Episode 3 Iceland Foods: Life in The Freezer Cabinet

This programme contains some strong language.

Meet Malcolm Walker, Chief Executive of Iceland Supermarkets.

'How would you describe yourself as a businessman then?'

Cowboy.

This is a place where the boss dishes out briefcases of cash

to his staff.

There you are, this is what you've won.

I always believe that

having fun is a big part of why we are so successful.

It's the Iceland incentive.

It's a Hummer, so just imagine that parked outside your store.

It's been voted the happiest place to work in a national poll.

Good morning.

I've never worked in a place like Iceland

and I hope to never work in a place that is not like Iceland.

Malcolm started the company from a handful of freezers in Shropshire.

CORK POPS

Today, 25,000 staff provide budget frozen food

to over four million families every week.

Long live Iceland.

I'm in love with all our customers because they give me

everything I've got. They pay for my car, my house, my holidays.

After the media disaster of the horse meat scandal...

Right, Nick, what are we going to do?

Green mushy pea. Green, yeah.

..an image relaunch is now more important than ever.

This is about drawing a line in the sand and saying what we are.

But can they win over the sceptics...

Oh, this is Iceland.

You have to say the shop, not the country.

..while keeping their loyal customers?

The extra food went whoof, gone.

That's fine. Yeah.

For CEO Malcolm, tonight is one of the most important nights

in the Iceland calendar.

The business is defending its title

as the best big company to work for in Britain.

Now, this is the tricky bit, you see, ah, doing it right,

no bloody clip-on ties here.

This is not the Iceland way, clip-on ties.

Anybody has a clip-on tie in Iceland, they get fired.

Bloody hell, that's a masterpiece, that is.

Well, it's the Best Companies To Work For dinner

which we won last year, of course.

I'll be seriously pissed off if we don't win,

but I'll pretend that we're all happy.

Have we all got a drink? Right.

To the best company to work for,

irrespective of what happens tonight.

Yeah. Iceland.

Last year, Malcolm beat blue chip firms like Goldman Sachs

to the best company crown.

Ohhh, yeah! There you go, see.

But his outspoken reaction to the horse meat crisis has won him

notoriety among his fellow chief execs in the food business.

How are you anyway?

Ah, I'm OK, barring the horse meat, which is...

But you've been unaffected, haven't you? No.

Apart from your comments?

No, it's cost us three million a week in sales. Really?

The PR fallout was horrendous.

I heard it on Breakfast News,

and even Chris Evans was saying he should have stopped.

But I've been proved right!

Ladies and Gentlemen, time for us to find out

who are the best companies to work for in 2013.

The second place has a real family feel.

This employee says it best, "We're not just a team but a family."

Bugger, that's us.

Ladies and gentlemen, last year's number one,

the number two best big company is Iceland Foods.

APPLAUSE

Malcolm and his team have been knocked off the top spot

by Pets at Home.

We were never going to win. No.

Well, that's a result.

I mean, of course, I'm disappointed we're not number one, which is where,

rightly, we deserve to be, but number two's OK.

Malcolm's concerned that the horse meat scandal has

tarnished the company's image and cost millions in sales.

Back at Head Office, he's pressing on with the relaunch

to help get the business back on track.

He'll be personally overseeing things from top to bottom

starting with the new Party Fare range.

Hello. Hi. Right.

Talk us through it.

OK, so we've got for you...

So this is just chicken strips

and then you've got a chip shop curry sauce.

Buyer Alistair Krimp developed the new products

in Thailand in an attempt to revamp their frozen finger food.

In essence, what we've tried to do this year is really brighten it up,

so, you know, the fish, chip and mushy pea products is one example,

just trying to keep it Iceland.

So you've just got a massive piece of fish, mushy peas

and then the chip on top.

Very good, innit? Yeah.

Well, lightly-coated fish chunk.

Green mushy pea. Green, yeah.

For the last six months,

the company has been planning to refresh its image.

The horse meat crisis has made the need for this more urgent.

and we're giving the stores a new look,

they're going to be brighter,

we're having new point of sale material,

new packaging, lots of new products being launched.

And it works better if you have the big launch

than if you drip feed it in.

In charge of the Iceland relaunch is Malcolm's right-hand man,

Nick Canning.

Nick's dream is to achieve what budget supermarket Aldi has.

RADIO: 'Hello, good afternoon.

'Today, what we're buying, where we're shopping...'

Aldi's great success over recent years is how they've wooed

the middle classes. It's a badge of honour of going to an Aldi

and saying, "I've found a bargain" in a way that they wouldn't do

actually going to Asda and certainly not to Iceland.

Despite Nick's ambitions, Malcolm's always been

cautious about changing the company's image.

A part of the issue we have here is about saying who are we trying

to influence because if we are just talking about existing customers...

But I'm nervous of taking...

..taking it to market. OK.

The only point I'd make on that is that you can't just change a pack.

We're going to have to go a lot broader and a lot wider than that.

There are only around about one in five households

that shop in an Iceland and that is about

a load of baggage around the brand that some people simply reject.

It's very cheap and very fattening.

Well, it's nice and clean and cheap.

Donkey burgers, horse burgers.

The brand that used Kerry Katona as a spokesperson, you know,

their view would be that the quality of the food we sell isn't

fantastic and that when you set foot into an Iceland,

the standards won't be great,

partly because of the location of our stores.

'And what do you think about that?'

Well, I think it's an opportunity.

We have to make sure that people throw all of their prejudices

about the Iceland brand out of the window.

Someone who's less optimistic is Keith Hann,

the company's PR Consultant.

