As I write, the country is enraptured by the unveiling of the John Lewis ‘Fifty Shades of Slush’ Christmas TV advert where a snowman nips off to the shops to purchase festive knitwear.

As I write, the country is enraptured by the unveiling of the John Lewis ‘Fifty Shades of Slush’ Christmas TV advert where a snowman – who has no form of payment – nips off to the shops to purchase festive knitwear for his snowwoman companion.

The ad has obviously succeeded again in capturing the hearts of the British public and will no doubt presage another bumper Christmas trading period for the retailer.

It suggests to me that, although a lot of excitement is justifiably being directed at social media, retailers can’t beat a nice, big TV campaign for getting a message across.

One retailer that will be giving this thought is Morrisons, which admitted alongside lacklustre third-quarter results last week that it should be doing more to communicate points of difference to customers.

It is this lack of communication that sits at the heart of Morrisons’ problems. Shoppers who encounter a refurbished store could be forgiven for thinking that premium prices are being charged: the retailer does little to communicate that this is far from the truth.

The own-label range offered by Morrisons has improved exponentially and is now comfortably one of the best in the market, but I’ve yet to see any substantial communication of this outside of a few pages in the Sunday magazines.

New and refurbished Morrisons stores have the best produce departments and service counters in the country but the only way to know this is by going in. How many shoppers have been told about the in-store food preparation capabilities the group has?

When price is still the main driver of value and shoppers have a keen eye for promotions, there is obviously still a need to communicate about petrol discounts, multibuy offers and price reductions.  But in an increasingly homogenous market where the supermarkets are hard to tell apart  and the promotional drone is deafening, Morrisons should be doing much more to tell shoppers that it is different, affordable and better than its rivals in some key disciplines. There’s no point being awesome if you don’t tell anyone.

  • Bryan Roberts, Director of retail insights, Kantar Retail