Last year, The Co-operative Group served up a turkey of a Christmas ad.

The instantly forgettable ad featured a lady leisurely walking home through frantic crowds because she’d done all her Christmas shopping at The Co-op. A panel of experts for The Grocer scored it a lowly 13 out of 30 (the lowest score of all the Christmas ads), branding it ‘bland’, ‘cack handed’, and a ‘lack of clarity and empathy with the target market’.

Today, the society launched its 2014 campaign – and this time it has hit the nail on the head. The ad focuses on convenience (tick), is humorous (tick) and features people in everyday situations who suddenly realise they have forgotten to buy something important for Christmas (tick).

Not only is it a situation we can all relate to, but it’s also playing on The Co-op’s strength as a convenience operator. Realistically, how many people are actually going to be doing their main Christmas food shop at The Co-op? The Co-op’s role over Christmas is for when we’re in the middle of wrapping presents and run out of selotape. Or the family is coming round in an hour and there’s no milk left. And then when we get to the store, we realise there’s a few other bits we need.

In fact, I met up with a PR from The Co-op in October and suggested a pretty similar idea for its Christmas ad campaign – I’m still waiting for my commission!

For a company that is on the mend after a pretty miserable 18 months or so, Christmas will be the chance for The Co-op to put down its marker in the grocery sector – to prove its ambition to be the number one convenience operator in the UK isn’t pie in the sky, and following big investments in product, price and stores, that it can get customers through its doors.

With this ad, it has given itself a real foundation to do just that. 

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