A Recipe for a New Way of Marketing

These are scary times for advertisers. New technologies such as digital video recorders are giving consumers the ability to avoid marketing messages, and that means the advertising of the future will have to do more than the advertising of today.

It will no longer be enough for companies to interrupt television programs to tell people about products. They will need to produce communications of various kinds that are so entertaining or so helpful that consumers will seek them out.

It is a tall order, but not impossible, as Jamie Oliver, a 30-year-old celebrity chef, has demonstrated. To get a glimpse of the new world of marketing, look no further than Oliver’s recent work. He has been producing a blend of social activism, entertainment and advertising so potent that he has become one of the most popular people in Britain.

Oliver is a restaurateur who has produced a stream of popular television programs and cookbooks dedicated to the proposition that there is nothing quite like fresh British produce. His piece de resistance was a television series last year called “Jamie’s School Dinners,” which portrayed his efforts to improve the quality of food in government schools. Shot in a documentary style, it was a ratings success and a cultural moment, enshrining Oliver as a political figure and solidifying his position as a highly paid pitchman.

While politicians from Prime Minister Tony Blair on down scrambled to show their concern about school food, supermarket chain J Sainsbury re-signed Oliver as a spokesman for a sixth year, at more than 1 million pounds ($1.7 million) a year.

Sainsbury’s advertising agency, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, also produced a marketing campaign that echoed the language and spirit of “Jamie’s School Dinners.” As part of his work to improve school food, Oliver handed out stickers to children that said: “I’ve tried something new.” On behalf of Sainsbury, he is urging people of all ages to “try something new today.”

Oliver’s ability to appear convincing in both guises testifies to the potential of this kind of communication and to its limits. This cannot be easily replicated. Oliver’s strategy boils down to “letting Jamie be Jamie.” He trusts his gut feeling and seeks out collaborators with a similar faith.

Oliver said the process that led to the television series was simple: “I go to Channel 4. I say I want to do a campaign that will radically change the food we serve our kids in school. I passionately believe in it. Anything that involves the word ‘passionate,’ they generally prick up their ears because they think, ‘Well, if Jamie is passionate, then normally he’s quite good value.’ ”

The success of the school campaign spurs the question of whether Oliver collaborated on it with his marketing fellow travelers at Sainsbury and Abbott Mead, a subsidiary of Omnicom of the U.S. But the sequence of events suggests that his triumph has an improvisational -- if not accidental -- side.

Just as he was delighting television audiences with his attempts to encourage children to eat something healthier than burgers and fries, Sainsbury was pondering dropping Abbott Mead after a quarter of a century of joint effort. The last five years included Oliver, who was recruited after a previous television recipe campaign by Sainsbury was deemed to have grown “too posh,” said Peter Souter, deputy chairman of Abbott Mead and the original copywriter for Oliver’s advertisements.

By asking JWT, an advertising unit of WPP of Britain, to pitch against Abbott Mead for its business, Sainsbury seemed to want to try something new itself.

Both agencies were asked to say how they would “evolve the J Sainsbury brand,” said Gwyn Burr, customer services director. It was the kind of contest that an incumbent agency often loses, industry analysts said.

Abbott Mead’s pitch went by the numbers. A typical Sainsbury’s store stocks 30,000 items; the average shopper buys about 120. Abbott Mead reckoned that if shoppers could be persuaded to buy one more item, Sainsbury would be able to hit its turnover growth targets. It was an idea that could work without Oliver. But as the pitch unfolded and his popularity grew, Abbott Mead tied its appeal to Oliver and got “very lucky” because its man “became a saint,” Souter said.

At the same time, Sainsbury benefited from an ex post facto example of what advertising people call “branded content.” This is entertainment content that promotes a brand, either explicitly or implicitly. It is a sophisticated cousin of product placement, in which goods are displayed during a program, and it is more highly desired by executives who fear that product placement annoys consumers.

Their goal is to create characters in entertainment pieces who will serve marketing ends. “Jamie’s School Dinners” shows it can be done, albeit in this case probably by accident.

“We didn’t know Jamie would evolve this way,” Souter said. “We lucked out on a couple of pieces of branded content.”