Sweet Suspicion: A Waitrose Mystery

As retailers compete for attention in the most cluttered ad moment of the year, Waitrose sought a fresh approach to stand out at Christmas. ‘Sweet Suspicion’, a two-part mystery, would build intrigue, excitement and appeal for all Food Lovers across the entire build-up to Christmas.

This required a role for media that broke convention, evolving the shape of Christmas significantly. Naturally, we would spike attention twice with the two-parter mystery, but the real challenge was developing a campaign shape where media would grow in strength the longer it went on. Intrigue, excitement, conversations – these all needed to build in advance of part two landing. We accessed the biggest media platforms and personalities to build Waitrose into Christmas culture, dominating spaces that our ‘Food Lovers’ love, and creating a sea of momentum that would carry over from November into December encouraging shoppers to make this Christmas a Waitrose Christmas. The results showed significant success and improvement year-on-year for Waitrose. Creative and media targets were surpassed, ad recognition scores peaked, and the likelihood of shopping at Waitrose increased.