Is Waitrose PR stunt really such a disaster?

I was interested to read the Daily Mail’s take on the Waitrose Twitter stunt this morning.

According to the Mail – read the report here – the supermarket’s decision to encourage Twitter users to give reasons why they shopped at Waitrose with the hashtag #WaitroseReasons had “backfired spectacularly”.

Apparently Waitrose is keen to shed it’s upmarket image and appeal to the masses so tweets such as ‘I shop at Waitrose because… I don’t like being surrounded by poor people’ would surely shock and enrage the Waitrose PR team, chortled the Mail’s writers, gleefully.

The paper reported that the in-house team had tweeted beck saying they had enjoyed most of the response. Surely, the Mail seemed to suggest, a case of the beleaguered team just putting on a brave face?

Only I think not. In my view the stunt was a success rather than the ‘spectacular backfire’ the Mail report.

For starters it got people talking. I’m sure millions of people have seen the story on the Daily Mail online today who don’t even use Twitter. Nice backfire!

Then there’s the brand impact. What does a punter who shops at one of the other supermarkets learn from reading this report?

Well he or she would certainly discover that Waitrose is upmarket. It sells high quality food. But it would like to attract other shoppers too, maybe even lure some from Sainsburys or Tesco.

Our fantasy reader / shopper would read of the jokes at Waitrose’s expense. Jokes like ‘I shop at Waitrose because Clarrisa’s pony WILL NOT eat ASDA Value straw.’

My guess is most people reading that would think, ‘Yuck, I don’t want to east Asda value stuff either. Maybe I should checkout this Waitrose shop and see if it’s for me.’

The backfire just gets better and better for Waitrose.  The Mail even tells readers that ‘the supermarket has Royal approval and includes Kate Middleton as one of it’s fans.’

My guess is that the PR teams at Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys would sell their Grannies for a story like this.

Spectacular? Maybe. Backfire? That’ll be a nope.