2 minute read
The Week in Retail 107
by 55 North
LOT OF SCONE-SENSE
Waitrose has been accused of “totally blowing it” after it had the temerity to advertise Platinum Jubilee cream teas with a picture of a scone that had the jam on top of the cream.
Not a massive deal one would imagine, unless you’re from Cornwall, where they take these kinds of things seriously.
How seriously? “Should be run out of Cornwall”, “Boycott this abomination”, “Respect the Cornish way”, “Disgraceful insult”, “From what planet do these people come from?”, “What a travesty” and “Disrespectful to the Cornish” were just some of the comments on social media.
Barry West, who was first to call out Waitrose over its gaffe, explained the outrage thus: “In Cornwall our cream always goes on top because we are so proud of it. In Devon, they hide it under the jam.”
To make amends, the Waitrose branch in the Big City (that’s Truro, not London, obviously) will donate cream teas to local foodbanks over the Jubilee weekend.
So which county is correct – Devon or Cornwall? National treasure and former Bake Off judge Mary Berry narrowly missed out on the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her proposal to end the cream tea conflict: cut your scone in two then do one half jam first and the other cream first.
BAGS OF SCREENTIME
Forget Hilda Ogden or Jack and Vera Duckworth, it looks like there’s a new star gracing the Weatherfield cobbles of ITV’s long-running soap Coronation Street: the Co-op shopper.
Product placement in UK-made TV programmes has been around since 2011, so one imagines ITV would have mastered the art of doing it in a subtle and nuanced manner by now.
Apparently not. During a gripping episode broadcast last week in which a wet cement fight featured prominently, one eagleeyed viewer counted four separate bags. Before the ad break.
This included one inexplicably hung on a glass-panelled door and beautifully backlit. The producers must have thought the bag’s partial obscuration by a kitsch apron would transform what was practically a neon sign into a subliminal marketing message.
So, who fancies two pizzas and a four-pack of beer for a fiver then?