This is confidential. Oh, I never tell anyone anything.

That's key to the whole PR strategy -

never tell anyone anything.

THEY LAUGH

We gathered that.

He's recently rebranded his own department in the wake

of the PR disaster of the horse meat scandal.

'What? The Centre of Mediocrity?

'I have no qualifications in public relations,'

I haven't done a degree in public relations which are very popular now

as I know from the degree students who keep e-mailing me

asking me for my lessons I've learned from "Horsegate".

'What were you aspirations when you were at university?'

I wanted to stay at Cambridge and be one of those Dons who

makes frightfully witty jokes and shags lots of young students.

Female students, so there wouldn't be so much competition.

'What happened?' I wasn't clever enough.

HE LAUGHS

Keith's dubious about whether the company can ever move upmarket.

You're never going to convince the hardcore Guardian-reading,

media-conscious person in London that Iceland sells anything

other than total crap, it's just I've spent years trying to do it.

Perhaps if they employed a decent PR man rather than one who is

clearly shit at his job, they might have made more headway.

Nick is more optimistic.

He's in London with his head of marketing, Alison,

to meet advertising agency Karmarama.

To seduce new customers, he needs a game-changing TV advert.

People who hate us, haven't ate us.

Karmarama's Dave and Sid are the masterminds

behind campaigns for Costa Coffee and Ikea.

Iceland is better than you think.

Nick's given them the brief "better than you think"

but he knows it's a risky one.

Iceland is better than you think.

Iceland's better than you think is the strategic bull's-eye, isn't it?

My problem with it, I guess, is it feels a bit chippy.

There is a degree of chippiness. I think you need that.

You are dealing with a group of people who believe they know you

and you've got to agitate against that

and you've got to say, actually, think again.

But Nick's got to contend with boss Malcolm's more conventional tastes.

The London agencies, they're all out of the same mould.

You get two or three guys in sharp suits

and then you get one in a denim jacket and maybe a ponytail,

he's the creative director,

and then you always get a beautiful girl in a very tailored suit

and they'll start the presentation with PowerPoint,

just to prove that they've done all the research and then they'll come

to the punchline and our proposal for your next advert is da-dah.

So the first route, "People need to know."

It's almost like Iceland Tourette's.

I really like the idea of Iceland Tourette's...

I was just thinking I've got a perfect spokesperson for that.

You know whether its bloody polar bears, penguins...

As if we haven't had all that before.

This is a beautifully-shot film about a lovely wedding.

We see people being offered lovely canapes on elegant platters,

we see the groom take the microphone and announce,

"And finally, I just want to say a big thank you to

"Iceland Supermarket for providing all the food we've enjoyed today."

We then pan round the room and we start to record people's

absolutely stunned and flabbergasted faces.

We see the bottom of someone's profiterole bowl,

It's certainly bold and it certainly will, you know, get people talking.

Karmarama's experience of wooing the middle classes

could give them the edge.

We've got people on the team who have been eating, religiously,

huge amounts of Iceland food and they're loving it.

Every day is a revelation.

When you experience a Chicken Tikka Masala Lasagne

for the very first time, it blows your mind.

I think that we're not going to come back with a Kerry Katona campaign

or a, you know, whoever it is, a Division 5 celebrity,

it kind of works, but what it doesn't do,

it just keeps feeding the beast that you're going to become.

If you're doing advertising with Kerry Katona,

what are people going to think about your product?

Competing against Karmarama is Malcolm's favourite

advertising man - 70-year-old veteran Tom Reddy.

Head of a small northern agency, Tom does most of his work

out of his car on the M60.

Tom is...he's well into his 70s,

grey hair, at least 15 stone overweight.

You'd be amused to know our latest client is a slimming product.

When they saw me panting my way upstairs,

they must have thought there's our chap, that's our agency.

But Iceland is our main client.

It was Tom who was responsible for the company's most successful

advertising campaign featuring I'm A Celebrity Winner Kerry Katona.

Tom really came shuffling in and I could see Nick Canning

rolling his eyes - who on earth are these people?

And he said I've got an idea for your next advert

and you need an attention-grabber, a shocker -

Kerry Katona.

Who? Who's she? Kerry Katona?

But what an absolutely brilliant idea.

And it was a jackpot, a hole in one.

Base, turn, stuff, check.

Kerry was the face of Iceland for four years

until a series of tabloid scandals brought the campaign to an end.

That's why mums go to Iceland.

Today, Tom is back at Head Office pitching his idea to convince

people to think again about Iceland.

The music of celebrity Michael Buble.

We found a song called "We Just Haven't Met You Yet."

It sounds a little bit cynical from an advertising man

to say that Michael Buble and his partner

are expecting a baby and he posted

the scan on the internet and put this song over the scan.

See what you think of it anyway, this is a very rough cut.

So we let the pictures and the music kind of do the talking.

The idea of just haven't met you yet is a strong one,

in terms of the song.

What I'm thinking about, as I'm seeing the visuals and reading

the script, is whether or not we need to be a little bit more direct.

Nick is keen to explore his bolder strategy.

You could go direct at them

with a...

strategy thought of better than you think.

Advertising men and politicians were told never apologise, never explain.

I agree.

Once you start, sort of, explaining better than you think,

it could be... I never thought that in the first place, but I might

start thinking it now. It's got to be very carefully approached really.

And you're right, Tom, you should never apologise.

But we've been struggling with this one for a while now.

One of the downsides of having an agency that's been with us for

a long time is that they'll often come up with ideas

that are very comfortable in the space we're in.

It's like a comfortable old jumper.

