Why Waitrose Sent @WhatWillyCook Into Space

Waitrose is on a mission to engage with lovers of food, entertaining them with campaigns that are incredible in their concepts and eye catching in their execution.

Delivered by Wonderhood Studio, the most recent brand work ‘The Gastronaut’ features influencer @WhatWillyCook as an astronaut travelling through space who is clearly missing home cooked food. In the end, his cravings and memories drive him to the decision that it’s time to return to Earth and Waitrose for the food he loves most: prawn linguine.

Alongside cinematic visuals is Aerosmith’s iconic song “I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing”.

The campaign, created by Tad Buxton and India Penny, and directed by Tom Speers, marks the official launch of the supermarket’s ‘The home of food lovers’ platform, spotlighting the quality, care and obsession that the retailer has for delicious, ethically-sourced food.

Sharing some of the insights on the production of a campaign that is another indication that Waitrose aims to produce campaigns that entertain and stand out, is Wonderhood Studio’s executive creative director, Jack Croft.

Can you outline the brief for this campaign? 

All the best briefs have a very clear target audience, knowing who they’re for, and also who they’re not for. For Waitrose that was people who really love their food. For them, food is a way of life. The brief was to reconnect to this audience and show that they can find their ‘home’ in the isles of Waitrose. To do that in a way food lovers actually take notice, we knew we’d need to hit them right at their core. And there was no better way to do that than to show a world where food is merely ‘Fuel’.

What prompted the idea for ‘The Gastronaut’ concept? 

The team got to this idea of showing ‘food as fuel’ pretty early on in the process. Stacey and I loved this image of food being reduced down to some mush. It was an evocative visual that we knew would send shivers down the spines of food lovers. Then it was a case of finding the world where a ‘life of fuel instead of food’ could play out. A space station thousands of miles away from anything remotely resembling ‘food’ felt spot on. This became our floating prison for our food lover where he could embark on an epic return to what he loved most.

Why choose @WhatWillyCook over anyone else to feature at the hero? 

@WhatWillyCook has that normal guy approachability to him, representing a new world of chefs and food lovers - rather than an old world of chefs in their chef whites cooking in stainless steel kitchens. He’s actually someone Waitrose have a long- standing relationship with too so it helps to build on that. We also knew we wanted someone with a recognisable, bright, chipper voice that could cut through the void of space as the Gastronaut’s device drifts in zero-G. 

Can you share the lessons that have been learned from the previous work with Waitrose that helped on this campaign? 

What’s really exciting is we’re in a position with Waitrose where people are beginning to expect entertainment from then as a brand. The work we’ve done so far has helped build that image of the brand for the Waitrose audience. Together with Waitrose we’ve brought back 90’s icons like Chesney Hawkes and S Club 7, we’ve enlisted Alex Horne to do a fun song about Waitrose’s ‘Better Chicken’ commitment and we’ve made a RomCom which left the nation wanting to see the feature length version. ‘The Gastronaut’ is doing a different job to the work that’s gone before it, but it carries that same DNA of entertaining audiences. 

What was the biggest challenge in making this campaign? 

Ok, maybe not the biggest challenge, but one thing I remember hurting my brain thinking about the logistics of, was figuring out at what stage in the shoot to shave our astronauts’ beard. Tom shot the whole thing back to front so we could show Michael looking more and more bearded/worn out the longer he’s up there. It pays off seeing it, but there was always this impending question on set of ‘when shall we take the beard down a notch’?

What did director Tom Speers bring to realising the concept? 

Tom has this brilliant ability to get under the skin of a character. Knowing what motivates them, what they care about, what pushes them over the edge. From early on Tom talked about him being a normal guy with a real vulnerability to him. It’s this deep understanding that then informs so many of the elements of the production along the way, right down to how long his beard should be. As is always the way with comedy performances, get it slightly off the mark, and it’s just not funny. Tom managed to take, what on paper could be interpreted as a very silly idea, and delivered it in a way that makes you laugh but also makes you feel some deeper emotions for this astronaut too. It’s this very clever manipulation of emotion that sets Tom’s work apart.

There are lots of Easter eggs from space-based movies - were there any other that you hoped to include but couldn’t in the end? 

Yes, it’s always a fun thing to play around with. It’s something we dabbled in with Christmas and feels like a fun lever to carrying on pulling. There’s a lovely ‘ahhh I get it’ moment that’s super rewarding for an audience. But, for obvious reasons, you’ve got to be careful in how you reference them. There does normally tend to be one or two you want to get in but are deemed too risky, but thankfully with this one, we got all the ones in that we wanted to. See if you can spot them all…

When will it be sent into space and what do you hope any aliens who watch it learn about humanity from doing so? 

Well, I just checked with The Heard who worked on sending it into space, and they said it’s currently travelled 36,000,000 miles and counting. I think those aliens up there will be stunned by how lovely Waitrose Partners are – helping someone putheir shopping in their boot… how lovely!