This new advert for Sainsbury’s is both baffling and extremely shit.
It starts with Jamie Oliver, a person who no doubt means well but who is, ultimately, fairly annoying, strolling through the countryside, talking purposefully to no-one in particular about the concept of “taste” while wearing wellies. This cements rather clumsily the idea of natural goodness, the great outdoors and good, honest food.
As Jamie walks, he gradually runs out of breath. You half expect him to start reaching for the inhaler but thankfully he reaches his destination without dying. That destination is where the ad gets a little weird, and also becomes forehead-slappingly dumb. Because instead of this field being full of farm animals, as you might plausibly expect, it actually contains a frying pan full of cooked sausages. Before viewers have time to ask questions such as “Why?” or “How?”, Jamie takes a bite from a banger and informs us that it represents:
Everything that Sainsbury’s stands for, in a bite.
This advert sums up the relationship Sainsbury’s would like its customers to have with their food. Rather than provide illumination about the process of husbandry and slaughter that goes into the highly mechanised process of making a sausage, Sainsbury’s prefers to create the idea that fully cooked sausages magically appear in the middle of a pretty field after being apparently conjured from nothing by Jamie fucking Oliver.
Other shit things include dismal overacting and, at the end, the way Jamie gazes wistfully off to the right of the screen like a model in a 1970s Littlewoods catalogue underpants photo spread.
You might also be interested in this. Think of it as an outtake from the Oliver shoot.