Every now and then, we have to stop that and we have to sort of make sure

we're looking a bit further afield to challenge ourselves to say,

well, is that what our customers and potential customers want?

The problem is to move up without moving out.

If you move out, then you lose your core market.

Tom's been making Iceland's adverts on and off for 30 years.

Losing the account would be a blow.

It's funny cos one of our writers said, "I wonder

"if anybody will be able to be as emotional about Iceland as we are."

And...

..I thought that kind of summed it up really.

In Tooting, news is in from Head Office that the stores need

a facelift ahead of the relaunch.

Ah, that's better.

Cricket enthusiast Sandra is

looking for new ways to motivate her team of 45 staff.

Good morning.

As part of Easter,

we've just got every team member,

when they're on break or before they started or when they finish,

just to colour themselves on an egg. This is Abraham, our supervisor.

This is Balol's one.

And the reason it looks like this is because Balol went wrong

and so instead of just using a different egg,

he just coloured the whole egg in, so that's fine.

I'm this egg in the middle.

I have a Sandra name badge on.

It doesn't look a lot like me,

but I wanted to make sure my egg stood out among everyone else's egg.

I talk an exceptional amount all the time

and I probably am quite controlling of what goes on in the store.

One of Malcolm's biggest bugbears is shoplifting.

For law graduate Sandra, it's a daily challenge.

You can watch across the entire store from the gap,

so we just watch to see if there's anything we need to be

aware of that we're not aware of.

We know the common shoplifters, so we have Mr Leg of Lamb

who would only remove legs of lamb from the store.

He regularly comes in but he's now swapped his tactics,

he doesn't come to take the legs of lamb to steal the legs of lamb,

he comes to take the legs of lamb so the police will arrest him

so he can stay in the cell overnight.

So he's got a bit of a win/win situation going on now.

So we just seal them all up and then they should be fine for the day.

Sandra has foiled leg of lamb man with locked boxes,

but there is another thief eluding her net.

We've got salmon and prawn man.

Last year, we lost nearly ?1,500 on salmon fillets

and prawn alone, so he's our next lookout

but we've not caught him yet.

Guys, we're getting very, very close

now to catching the person who's responsible for the salmon, OK?

We've narrowed it down

that those products go missing between 9.15 and 10.00, so..

Do we know what he looks like? No. No, OK.

And I say it's a guy, I'm assuming it's a guy?

Yeah, OK, OK. We'll keep our eyes open.

Keep your eyes open, don't headlock anyone, please?

No, I'll try not to. Choke slam? Yeah, that's all right.

So what I want us to do is to go downstairs.

Now, we'll be doing stuff,

but we need to keep an eye on those three cabinets.

So what are you guys going to do downstairs?

Just going to pretend that we're working.

Well, you can do some work. We're going to work.

You can do some work. I'm going to watch you now,

I'm going to watch you more than prawn man.

The company loses ?5 million to shoplifters every year.

With sales struggling, the staff are on orders to be extra vigilant.

Well, we're looking for anyone that comes in that doesn't have a basket

because why would you come into the store without a basket?

Like that gentleman has come into the store without a basket.

Just keep an eye for anyone who's come in without a basket

and a massive bag. We'll find him. Yeah.

Store number two, Tim.

When an incident occurs in any of the 800 stores,

it's reported directly to the security department at Head Office.

That's a male who was violent who came in store and was asked to leave.

We're pretty sure that Tooting know exactly what they're doing

with these toerags.

Ex-accountant Duncan Miles is responsible for all crime

and security at the company.

The team will tell you here that when something bad happens

to someone in a store or to a store, I'm walking round like I've been

kicked between the legs because we do care passionately about it.

Physical attack, Hackney, male became aggressive

and punched the manager in the face.

Our job is to protect our staff

and I'll tell you what, that's something we all strive to do

to the best of our ability because this company doesn't work like

faceless bureaucrats, we all get our sleeves rolled up and get stuck in.

In London alone, the company's store detectives catch

more than 3,000 shoplifters every year.

Certain police forces have sent out an edict that they're not to

attend for shoplifting incidents where it's less than ?20.

They're saying that as a rule,

but we are still getting prosecutions at under ?20. Right.

I mean, it is a huge problem and even the police are treating it

as a victimless crime, and so many times, the police won't come.

No problem getting you doing 32mph down the road here,

you can go to jail for that, but stealing something, no, that's OK.

So, again, how do you change people's attitudes towards it? It is a crime.

Near Sloane Square in Chelsea, Malcolm's drive to refresh

the business is gathering pace.

He's handpicked the company's newest store manager,

his only son, Richard.

We are out in Chelsea, um...

just driving to my new store in Swiss Cottage

where I'll be working for the next couple of months managing the store.

After a successful career in property, Richard is deciding

whether to follow his dad into the business

but he needs to start on the shop floor.

He's hoping to bring some fresh ideas.

I think...I think my dad thinks that, er,

the role I'm doing now is obviously invaluable

and I'm quite aware that the eyes of the company are on me now.

So I'm going into a store that's performed below expectation

and I think they think I'm going to go in and try and sort it out.

Don't actually know where to park.

Guess we walk in the front, I think.

I'm very nervous actually, very nervous.

Hello, I'm Richard, how you doing? You all right? Good to meet you.

How you doing? Good to meet you.

Do you want me to help you with that, madam? Can I help you with this?

Here is a basket holder that wasn't there before,

but what I've found is a lot of people are coming straight

into the store and they're just thinking about bread, milk, eggs

or whatever they've got to buy

and they get here and they're struggling to hold stuff

and so having the basket holder there is just quite good.

