Let’s Grow

Read the campaign story

Morrisons launched Let’s Grow in September 2008, linking a school gardening programme with a voucher-redemption scheme. The IPA summary describes equipment and seeds for schools, while the detailed award case hosted by the Advertising Research Foundation documents school recruitment, teaching resources and the public launch. The programme connected the retailer’s fresh-food positioning with a practical activity beyond the store.

The mechanism required more than advertising. Schools needed information, suitable resources and a way to redeem collected vouchers. Store staff received briefings, and communication reached parents through several channels. The case describes equipment delivery beginning in early 2009, aligned with the growing season. This separates the promotional collection period from the later operational fulfilment that made the programme useful.

Editorial reading: A brand promise can become more concrete when people have an activity through which to experience it. Growing food gives freshness and origin a practical setting, while a school partnership creates an organised route for participation. The value depends on the programme’s usability for teachers and families, not merely on the emotional appeal of showing children in a garden.

There are important design tensions. A purchase-linked school scheme can place pressure on families to shop or spend, and schools with different resources may participate unequally. A contemporary programme should provide fair access, avoid turning children into sales intermediaries and keep teaching material educational rather than promotional. Safeguarding, accessibility and the burden on school staff deserve explicit planning.

A small food retailer can offer a limited gardening resource to a willing community partner without requiring purchases. Agree on what the partner actually needs, when it can use it and who will maintain it. Test the resource with educators before scaling. Measure delivery, usability and sustained activity, while avoiding unsupported claims about nutrition, learning or long-term behaviour.

The award sources report effectiveness estimates, but those are not independently re-audited here. The detailed case also distinguishes communication expenditure from fulfilment cost, an important warning against simplistic return calculations. The transferable lesson is to design the service behind a cause-related campaign: recruitment, resources, timing and delivery must fit the beneficiary’s reality, and commercial objectives should not obscure the responsibilities created by involving schools and children.

Design for the partner

Resources must fit teachers’ actual needs.

Count delivery costs

Communication spending is not the whole programme.

Avoid purchase pressure

Children and schools should not become sales instruments.

A small test for another brief

Editorial reading of the challenge: how to make a fresh-food positioning tangible through a practical school programme with real fulfilment requirements.

Resources delivered and used as intended.

Stop if participation pressures families to buy or overburdens educators.

• Agree needs and safeguarding with a community partner.
• Provide a small purchase-free resource on the right timetable.
• Evaluate delivery and practical usability.