Will TV audiences value what Whole Foods is selling?

By George Anderson

OCTOBER 24, 2014

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Whole Foods has never run a national ad campaign before. Now that it has, will it make any difference to the natural and organic grocery chain's business? Will television commercials convince former shoppers to return? Will print ads bring in new customers who always assumed it was too pricey for them to even consider? Will any of it make any difference to Whole Foods' loyalists?

"Not everyone knows what makes Whole Foods Market different from other grocers, or the fact that no other retailer has standards as demanding or as transparent as ours," said Jeannine D'Addario, global vice president of communications of Whole Foods, in a statement. "This campaign will distinguish what makes our brand special, our food different and our quality superior. It's our opportunity to reaffirm our unwavering commitments to core values, which are at the heart of our brand."

One thing Whole Foods is not trying to do with its campaign is to convince consumers it's a discount grocer. In fact, noticeably absent from the TV spots or print ads is an messaging that refutes the grocer's "Whole Paycheck" image.

The voiceover for the first spot in the campaign reads:
"We are hungrier for better than we ever realized.
We want to know where our food comes from.
We care what happens to it along the way.
We want to trust our sources.
We want people, and animals, and the places our food comes from to be treated fairly.
The time is ripe to champion the way food is grown, and raised, and caught...
So it's good for us... and for the greater good too. This is where it all comes to fruition... Where values matter."

The chain launched the first of its "Values Matter" commercials during the opening game of the 2014 World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Kansas City Royals. Whatever enthusiasm Whole Foods' management had for the campaign may have been tempered when they learned the television audience for the first game of this year's Fall Classic was 19 percent lower than when the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals squared off in 2013.