What else have we done? I don't know really.

Rome wasn't built in a day, so just a few little things.

The trouble for Richard is that Iceland traditionally

thrives in low-income areas.

The newly-opened Swiss Cottage store is next to a Waitrose

on a high street that serves some of

the most affluent neighbourhoods in London.

Oh, this is Iceland. Yes.

People get confused. You have to say the shop, not the country.

Richard's success will depend on bringing a different

kind of customer through the doors.

10 Jaffa cakes ice cream. Oh, I'm going to get one of those.

I think it's very interesting because I think most of us

are having to look around now when we didn't.

I mean I'm a Marks Spencer and Waitrose shopper,

I'm in Marks Spencer daily, but this is great to know it's here.

We think that you should advertise in say the Ham High.

In the...? In the Ham High, the local paper.

Ah, the local paper.

Get pictures of people shopping in Iceland into the Ham High.

I suppose advertising would help.

Perhaps it might have to be a little

more sophisticated than Iceland's advertising currently is.

I don't think anybody wants to be known for shopping

because it's cheap.

The fact that it is is a bonus.

Hello. Hello.

Look at your hair.

It looks like you work in a bloody clothes shop.

Malcolm is down in London to take Richard to lunch.

It's, er, practical.

When you come into Head Office, you have to have a bit of gravitas.

He's taking a keen interest in Richard's progress on the shop floor.

So how did the, er, the manager's meeting go yesterday?

It went really well, but I need to be...

You can't fail. I know.

But I need to be allowed to...

to fail, you know, and if...

Hopefully, I won't.

A lot of people bring their son in almost at board level

which is completely wrong, you've got to earn your spurs.

It's very important to bring up your children with a work ethic

and they all had holiday jobs,

they all know the value of money, where some people I know

who have done well in life, their kids are a nightmare.

In Treorchy, an ex-mining town in Wales,

Malcolm's other new store manager Martin

is keeping the company's more traditional customers happy.

The store opened four months ago, bringing with it

24 new jobs to a deprived area.

Yorkshire puddings.

Yeah, just down this way and I'll show you now.

You need to get some new batteries for your glasses perhaps.

All right, anything else I can help you with?

Cheers then.

The store is doing very, very well.

The team and the staff know a lot of the local people.

Yeah, of course, you come in and have a chat any time.

A lot of their feedback is generally along the lines of

we're glad Iceland came, it's done so much for the town centre.

We could get like... Are we getting...?

Yeah, mini ones, but they're down by there. Oh, the party ones.

The first customers through the door when the store opened

were 55-year-old electrician Mark and his fiancee Lisa.

Now they are back to cater for their upcoming wedding.

So we'll have these. Yeah. Right, the Indian platter.

This is going to be nice, pastry swirls.

Chicken, they look weird. Yeah.

It's unusual, innit? That's what we want.

All wedding food is always the same, wedding buffets, you know,

the same thing - sandwiches, this, this, that, you know, and these

kind of stuff is going to be very unusual because they'll be looking

at them and they'll be thinking "Wow. What is this? What is that?"

More so these because these, you never see, I've never seen them.

No, potato skins, mini potato skins,

I mean they'll be unusual in a party, you know.

You know and they're going to look at them

and hopefully they're going to eat them.

Do you want to have a look at the gateau's now?

And my favourite lemon meringue, look.

You don't want that at the wedding though, do you?

Lemon meringue pie, yeah, people love it.

Right, can you give this a wipe down for me?

I've got to be honest, he is good at housework.

I don't go for the looks.

Pardon.

I'm not a lovable person, I'm not romantic either,

I've never been romantic, I don't know how to be romantic, you know.

He has his little ways but he shows them when he doesn't realise

he's showing them.

Oh, they're only little things. Yeah.

With 200 guests coming to the wedding,

Mark and Lisa are planning to spend ?1.75 per head on food.

Very nice.

Putting it on proper trays and everything else, I mean. Yeah.

Like many of Iceland's core customers, Lisa is used to

operating on a tight budget.

Me and my stepmother had to apply for a loan

when my father passed away to help with the funeral.

For me, at that particular time, cos I mean

I wasn't with Mark, I was on my own. It was a struggle but I coped,

just as much as anyone else, you know. Lived on ready meals, really.

Hmm, I like this one. They're like lollipops, innit? Yeah.

It does look like a lollipop, not classy, but maybe strange.

These are going to go down a treat, I think.

Although sales are flying in Treorchy,

the company as a whole is feeling the pinch.

RADIO: 'It's been a eventful new year for the high street and a depressing one?

'It is undeniably a challenging time for high street retailers.

'Businesses have to adapt to the way consumers are now choosing to shop.'

Hello.

At HQ, Malcolm's worries are all about sales.

We're not doing as well as we should be.

It's a bit flat at the moment.

Flagging sales are making Malcolm cautious,

but Nick is pressing on with his risk-taking ad campaign.

So you need to just come round here a bit, Nigel, if you can.

He's presenting Karmarama's wedding idea to the board.

Who's put this together Nick?

So this is from a new agency called Karmarama.

In terms of agitate, the phrase "better than you think",

imagine the perfect idyllic British summer wedding, OK?

It's beautifully set, you've got a buffet wedding platter

and the food just looks fantastic.

It's everything you do that you would expect to see at a wedding.

We get the classic wedding scenes of the bridesmaids dancing,

so we see guests sipping bubbly being served trays of canapes,

they love it, they think it's fantastic.

