‘Forefront of food culture’: Why Waitrose is ‘reimagining’ print

On shelves for more than 25 years, the Waitrose Food magazine is being reimagined to reflect “how food culture has changed” and inspire a new generation of foodies.

Launching today (30 October) in partnership with Dentsu Creative, the new look mag has been redesigned to make it more accessible to everyday cooks.

Head of creative and content at Waitrose, Murray Stevens, sees the magazine as a “key part” of the brand’s content and one which is “hugely cherished” by its readers. Waitrose wants to be “at the forefront of food culture” and not a “cold commercial brand”, which Stevens believes can be achieved by “taking risks” with content.

“It’s going to widen the shopping experience. It’s actually about the discovery, the excitement behind it and we want the magazine to reimagine that and be relevant. The work we’ve done with Dentsu allowed us to do that on steroids,” he says.

The “strategic work” was done in the run up to the launch, including analysing customer behaviour and the role of “food love in society”.

What we’re excited about is creating a community of food lovers and connecting them together.

Murray Stevens, Waitrose

Dentsu Creative UK CEO Jessica Tamsedge explains the vision was to “collapse the distance between content to commerce” and doing so with “connection and community at the heart”.

From a design perspective, Tamsedge describes the magazine as “more of a keepsake” and coffee table book people look forward to reading.

Waitrose’s reimagination of print comes in an era when brands and publishers are taking money out of the medium. While the retailer sees social and digital as important to have in the mix, Stevens says print embodies the ethos of “food love”.

“Sometimes your love of food love takes time, and it’s actually about indulging and taking time with it,” he explains.

“It’s very easy to just chase SEO optimisation, short form, social bits, because [the idea is] attention is probably reducing across the board. We actually fundamentally don’t believe that’s the case,” says Tamsedge.

She cites the success of Waitrose’s Dish podcast as an example of successful longer-form work.

“Just because you’re optimising for modern content doesn’t mean everything’s a two-second sting,” Tamsedge claims.

The relaunch takes place in the run-up to Christmas, a key moment for food lovers.

“It’s a great time to use that spirit and excitement around this real food moment to reimagine the magazine and get us going,” says Stevens.

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The festive issue features a ‘Friendsmas’ feast and food trends for the holidays, with contributors including food writer Gurdeep Loyal and Waitrose in-house chef Charmaine Katz.

The success of the revamped magazine will be measured by how readership starts a customer’s journey through the app or the site, and takes them through the funnel to purchase. The team want to assess how the journey pulls through into store, tying in with new store formats.

“We’re trying to push the bounds of where customer experience would take every aspect of the ecosystem rather than just assets that sit along the journey,” says Tamsedge.

Waitrose wants all the magazine content to be consistent across its various touchpoints, including the in-store experience. Indeed, Stevens sees the in-store experience and colleagues as a point of difference.

“We see a lot of supermarkets being more media driven. We see it taking away the human elements of the store experience. We don’t think that’s a true reflection of food love and what our customers want,” he argues.

‘Creating connected storytelling’

The magazine’s reimagination is just one part of a wider content strategy. The grocer is launching a Food Content Studio with Dentsu, spanning digital, print, in-store and online. The Waitrose Cookery School, for example, has been turned into a livestreamed cookery school as the team experiments with content.

“We really believe that we are uniquely placed as a food retailer to be the go-to point, not just for buying your food, but for being inspired by all these amazing content channels that excite and give people that discovery,” says Stevens.

Tamsedge agrees the magazine is “just one aspect” of the content. She praises the Waitrose team for allowing Dentsu the room to experiment with content, for example through bringing the in-house chefs closer to the content and not solely planning content around seasonal cycles.

“You’ve got the own content experiences, you’ve got the app, you’ve got the recipe cards, you’ve got the connected retail experience. It allowed us to go: ‘Where should all of these things sit in a true food lover experience? And how should they talk to each other?’” says Tamsedge.

Dentsu’s SEO team identified that customers who come via recipe cards or are inspired by what they see in store are three times more valuable to the brand from a commerce standpoint. The team are now experimenting with new content, such as live cookery skills, to trial new ways to attract these customers.

Just because you’re optimising for modern content doesn’t mean everything’s a two-second sting.

Jessica Tamsedge, Dentsu Creative

Taking this new route to content isn’t about “losing the legacy” of the existing Waitrose customer base, but instead is about “creating connected storytelling” across its different outputs, says Stevens. This approach has encouraged the team not to work in silos.

“It’s really almost flipped on its head the way we approach content and having the ability to be agile enough to then also do that at pace, do that with reactivity to trends, as well as set trends ourselves,” he adds.

Social is central to Waitrose’s ambition to “see all sides of food”, as the brand partners with influencers and its own in-house creators.

“For a long time, it was about unattainable, celebrity, often male dominated figures, within food culture. And actually, what we’re excited about is creating a community of food lovers and connecting them together, and really tapping into our customers that are inspirational, and love and cherish what we’re going to do,” says Stevens.

The idea is for the food i the new magazine to look “loved” and enjoyed, rather than focusing on “inaccessible” beauty.

“If you look at the tonality of the magazine and the tonality of the work we’re producing from the food studio, it’s trying to make everything more conversational. It’s trying to make it more achievable, a bit more reachable. That’s really how we see ourselves as a brand,” he adds.

“What we’re really trying to do as a brand is say: ‘We see you, we see how you react, and we see how you live your food-loving life, and we want to be part of that.’”