Asda’s Unorthodox Ambassadors: Nanfluencers & Rapping Store Staff
British supermarket chain Asda’s Easter brand communications continue its ongoing strategy for humorously “keeping it real” (see the mini rappers in Destigmatising Budget in Back to School Strategies, 2022) to show solidarity with its mainstream audience. The key? Unorthodox real people (non-influencer) ambassadors – specifically its own staff and grandmothers (aka the nans).
The nans appear in a series of dedicated Easter posts on Instagram and TikTok, after the launch of the brand’s Meet our Nans videos in late January 2024, showing grandmothers in shopping content, such as Price Guess with Nan, to almost cult acclaim. Five of the eight videos have had more than 1.3 million views to date, and the Asda TikTok page even has a dedicated Nans playlist. There are also calls for viewers to nominate their own nans to be featured.
Staff appear in a 101 Ways to Crack an Egg TikTok rap, which features lines referencing TV show Love Island (“my type on paper”) and the aforementioned Nans series (“I threw it to my grandma and she didn’t catch it”). It’s amassed more than 300,000 views so far, outperforming Asda’s adjacent content.