Our brief was to reach infrequent / non-core Waitrose shoppers (25-44 years) with content that communicated the brand proposition “Food To Feel Good About”, highlighting Waitrose’s superior quality, service, and sustainability credentials.

Simply put, our two key business objectives were:

1) Create a content strategy that would genuinely influence popular culture using Waitrose produce and food expertise.

2) To increase consideration of Waitrose with a younger audience than the traditional “premium 45+ food shoppers”

Dish is a podcast and social media strategy that has turned a meal from Waitrose into a weekly cultural event, converting listeners to shoppers with each episode.

The show is made to be shared with dinner guests, the studio audience,

and followers at home. Each episode features a recipe from Waitrose, cooking

tips from a Michelin star chef (Angela Hartnett), drinks recommendations from one of our beloved broadcasters (Nick Grimshaw), and a meal enjoyed by some of the UK’s favourite celebrities, who in turn share their own food and life stories with the audience.

When our guest celebrities see a meal cooked in front of them, with the best quality food, by one of the UK’s best chefs, their reactions are genuine: they ask questions, they show appreciation, they offer something of themselves back. This makes for great conversation and the best advert for Waitrose food you can ask for.

To understand our target audience, we used Sony Music’s nationally representative Cultural Landscape Survey (7,000 respondents) to identify an audience of “curious cultural connoisseurs,” a segment that sits outside of the traditional Waitrose audience but has some existing affinity with the brand.

We then conducted a one-week diary study with 12 recruits from our target audience via a mobile ethnography platform, immersing ourselves in their lives so we could experience the moments that really mattered to them. By doing this, we discovered that this audience views food as part of a much bigger conversation connected to entertaining, travel, careers, ethics, and cultural understanding.

What’s more, our research told us that this audience were part of the 3.2 million people who consider themselves “foodies” who regularly listen to podcasts in the UK. So our strategy became to create a podcast that turned a meal from Waitrose into a weekly cultural event.

Reach: The podcast show is listened to over 500,000 times per month and has received over 60 million organic video views across its social channels.

Engagement: On average, people listen to 97% of each episode. Dish was No.1 in the Apple Food charts for over 20 weeks. And it has received over 2000 ratings, achieving 4.9 / 5 on Spotify.

Impact: The show has also featured in 1327 pieces of press coverage, including 6 front pages and appearances on BBC1 and ITV.

Effectiveness: In collaboration with Savanta, a renowned market research agency, we conducted a study to assess the impact of Dish on Waitrose. This research revealed 67% of Dish listeners are shopping more frequently at Waitrose since listening to Dish. What’s more, 86% of listeners state that Dish has positively impacted their view of Waitrose. And 93% agree that the podcast reinforces Waitrose’s image as a quality-oriented supermarket.