John makes his speech and he

and Louise have one final surprise for their guests -

"And finally, I would just like to thank Iceland, the supermarket,

"for providing all of the food.

"Without them, none of this would have been possible."

Silence. Everyone looks stunned. OK?

And then it's, "Iceland - better than you think."

Thinking of the simple idea, this is complicated.

It's a story that's complicated, I don't know.

I don't know, ah.

I like the principle. What I'm struggling to get me head round is

that I'm not sure you make

the stretch between Iceland retail food and a wedding.

Look, here's the reason for showing you now.

If I don't show you now, I'll go back into development

if I'm not 100% and we will miss this summer.

Well, I... Yeah. OK, so...

Right. I'm not 100%, I don't think any of us are.

Look, at the end of the day, if there's no better idea, go with it,

but you're not 100% convinced.

We haven't sort of had the eureka moment, have we?

The Kerry Katona ads hit the bull's-eye for exactly what

we were trying to do from day one.

How about bringing her back? Oh, sorry, I shouldn't have said that.

I wouldn't do it, because what she does is

she reinforces all of the bad things about our business.

In Treorchy, Lisa's wedding dress has come back from its final alterations.

My stepdaughter I had it off. Well, my stepdaughter-to-be.

She was going to get married and it didn't work out.

She was going to sell it and then when she found out

me and her dad were getting married, she offered it to me,

so she's happy in a way that it's being used.

'Are you excited about seeing Mark's face

'when he sees you for the first time?'

No, not really, cos he's not going to show anything.

In Bredbury, near Manchester, Head of Security Duncan is

doing his bit to spring clean the company image.

He's recording an instructional video

to show staff how to spot shoplifters.

The whole idea of this is to get robbing bastards down to the

Co-op or somewhere else where they can get away with it easier.

Responsible for delivering Duncan's vision is director

Beverley Ashworth.

..and then fling it.

Stand by...

..and action.

CLATTER

Duncan wants the crime re-enactments to look as convincing as possible.

You wouldn't walk down here past a cashier, would you?

because you've got a chance of getting stopped,

so you would walk round.

All right, I'll sort something out.

Are you with me, real life? I'm talking real life.

Yeah, all right. Real world.

Oh, I don't think, I think you just get on the radio.

Don't chase him, let's not... that looks a bit vigilante then.

Most of our staff are vigilante, they just want to stop things

and it's not right, we don't want to tell them to do that.

No, no, not at all, do something, but don't do that, yeah.

They do, cos they just hate shoplifters so much.

Bastards. Right.

Sorry, I'll let you get on. Chill. Just chill.

Jack Regan in The Sweeny, I thought that was brilliant,

I thought it was superb.

Ray Winstone, I'm a big fan of his.

people like Telly Savalas and Clint Eastwood.

Well, we can compromise. We can do one more where she doesn't go in,

how does that sound? We'll use that one if we can.

Yeah, as I've always said, Bev, I don't give a stuff,

I'd drag them out the back and give them a kicking

just for trying it, but...

Once again, we're rolling, excellent.

SHE LAUGHS

'Do you dream about crime?'

I dream about Iceland.

The missus gets pissed off with it.

'What do you dream of about Iceland?'

Apparently, a couple of weeks ago, I woke up and told the missus that

she knew fuck all about security. Don't know where that one came from.

At HQ, Malcolm is about to talk shop with one of his family members.

With Richard as his man on the ground,

he's able to keep tabs on how the stores are running.

Hello.

Hello. Hi.

Hi. Um, are you going online today?

Ah, we're going online tomorrow. It's tomorrow morning

and we've just had a conference call about it,

so the orders are going to be placed up to 10pm tonight.

If there are any orders.

OK. Can't think of anything else to talk about, OK. Right. Cheers.

'Pretty no-nonsense guy.'

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Come to see that as an endearing trait of his personality.

One trait that Richard shares with his father is impatience with

things that don't work.

He's trying to order supplies for the staff room.

I can't see it on the list, it's the blue Tork roll, paper towel.

I can see that, actually. It's not the paper roll. Could you...

You couldn't put me through to the suppliers then, could you?

I can't believe it.

Now they've just hung up on me as I was waiting.

It's, like, unbelievable.

I mean, I'd actually... I'd pay someone ?10

if they could actually work out how to order something from that.

It's impossible.

It is impossible to order anything from that.

It's the shittest system ever.

Some of the systems are just so archaic.

These are the things Dad doesn't realise cos he's on his Mac,

you know, he's on a different system and a different e-mail address.

Malcolm hopes all will improve

if they move back to the simplicity of the company he first started.

See, in 2005, we developed this as our plan.

2005. Keep it simple, focus and accept reality.

And I've just realised over the last week or two,

mainly because Richard was working in a store

and keeps feeding me information,

it's creep, and it's all crept back.

And people here in ivory towers in their office

designing programmes for stores,

sending it out without any appreciation

of the workload that's piled onto a manager.

When you look through it, it's just complete bollocks.

So what is this?

What's it for?

I've no idea, but I think these guys will probably tell us.

Well, we don't know. Oh, you don't know either?

Nobody's going to read it.

I don't think, to be fair, we've got...

What's that?

from a jar.

Look, absolutely get the message loud and clear.

Can we have an agreement that as from today nothing goes in store

unless I say so?

Unless, as soon as he goes...

No, no...

It's a balance between consensus management and JFDI.

JFDI? Just Fucking Do It.

But there's one thing they haven't done - decided on a new TV advert.

Rival supermarkets have launched their summer TV campaigns

but Iceland has missed the slot.

I make my way through the ferns of summer here.

