Morrisons’ new TV message to customers: Baby come back

The TV advert, which airs from tomorrow, features the Eddy Grant song, Baby Come Back, which could be a direct message to shoppers who have deserted the grocery chain in favour of cheaper rivals.

The advert stars genuine Morrisons employees cheerily saying good morning to customers, helping them with their shopping and checking eggs to make sure they are not broken.

One winks at a burly builder with a bunch of flowers while another coos at a newborn baby.

All of which is presumably designed to make the viewer believe that Morrisons is the home of good customer service - the grocer with the human touch.

Mike Hoban, marketing director, told The Yorkshire Post: “We’re listening to our customers who asked us to bring back express checkouts and we’ve done just that. The feedback so far has been very positive.”

The express lanes will serve customers who wish to buy ten items or less. They will mean customers with a small shop who want personal service will not have to queue behind those with a trolley full of groceries and have an alternative to self-scanning and the loathed robotic command of “unexpected item in bagging area”. Morrisons worked on the new advertising campaign with agency DLKW Lowe. It parted company with multi-millionaires Ant and Dec, the previous stars of Morrisons television campaigns, earlier in the year.

The new team of chief executive David Potts and chairman Andy Higginson are trying to take the business back to basics to halt a disastrous slide in sales, profits and market share.

Mr Potts has been doing unannounced store visits with Sir Ken Morrison, the former chairman who transformed a small Bradford grocer into a national retail giant.