Bradford-based supermarket Morrisons has swapped famous faces in its adverts for inquisitive children asking questions about the origins of its fresh food.

The supermarket chain has ditched the celebrities and focused on “more believable” children, visiting farms and butchers and asking questions about food.

The group’s adverts have become well known for featuring a host of famous faces including Denise van Outen, Richard Hammond, Alan Hansen and Nick Hancock.

Angus Maciver, group marketing and communications director, said the new campaign aimed to explain where a lot of the fresh food comes from.

He said: “We are being brave and moving away from featuring celebrities, at least in the main.

“The celebrity advertising is fantastic and we are very pleased with it and think it has done really well.

“However, what’s interesting is that the format is reasonably formulaic – you have to have a celebrity out in a field with a trolley and they are quite a demanding customer, so they are saying ‘I want fresh British meat’, and then they end up in store and say ‘I can get it from here’.

“But what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t do a really great job and say only Morrisons does this.

“So the customer doesn’t actually take out of it, that Morrisons is the only supermarket which does 100 per cent fresh British meat and chicken.”

Mr Maciver said the supermarket decided on using children’s natural curiosity following consumer research and any savings made by losing the celebrities was an unintentional bonus. He said: “The cost of production is slightly lower, but that’s not why we are doing it.

“It’s not about moving away from celebrities, our story is about telling our message in a more compelling way.

“The other added advantage for us is that in the focus groups we got comments from customers that they found the story more believable because we are explaining it to children.”