Avid viewers of Coronation Street or Country House Rescue might already have seen the start of Waitrose’s new advertising campaign. Waitrose took over an entire commercial break during both programmes, showing a three and a half minute ad with Delia Smith and Heston Blumenthal that was a mini-cookery programme in itself.

Taking over an entire ad break isn’t completely new – Adidas and Xbox are among the brands to have done it before – but this is something different. It’s more like content than advertisement, more like an interaction than an interruption, and part of a carefully planned journey that the audience can be taken on. In short, everything that we’ve seen working as an approach to B2B buyers (but at a cost of c.£20m).

Whether or not it works for B2C remains to be seen, although everything seems to be geared up to meet Waitrose’s goals – the recipes are about showing that you can do your ‘everyday’ shop at Waitrose, the mix of Delia (traditional values) and Heston (21st century), the online continuation (with a prominent option to shop for the ingredients)…

If the Daily Mail’s reports are anything to go by (Achtung der Rhabarber! Waitrose forced to import German rhubarb), the tactic seems to be delivering early results: “in the first four days of the supermarket’s campaign the company sold as much of the crop [rhubarb] as it normally sells in 12 weeks – enough for 61,000 brulées”.

So what are the wider lessons?

We’ve been working with Microsoft Advertising recently on their research into what drives consumers to make premium purchases – and the answer tends to be a combination of Interest and Information. First, people need to be interested (or to be shown why they should be interested) and then they need access to information. At a high level, it really is that simple – the trick is in how you spark the interest and provide the information. It strikes me that Waitrose’s campaign is just an example of trying to meet these goals (finding an interested group – like viewers of Country House Rescue – and then explaining the value of good quality, responsibly sourced food to spark an interest that the information in the advert and online can answer.

Given that most senior decision makers will be premium consumers in their personal lives, there’s definitely a lesson to be learnt here for B2B marketers. Perhaps it’s little wonder that the most effective programmes today are the ones that have a precision focus on finding interested buyers and then take novel approaches to providing the information they need.