This year’s Christmas advertising from Waitrose and Tesco offers two very different uses of humour - and each reflects a clear retail strategy designed to drive brand distinction in a crowded grocery market.
Waitrose: Humour as Premium Theatre
Waitrose’s rom-com-style advert, starring Keira Knightley and Joe Wilkinson, uses gentle, self-aware humour to reinforce its premium food credentials. The comedy isn’t slapstick - it’s subtle, polished, and rooted in food as emotion: romantic cheese counters, meaningful pies, lovingly lit ingredients.
Retail strategy at play:
· Premium reinforcement: By centring the story around quality ingredients, Waitrose strengthens its identity as the supermarket for food lovers.
· Emotional trading-up: The advert encourages shoppers to associate special moments with special food - a classic tactic for increasing spend during peak season.
· Shareability over hard sell: The cinematic, humorous tone is designed for social media circulation rather than direct product pushing, boosting brand warmth.
Tesco: Humour as Mass-Market Relatability
Tesco’s campaign takes the opposite route - short, funny vignettes about real festive chaos, narrated by John Bishop. The humour is everyday, recognisable, and built from customer insight: imperfect Christmas moments that everyone has lived.
Retail strategy at play:
· Broad relevance: By reflecting real household behaviour, Tesco strengthens its position as the supermarket of everyday life.
· Light-touch branding: Instead of premium cues, Tesco leans on emotional accessibility, building affinity with core family shoppers.
· Multi-format flexibility: The short, humorous clips are ideal for different channels - TV, social, YouTube, and in-app - maximising reach at low production risk.
What the Two Approaches Reveal
Together, the campaigns highlight a clear strategic split in UK grocery:
· Waitrose uses humour to elevate - crafting a premium, feel-good world that nudges customers toward high-quality festive food.
· Tesco uses humour to normalise - showing it understands real families and real budgets, strengthening mass-market loyalty.
Both strategies show that humour isn’t just entertainment in Christmas advertising - it’s a deliberate tool for signalling brand positioning, shaping shopper perception, and driving seasonal spend.