Instead they've asked old-hand Tom Reddy

to make some ten-second trade adverts as a stopgap.

These are just essentially to sell food.

Food is the A-line

and order this food, so you present it as beautifully as you can.

London agency Karmarama has been asked

back up to HQ to pitch again.

They're limbering up for their presentation with a name game.

BA? Bryan Adams.

Bryan Adams is a good one.

CM? Chris Martin.

Charles Manson. Charles Manson.

OH? Oliver Hardy.

Oliver Hardy - good call.

That is class. Very good.

'What are you aiming to get out of this meeting?'

The green light. Yeah, the go ahead.

ON LAPTOP: If you like authentic tasting curry

you're in for a real treat.

Oh, and a little bit of a surprise.

Iceland - better than you think.

The wedding idea has been rejected

but they are back with something new.

I think we've really got to knock in this whole thing of the humour.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

I want to make sure that they really get that.

What I'm worried about is that when you show them all the other stuff

that they're going to go, "Oh, yeah, that looks lovely.

"That's lovely, innit? The food looks amazing. Do we need the funny bit at the end?

"Why can't we just go back to 'that's why mums go to Iceland.'"?

'Nick needs to decide

'whether to go ahead with his game-changing campaign.

'With the crucial autumn season approaching,

'he'll have to make up his mind soon.'

We just wanted to show you

these little clips that we've put together.

ON TV: 'You're in for a real treat.

'Oh, and a little bit of a surprise.

'Iceland, better than you think.'

I've got to say, I'm just trying

to read your body language which is poker.

Obviously we need to know from you,

cos you're controlling the light switch on this.

The overt challenge to convince cynical mums that Iceland is

better than you think is still an overt challenge.

But I'm not sure it's one I want to take on at autumn and Christmas.

Yeah. I think, given where we're at and everything we've talked about,

you know, the creative needs to be a bit more mainstream -

funnier, populist, traditionally comfortable Iceland advertising.

I don't know. I'm not you, but my instinct would be,

I think you need to go out there with a new message.

But it doesn't feel to me like an Iceland campaign at the moment.

OK. We'll carry on thinking.

With sales still shaky and no suitable idea on the table,

Nick's starting to have doubts about

the risks of the bold new ad campaign.

The timescale is tight.

We need, in the next couple of weeks, to be going to the board and saying

this is the one we've chosen and what we're going to do.

Trying to get that Iceland brand a bit further out there,

that hasn't come to pass.

With the vital autumn period already looming, the priority for Nick

is any advertising now needs to reassure core customers.

I think we need to make sure we have

an idea that people understand, they get.

My job is make sure it challenges and is as good as it needs to be.

I mean, if I was just making advertising for Malcolm

then I could do that tomorrow.

In the head office test store,

Malcolm is having some relaunch ideas of his own.

He's decided that what his customers want is simple.

Now, when you look at that, at the wine display,

All the different wines... How do you really know?

So, I've got an idea.

Right, as an experiment we're going to take five stores and this label...

Imagine that bigger and bolder,

but all it needs to say is

"Good red wine."

"Good white wine."

"Good rose wine."

And that's it.

And we have good red wine, good white wine and good rose wine and...

..just blocked.

So we sell three wines instead of 30 and see how that works.

And that's it. Good red wine.

This isn't white label,

this isn't cheap, it's just simplicity.

Good cheddar cheese, good red wine.

There's something there. I don't know how it'll develop -

it might not go anywhere, but it might.

Ahead of the relaunch, the store facelifts are entering

the final push.

In Tooting, an undercover detective has been sent from head office

to help Sandra stop the shoplifters.

So today we've got Bayou in store.

Bayou is an undercover store detective,

and so what he does, he will move round the store

in the appearance of shopping, so that he can then stop any

potential shoplifters and also catch shoplifters as they leave the store.

Obviously we don't announce to the team downstairs that we have

an undercover detective, it's only because we don't

want his cover to be given away.

What we have had in the past, and what Bayou's experienced, and so I've had to speak to the team,

is that they will see him in the store

and they'll assume that he is a shoplifter.

So they then start to follow him round the store.

He's trying to follow someone else, they're following him

and it gets to be a bit of a circus.

So the guys know that he's here and they notice him,

but where they will have seen him before, today they should put

two and two together and not follow him around the shop.

He is very stealthy.

We've seen him go from the front to the back of the store in about two seconds.

Excuse me, sir, I'm a store detective,

I believe that your bag consists of items you haven't paid for.

Can you follow me back to the store, please? Thank you.

This is me first time and I didn't mean to do it.

Why did you decide to take it?

I...I don't know.

Why you do this, sir? You've got a job and you still steal from Iceland.

You will now be banned from Iceland stores

and also any other businesses that take part in the same scheme.

So you care now? OK, obviously.

Madam, why are you stealing this from Iceland?

Because I'm a bit broke.

The reason I'm stopping you is because I believe you conceal items.

What can be difficult is

when see mothers come in with young children.

And what I personally find very...

not difficult, because you'll do it because you have to do it,

um, is when you then have to take the mother

and the child out to the back.

And I think because I have a young son, you are terrified about

what on earth does your child think is going on?

And we deal with the mum and we get her out as quickly as possible.

But we would not let it go,

because she has stolen from us, she has no right to steal from us.

She's got a couple of children and she's stealing,

so when those children grow up and they steal,

she can't turn round and say that, you know what, stop doing that.

'Have you ever stolen?'

Once I stole Chewits when I was about 10, 11 years old.

And I stole it from round the corner from my house

and I got a slipper from my mum - she, she caned me.

