Ad of the Day: Waitrose Is Livestreaming Delightfully Boring Farm Videos for a Week

Want to see where Waitrose gets it food from? Just go on YouTube and watch live footage of its partner farms—for an entire week. That's the interesting premise of adam&eveDDB and Manning Gottlieb OMD's unique new campaign for the U.K. grocery store chain. The livestreaming started on Thursday and will continue for a full seven days. You can have a live look right now in the video below—although if it's after dark in England, you'll have to wait until sunrise. (They are taking overnight breaks, when you can't see anything anyway.) The strategy is simple: Shoppers want proof of quality food, so why not use modern technology to give them a live look at it? Waitrose does have a good sourcing story to tell, too, having recently become the only supermarket able to guarantee that all the cows that provide its milk and cream have access to grazing. A stream from the Waitrose Leckford Farm includes three camera angles—of beehives, rapeseed and panoramic views of the countryside. Other streams are coming from one of Waitrose's dairy farms near Newbury and one of its free-range hen farms near Marlborough. At the dairy farm, one of the cameras is a GoPro strapped to a cow, giving instant proof of just how free to graze the animals are. The footage is being recorded, and some of it is being instantly turned into TV commercials that are airing the same day—which Waitrose says is the first time a U.K. food retailer has streamed same-day content in its broadcast advertising. Here's a TV spot that was cut from today's footage: Digital, out-of-home and print ads also tie into the concept. Live footage of the farm is airing on digital boards at major train stations. The print work uses photos taken at real Waitrose farms within 24 hours of publication. And a digital banner will livestream footage into a YouTube masthead takeover this coming Monday. Creatively, the livestreams are incredibly boring—but that's the whole point. You don't want too much going on at the farm that's growing your food anyway. And spending a few minutes with the stream is actually remarkably peaceful, and in a sense reassuring. In all, the whole idea is clever, delightful and relevant. It's so simple and straightforward that even the canned quotes are pleasantly unadorned. "The quality sourcing of Waitrose food speaks for itself," Tammy Einav, managing director at adam&eveDDB, says in a statement. "We wanted to let it do just that." CREDITS Project Title: "Spring" Client: Waitrose Senior Marketing Managr: Joanne Massey Marketing Manager: Libby Langridge Agency: adam&eveDDB Chief Creative Officer: Ben Priest Executive Creative Directors: Ben Tollett, Richard Brim Copywriter: Miles Carter Art Director: Sophie Knox Agency Producer: Panos Louca Agency Print Producer: Nicola Applegate Agency Assistant Producer: Sion Prys Planner: Dom Boyd Managing Partner: Tammy Einav Business Director: Victoria Day Account Director: Joanne Murray Account Manager: Abi Robinson Account Executive: Alice Child Media Agency: Manning Gottlieb OMD Executive Director, Joint Head of Retail: Katherine Charalambous Business Director: Kirpal Bharaj Senior Planning Executive: Anneka Dew Production Company: Stink Print Retoucher: Stanleys Print Topographer: Dan Forde Executive Producer: Jon Chads Producer: Simon Eakhurst Director: Wilkins & Maguire Cinematographers, Directors of Photography: Peter Alibone (TOPS/farm footage), Martin Hill (TAILS/food footage) Editing Company: The Quarry Editor: Peter Lambert Postproduction: Unit Post Producer Magda Krimitsou Visual Effects Supervisor: Rob Ellis Colorist: Scott Harris Audio Post Production: Unit

Brand Marketing

Ad of the Day: Waitrose Is Livestreaming Delightfully Boring Farm Videos for a Week

Grocer's sourcing footage is being cleverly repurposed

Tim Nudd

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Tim Nudd