Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

Waitrose has been awarded a Gold IPA Effectiveness Award for the launch of essential Waitrose, its range of affordable, everyday products. Kitcatt Nohr was credited for its role in the campaign alongside lead agencies and awards paper authors MCBD and Manning Gottlieb OMD.

The IPA Effectiveness Awards ceremony took place last night at the London Hilton. The awards are recognised by agencies and clients as adland’s most rigorous awards scheme because entrants have to prove to a jury of experienced clients that their communications strategies have worked in hard business terms.

Waitrose was awarded one of only seven Gold awards, chosen from 38 shortlisted entries.

Waitrose had been enjoying strong growth until the recession arrived in 2008: as a premium retailer, its immediate prospects looked bleak. However, through the introduction of 1,200 disparate own label products under a new brand, named ‘essential Waitrose’, the retailer ended 2009 as the UK’s fastest growing supermarket. Range sales rose by more than 5% and soon amounted to 16% of the retailer’s total revenue. It is estimated the launch of this brand contributed £121m of incremental growth in 2009 alone, pointing to an impressive ROMI of c.16.8:1. Waitrose successfully maintained wavering and loyalist customers and simultaneously strengthened the parent brand’s image, sales and profits.

Kitcatt Nohr has produced a number of campaigns supporting essential Waitrose since its launch, including a direct marketing piece which was named as one of the top ten most popular DM campaigns of 2009 by consumers in a Nielsen survey.

Awards judge Nigel Gilbert, former Group Marketing Director, Lloyds Banking Group, commented: “This case is a great example of fantastically executed advertising and marketing working together. Waitrose built a brand new value positioning without adversely affecting their mother brand, a tremendous achievement that is rarely seen in the industry.”

Read more about the awards.