Waitrose Celebrates Britain’s Love of Baking and Humorously Highlights Challenges in the Kitchen

Waitrose has unveiled a refreshed set of idents to mark its continued sponsorship of Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off, which returns to our screens today. 

The new idents, created by Saatchi & Saatchi, showcase the breadth of challenges, successes, and results of a selection of amateur bakers in the kitchen and celebrate the UK’s love of creativity in the kitchen. 

Based on the idea that people have an internal monologue that encourages and guides them when cooking at home, the humorous stories centre around two characters as they navigate this voice at different stages of their baking journeys and embrace their creativity.

The work shows how this can lead to deviating from recipes. The characters add more chocolate to a cake to ensure they win a cake sale and plenty more cream to their scones. Another sees a character fight the temptation to open the oven sooner than needed while being egged on by his inner monologue, and another shows that a spinach roll is even better when three times the size.

Directed by Florence Winter Hill, the idents are a light-hearted view of the nation’s love of baking, highlighting that getting stuck in leads to confident cooking. The idents will air for the first time tonight as the much-loved series returns for the first time this year. 

The campaign is the second instalment of creative idents created by Saatchi & Saatchi to mark Watrose’s partnership with Channel 4’s Great British Bake Off.

Franki Goodwin, chief creative officer at Saatchi & Saatchi, said, " Baking is a funny thing. There’s something about a recipe telling you what to do that ignites an inner rebellion in people who are more natural cooks than bakers. This is why Bake Off is so fun to watch, and this insight has been so fun to write to. We’d been looking for the perfect opportunity to work with Florence since she was part of our New Creators Showcase in 2023, and this was most definitely it. We hope they bring some extra Waitrose joy to this year's show.” 

Nathan Ansell, customer director at Waitrose, said, “Bake Off is a firm favourite with many of our food-loving customers, so we are delighted to continue our partnership and to have the opportunity to share our food with a like-minded audience. This campaign has moments that everyone can relate to and shows the absolute joy that comes from creating something from scratch in the kitchen, disaster or not - it's always fun when food is involved."

The concept will be live on Channel 4 idents, linear TV, and BVOD starting today (24 September). Manning Gottlieb OMD negotiated the sponsorship.