'Now We're Cooking': Inside Tesco's Accessibility Ad

In Britain, millions of disabled people are currently excluded by traditional online recipes which can create a frustrating and isolating experience for those in the community who simply want to enjoy cooking. Acknowledging this, Tesco has released ‘Now We’re Cooking’ - a campaign calling out the issue and designed to make cooking more representative, and inclusive. 

With 18 million deaf people in the UK and two million people living with sight loss, 20 per cent of the population are currently excluded from easily engaging with standard advertising. Channel 4’s annual initiative, which started in spring, requires all adverts to include closed captions. This drive for inclusion is the centre of Tesco's new campaign and what the supermarket stands for. “We work hard to make Tesco a place where everyone is welcome,” explains Murray Bisschop, UK marketing director at Tesco.

The campaign won Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award, an award that encourages brands to be ‘Inclusive by Design’ and start positioning themselves with the determination to be accessibility focused and designed for wider audiences.

Created by BBH and WPP Media, the work aims to help make cooking with confidence more accessible while embodying the supermarket’s ‘Every Little Helps’ brand promise.

Appearing in the ad is blind social media influencer Kitty Hinde. She confirms that the campaign successfully humanises disabled experiences while authentically involving the community in its creation.

Tesco’s Commitment to Inclusive Cooking

The campaign is rooted in real-life experiences and the everyday challenges many people face when trying to cook. 

Tom Chard, media planning lead at Tesco, explains that the campaign champions the supermarket’s duty to make everyone welcome and understands that the brand represents more than a place where people buy groceries. He emphasises that food is in Tesco’s DNA, saying: “We understand that no two customers or Tesco colleagues are the same. We wanted to create a campaign that can champion this, however, we want to be clear that this isn't just a campaign. It builds on our commitment for Tesco to meet more everyday customer needs, to make the kitchen more inclusive, and to ensure that everyone can enjoy cooking”. 

Holly Fallows and Charlotte Watmough, associate creative directors at BBH, continue his point, reflecting on the history of the brand, looking at Tesco’s food love stories and the recipe hub. Watmough believes that cooking is “such an integral part of everyone's lives”. 

The 60-second launch film, ‘Need anything from Tesco?’ stars a cast with a range of disabilities who each call out the ways the world of cooking hasn't been designed for them, and what would help make the experience better. As Tesco colleagues respond with British Sign Language (BSL) translation and audio description, the kitchen comes alive with the sights and sound of everyone cooking. 

Designing Accessibility Into Every Detail

The BBH London team worked with The Diversity Standards Collective (DSC) and the disability-founded talent and production agency With Not For to ensure the film was built to be inclusive from the ground up. Fallows and Watmough reflected on the evolution of the ad. 

What began as a poetic and rhythmic concept gradually evolved into a campaign focused on clarity and accessibility. Watmough explains: “We spoke to the community and they were constantly feeding back, which was crucial, because they were telling us where we were going wrong, what we were doing right.”

Watmough shares the biggest challenges of the advert and making sure it all worked together. She emphasises that the audio description and the captions was the hardest part and reflected on the amount of work put in to figure out what would work in the physical space. “It looked really simple but it really wasn’t.”

The BBH team also reflect on the importance of creating a film where every element felt clear and cohesive to fully evoke the challenge of cooking for disabled people. This meant that the final edit proved to be another challenge. Fallows admits to the team's naivety about BSL and putting each of the different languages together.

“It was quite a jigsaw to put together, especially in the edit. I think it was like almost like four dimensional editing, that's the way I describe it,” Watmough continues.

More Than Just an Ad

Chard outlines that even with the challenges faced, the production was always about focusing on "building better, step by step".

He continues, “I think a lot of advertisers strive for perfection, whereas we at Tesco strive for progress, and we strive to make sure that it might not 100 per cent be perfect, but it's the right thing to do for our customer base.” 

Kitty Hinde, a cast member for the film, praises the advert for its inclusive casting and its aim of highlighting the honest experience for disabled people trying to cook. “It just humanises that experience. It’s not that different from the average human experience to struggle with things like cooking.”

The film ends with the brand stating the need for more accessibility around cooking, while driving viewers to its online ‘Accessible Recipes’ section on its website. Tesco has now launched 100 recipes that meet the latest inclusive standards. This includes measurements written in full and specific timings rather than visual cues. 

A key take away from the campaign for Chard is making sure that any future advertising is backed by action, "That fundamentally, is the most important thing".

Fallows agrees “As one of the nation’s most visited recipe sites, Tesco Real Food, receiving over 1.6 million unique monthly visitors, Tesco had a responsibility to change the status quo. This isn’t just about an ad; it’s about redesigning the utility of cooking authentically and recognising the importance of detail.”