Last November, Tesco – along with agencies BBH London and EssenceMediacom – was announced as the winner of Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award. The prize: £1m’s worth of free ad space with the broadcaster that has made accessibility and diversity one of its core tenets.
Today, the winning work is unveiled ahead of its first airing during tonight’s episode of C4 comedy flagship Taskmaster.
‘Now We’re Cooking’ won under the 2025/26 competition’s theme, ‘Inclusive Design.’ It combines an ad designed from the ground up to be accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities, with tangible actions from the retailer to make its recipes more accessible to those same groups.
The 60-second spot is set in a cavernous test kitchen. At the open, a range of disabled people are waiting to start cooking. “Need anything from Tesco?” a woman in a lanyard asks. “A recipe we can use,” one of the cooks responds.
What follows is a visual and audio elaboration of the changes from standard practices that people with disabilities may need in order to have the same access to cooking. For a blind participant, audio recipes are played (and the entire spot is narrated). For a deaf participant, the recipes are portrayed in British Sign Language (BSL). For a participant with a limb difference, special devices for knifework are shown.
Directed by Alan Masferrer via ProdCo, the ad closes with mention of the retailer’s new hub, Accessible Recipes, which launches with 100 recipes adapted for braille, BSL and audio.
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Alongside BBH, the team worked with The Diversity Standards Collective (DSC) and disability-founded talent and production agency With Not For.
The year’s ‘Inclusive by Design’ aims to shed light on the size of the audience that cannot fully access or understand much of advertising’s standard output: according to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, more than 18 million Brits are deaf, live with hearing loss or have tinnitus and, according to the Royal National Institute of Blind People, over 2 million people are living with sight loss. That adds up to nearly 20% of the population.
In the world of cooking, DSC research found that disabled people often cook more ‘intuitively’ or are otherwise forced to memorize recipes by the inaccessibility of digital formats.
Credits
Campaign title: ‘Now we’re cooking’
Advertising agency: BBH London
CCO: Felipe Serradourada Guimaraes
Associate creative directors: Charlotte Watmough, Holly Fallows
Creatives: Lucy Johnstone, Grace Chambers
Client managing director: James Rice
Deputy chief strategy officer: Saskia Jones
Business lead: Tori Meadows
Account directors: Jenny McHale, Olivia Harte
Account managers: Charlie Morgan, Ollie Withell
Account executive: George Moody-Stuart
Strategy director: Arabella Saunders
Senior strategist: Alexi Hall
Agency film producer: Charlotte Kirk
Agency assistant film producer: Peter Wiltshire
Agency experience producers: Lucy Budd, Tash Allen
Agency print producer: Rachel Clarke
Head of design: Stephanie McArdle
Design director: Miguel Sousa
Designer: Phoebe Kenny
Design director: Oded Shein
Motion designer: Lucy Russell-Bates
Design director: Miriam Menendez
Production company: Prodco
Director: Alan Masferrer
DOP: Albert Salas
Producer: Tom Farley
Editor: Amanda James
Post-production company: Time Based Arts
Post-production producer: Jo Gutteridge
2D lead artist: André Bittencourt
Grade: Time Based Arts
Colorist: Simone Grattarola
Sound studio: String & Tins
Sound engineers: Adam Smyth, Kaspar Broyd
Music company: Black Sheep Music
Music composer: The Elements
Music supervisors: Daniel Olaifa, Hywel Evans
Studio production manager: Paul Floyd
Studio artwork: Dave Walsh
Recipe book production: Royal National Institute of Blind People & Ink Print Solutions
Media agency: EssenceMediacom
Media planner: Lauren McGurran & Chandni Moda
Community research partners: The Diversity Standards Collective (DSC)
Production disability consultants: With Not For
Content agency: Cedar Communications
Dining and Cooking