangible. Among respondents exposed to Outernet, the campaign recorded strong gains in taste, quality, trust, favourability, preference and purchase intent.

Results

Stronger brand connections. Greater intent to shop.

The campaign achieved all three objectives. Prompted awareness and ad recall each rose by 5% points, ‘the home of food lovers’ was recalled by 57% against a 47.1% benchmark, and total-campaign purchase intent increased by 4% points. Outernet was the strongest all-round channel for the positioning and consideration objectives.

Data source: On Device

Cut-through exceeded benchmarks

Prompted awareness rose by 5% points against a 2.4-point benchmark, while ad recall increased by 5% points against a 1.5-point benchmark. The campaign achieved 76% correct brand attribution, and 65% of exposed respondents reported a positive response.

Strengthened mid & lower funnel measures

Within the Outernet sample, brand favourability was 70% among exposed respondents versus 43% in the control group (+27% points). Brand preference was 34% versus 24% (+10% points), and purchase intent was 25% versus 8% (+17% points). Outernet also produced gains of 11% points for quality products, 15% points for best-tasting food and 10% points for trust.

Outernet viewers reported strong action

Among Outernet viewers, 74% took or intended to take action, compared with a 56.2% benchmark. Visiting a Waitrose store was the leading response at 33%, followed by visiting the website and looking into available offers at 25% each.

“Food connects us to the people, places and memories we love. This campaign playfully celebrates the meals, flavours and rituals we’d travel across space for, showing just how much our favourite food means to us.”
Nathan Ansell, Waitrose Chief Customer Officer