After that I never stole again.

'With the brief no longer to challenge but to reassure,

'it's the final pitch for Karmarama.'

THEY CHATTER

'Impressed by their flair, Nick wants

'to give them one last chance to win the autumn/Christmas campaign.'

Where do you want us, Chloe? Usual office, please.

'To deliver the comfort factor,

'they're now thinking of signing up some familiar faces.'

So the first idea we're calling, "Good food, great fun."

This campaign features a fun chat show with surprised celebrities

ringing the Iceland doorbell to be met by our host.

We've written the script with Miranda Hart.

Hold on. There she is.

Look, laugh, yeah? Hey?

Essentially, we give Miranda her very own chat show where various

celebrities ring the doorbell and appear through the Iceland door.

OK, lots of fun people usually laugh, you know.

Tough audience. Don't worry, all right?

It's like playing the working men's clubs up North, isn't it?

Crikey, eh? Blimey.

Oh, somebody take my mother, please.

Right, come on.

Next. Next.

Look who it is, ladies and gentlemen.

You know who that is, don't you? Kerry is back. Right.

If I'm honest, it doesn't matter who we talk to,

whether it's you or another agency or an incumbent agency such as Tom,

when we go back to the core personality and core brand values,

we always end up with the same work on the table.

The point you make is a really interesting one,

Nick, which is, if all roads keep leading back to the same

sort of solutions, it either means that those solutions

are absolutely right or we need to actually step back

and think, "Is there a fundamentally different way in?"

We'll get back to you next week. Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Pleasure.

They have a better understanding than anyone

of their business, their customers and what they need to say.

And it's just taking us a while getting up to speed with that.

They're not the easiest clients to deal with, but nothing is ever

as easy as you imagine it's going to be at the beginning of the journey.

Here we are, Iceland, Chester. This store was built by Bejam

and we acquired it when we took them over.

Down the road from HQ in Chester, Malcolm's good red wine idea

is already in store.

So here we are - Good Red wine.

Now the wine marketing board, whoever it is,

who do have some authority, I understand,

wouldn't let us call it Good Red Wine,

cos that's making a claim.

So we call it Good Red.

Red wine. And I think it looks absolutely amazing.

I mean, if you look at that for a label,

why have all that bullshit on there, why not just call it what it is?

Good White. We choose the best white and the best rose

and we've called it just that - Good Red, Good White and Good Rose.

The idea was we took all the other wine off sale

and just filled it with three types of wine and it didn't sell.

So that was a bit of a disaster.

Now in this store, we've put the old wine back.

So we've got Good Rose, Good White, Good Red

and then we've got all the old wine back and the sales in this store

are probably 15% up on wine, so it's working.

So sometimes you've just to fiddle around and persevere

and make a few tweaks and changes and eventually you get it right.

With a tweaked version of his Michael Buble idea, Tom Reddy

is back at HQ to meet Nick, and with him to pitch is his daughter Verity.

So we're trying to show this can work, and we're saying,

well, you want to go back to a bit of fun to become Iceland again.

You want to have a bit of personality about it,

you don't want to lose the food quality.

You've got an optimistic Buble in autumn and then you've got a magical

Christmas, so it doesn't sound brave but it sounds professional.

And it'll be a nice, tested, bankable, safe, homogenous set of work.

It's the right time to put these things back on the table

and think to ourselves, "You know what? What is it that we need?"

And Buble does a lot of what you talk about,

and it's right up our street, as far as our customers are concerned.

I think it has got a real charm about it, a real warmth.

In a leafy suburb in Manchester,

Iceland's new advert is being filmed.

Tom Reddy has won the job.

This is great for us cos it's a very competitive business.

It's very satisfying to be trusted with the core piece.

Generally, in my personal life I think the quickest way to end a war

is to lose it, you know?

I'd rather walk away from...

So I'm not competitive in that sense, no.

But, um, yes, I suppose you do get a bang out of it.

DIRECTOR: Roll. And...action.

It's quite a simple story really.

This document says, "Romance, it's time we met."

A little romance builds up between her

and the Iceland delivery man.

And so we're kind of courting

the non-shopper through the medium of this little story.

When you cast actors, you say,

"Well, Iceland want to move up without moving out.

The strategy is -

two and a half million of these people are shopping at ASDA,

they're shopping at Sainsburys,

they're shopping at Waitrose.

They should be shopping here.

The relaunch is only a few weeks away.

The risky ad campaign has been put on hold, but the marketing team

have come up with something they hope will appeal to Malcolm.

So, top tier.

I like... Oh, it's a bit dark.

I like Pub Grub, I'm not sure of Posh Grub.

So Posh Grub went in as a wild card, really.

Posh Grub, oh, I like that name.

I like Posh Grub.

You don't even know it's Iceland.

Actually, if you did that and said it was Marks and Spencers you'd believe it.

And what I don't like is this -

I think it's complex, I don't think it's Iceland,

I don't think you know it is and I'm not a fan of Posh Grub, I'm sorry.

I love Posh Grub.

THEY LAUGH

You've just got to make sure they look different.

Posh Grub.

You can always change it in six months. Yeah.

Refresh it.

Very good.

For now, Posh Grub offers a move upmarket, Malcolm-style.

What's aspirational?

We don't have Iceland Finest or a gourmet range.

We're launching Posh Grub, so it's... aspirational to a point.

Back in the Welsh Valleys, preparations are under way

for a wedding.

Anyone got tweezers, I can't find my tweezers anywhere.

I haven't got none. I'm going to have bushy eyebrows!

