The Standard recently analysed our current print campaign for Tesco from a poetic point of view. Now the BBC has done the same. Here's an extract from a piece that appeared on their website.

"Shakespeare knew a thing or two about
stirring emotions.

Copywriters have been slyly plundering
the rhythms and cadences of his verse to impart epic qualities to the products
they are selling since the early days of advertising.

But there is one kind of ad where
literary flourishes, and outpourings of emotion, are normally in pretty short
supply – the full-page apology.

Taken out by corporations in crisis, when
they can't get their message out any other way, they are the advertising
equivalent of a cold shower.

They tend to stick to basic information.
If they resort to emotion at all, it is sorrow and remorse.

When horsemeat was discovered in its
value burgers in January, Tesco took out a full page ad in several national
newspapers.

It was a fairly standard example of the
genre: "We have immediately withdrawn from sale all products from the
supplier in question, from all our stores and online… We and our supplier have
let you down and we apologise."

But the supermarket giant was not
finished there.

A promise to get to the bottom of the
horsemeat issue has escalated, through a series of double page advertisements
in national newspapers, into an apparently heartfelt vow to change Tesco's
entire way of doing business.

Specifically, to improve the way it
treats farmers and other suppliers and simplify its supply chain.

There is a strangely poetic quality to
the ads, in the way the sentences don't reach the end of the lines and the
language employed has echoes of a sonnet.

Take this, from What Burgers Have Taught
Us:

"We know that all this
will only work if we are

Open about what we do.

And if you're not happy, tell
us.

Seriously.

This is it.

We are changing.

Or this from the final ad in the series
It Starts With Us:

"What's been happening
lately has made us

Look at the way we do things.

Made us realise that we need
to do our bit

To change the way our food
industry works."

Tesco insists these ads are not
deliberate attempts at poetry.

"We're using the ads to keep our
customers updated with the steps we're taking, as well as highlighting some of
the commitments we've made, such as sourcing all our fresh chicken from the UK
from July," says a spokesman.

Others beg to differ.

"It resembles poetry in the way that
it is laid out", says poet Matt Harvey.

"It gives the words a portentous
quality. They are reaching for gravitas, and probably achieving it.

"It is spot on iambic pentameter in
parts. You could find line four in a Shakespearean sonnet."

It Starts With Us has "an
incantatory quality", in the way it repeats certain phrases, trying to
"cast a spell" on the reader with words, adds Harvey, a former
poet-in-residence at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships.

"It is a love letter to their
customers. It is saying 'things haven't been easy, I have had a look at myself,
I have had a look at our relationship and I know I can change'.

Christopher Burlinson, an English
lecturer at Cambridge University, sees parallels with the work of 17th Century
metaphysical poet George Herbert, who used the patterns of the text on the page
to underscore the meaning of his words.

"Tesco are calling on a
well-established poetic technique," says Burlinson.

"The text is shaped like an arrow.
It points downwards on the page. The lines get shorter as you near the end. It
is all pointing to the Tesco brand."

Tim Johnson, chief operating officer of
corporate crisis management specialists Regester Larkin, says the ads are a
"highly innovative" example of a company turning a PR disaster to its
advantage.

"They have got to rebuild their
business and try to re-engage customers and the City. I think they have done it
really rather brilliantly," says Johnson.

"The story then becomes about how they are
responding rather than the issue itself. And that really is clever PR,"
adds economist Andrew Simms.

It's interesting to see how people are reacting to this campaign. Maybe it's because, as suggested by Marketing long copy is infrequently used these days. Maybe it's because it's unusual for a large retailer to talk directly to its customers in this way. And of course maybe it's our employment of Shakespearean language and metaphysical form that has caught people's attention. Anyway, we're very pleased that an approach initially dictated by the need to act quickly in response to events has developed into some thought-provoking work.