SHE LAUGHS

With husband-to-be Mark getting ready at his brother's,

Lisa has done a lot of the catering herself.

I'm going to have lovely smelly hands.

I just hope it all goes well now

and the cooking's going to go down a treat, I'm hoping.

We've done all these last night, all the cooking.

How long did it take us? Three hours?

Four. Four, was it?

It was something like that. Filled jacket potatoes,

chicken tikka this side and curry this side.

We have got more spring rolls, loads.

It smells lush.

If I had my way I'd have a sneaky taste, but I can't.

However you look at it, everybody in the UK has heard of Iceland.

Half the population of the UK have been into one of our shops.

CHEERING

It's a wonderful feeling for me that I started the business

with ?30, and now we have become part of the local community.

You know, we're a blue-collar store for ordinary people.

We're not Waitrose,

so we accept what market we're in and we're very proud of it.

'What about the naysayers? Do you think...?'

We are not a health food company.

My job isn't here to change the eating habits of the nation.

We're here to sell products that people want to buy

and to make a profit.

And with that profit we can open more stores, create more jobs,

pay more in tax, give more money to charity,

but we have to make a profit.

In the Valleys, we've been brought up, not in poverty, but in...

We've been...

We've struggled at times.

Our parents never, ever let us go hungry.

Never, ever let us go out of clothes.

But this day and age, when you've got places like Iceland,

what more do you want?

And everybody ate the Iceland food, so that's one thing, ain't it?

Yeah. The extra food went, whoof, gone.

Back in London, Richard's been having luck drawing in more

customers in Swiss Cottage.

His small measures are paying off.

I put PG Tips out front, A - because it's an amazing deal - ?4.25.

To have that right at the front as quite a high-value item,

will drive the basket spend which is what it's all about.

Sales are flying at the moment, so in the last couple of weeks since

we started making the changes round store, we've grown ourselves

from 36, 37 to 41 last week

and we're hoping for an even bigger week this week.

So, yeah, we've done really well.

Very happy.

With the company's annual results just out,

things are finally looking up.

PR Consultant Keith thinks it's time for Malcolm to speak to the press.

Do you ever get bored?

LINE RINGS Is this The Grocer or Retail Week?

Retail Week. We've fallen out with The Grocer, haven't we? No, we haven't.

ON PHONE: Retail Week, Alex Wilson.

Alex, Malcolm Walker. Hi, Malcolm, how are you?

Oh, well, I look forward to seeing that...

Well, we don't, but...

On to a better subject now, Malcolm.

How do you assess the year then?

Spectacularly successful, considering everything that's happened.

You know, our sales were a bit negative in the first half

but we got our act together and the second half was really

stunningly good until Horsegate,

and then it just flattened off a bit.

Yeah...

We refreshed the advertising, you know, we just woke up

and we're firing on all cylinders.

I have to go. Cheers. OK.

Well, he didn't sound bored. That's something, isn't it?

Down in South Wales, Treorchy store manager Martin is working late.

After nine months of planning,

product development and marketing meetings,

the big Iceland relaunch is finally happening.

The good thing about Iceland

We definitely try to cater for everybody.

With Sandra's shoplifters under control,

she's focusing on getting the new look right in Tooting.

Tomorrow morning we have to open absolutely perfect.

This is the final push now.

So it's a nice big sign.

Iceland never do anything subtle.

'So do you think it'll work?'

The re-branding? I think it will.

I think we've always had our faithful customers

that'll always come to us,

but I think this will just draw in a few more curious customers.

They'll be like, "Hmm, I didn't think Iceland was like that.

"Let me and have a look and see what it's like."

Then they'll come in and they'll be like, "Wow, great."

'Have you experienced any doubts, Sandra?'

I think if you do...you've already sort of lost, really.

We may as well just keep going and see what happens.

'After a year of highs and lows, Malcolm has invited all

'his staff and their families to his place for a charity garden party.'

Sandra, hello.

Hello. You've come a long way.

I have. Is this your house?

Yeah. It's massive.

Aren't you drinking? He can't multitask.

Oh, you can't drink and look after the kids at the same time?

It's an Iceland do, so I thought I'd better come along

and see everyone having fun in the sunshine.

It's most unusual that the sun is shining cos it's my birthday

tomorrow and I can say with confidence its pissed with rain

on or around my birthday every day for 59 years.

And I can also say I've just lost my one-year-old son.

Look up! Look up in the sky! Don't cover my eyes.

This is not a proper company

and he's not a proper boss. He's a one-off.

I don't think he can ever be accused of being the sort of boss

who'd ask you to do something that he's not prepared to do himself.

If you do tandems, can I have a go?

He is a maverick and Iceland has never been successful by being normal.

You complicated my cheese label. Bloody pictures, more words.

I am. Go back to your wine label, one of the reasons...

You told me to take that picture off it.

Mike, it's never like this when I'm cooking. I know that. I knew he was going to say that.

The Iceland burgers, that's what it is. As soon as I put them on, that's what happens.

It's never been easy. Every year there's been a crisis,

there's competition, you think it's never been as bad

but it has, it is and it always will be.

This place is awesome.

It's well kept but also quite natural

I'm stressing about them damaging my lawn edge.

When you're an entrepreneur you're never happy, you always want more.

And I've come to the conclusion

I never, ever want to retire, because I think when you retire, you die.

You lose purpose. So. um, I'm just going to keep going for ever.

Are you hungry to find out more?

Join the Open University in exploring the changing face

of the high street and discover what's in store for the future.

Go to bbc.co.uk/freezer and follow the links to the Open University.

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