Iceland supermarket pokes fun at Big Four consultants in new website cartoon
A tongue‑in‑cheek illustration on Iceland’s site revives the retailer’s ‘Dark Ages’ and calls out a £16m consultancy bill.
Iceland has posted a cartoon on its corporate website that lampoons the chain’s costly reliance on external advisers during the early 2000s. The illustration, styled like a pitch deck, shows a rowing race called ‘Beware Management Consultants’ where the supermarket’s boat is being pulled backwards by consultant‑appointed managers. The graphic references a £16m spend on firms that included PwC and other Big Four players.
The cartoon and its message
The drawing depicts “upper management” as sharks smelling the scent of reorganisation blood, eager to restructure. A “panel of auditors” is shown overseeing redundancies, director bonuses and the outsourcing of services to India. The tone is deliberately tongue‑in‑cheek, positioning the consultants as the cause of a losing race.
A look back at the ‘Dark Ages’
The episode revives a period Malcolm Walker once dubbed ‘The Dark Ages’. After Walker was forced out amid insider‑trading allegations in 2000, the board handed control to former chief executive William Grimsey and chief financial officer William Hoskins, known internally as “the two Bills”. Walker later accused them of failing to turn the company round.
In 2002 the retailer merged with cash‑and‑carry group Booker and was renamed The Big Food Group. Company filings from 2003 show the board received external advice from PwC and New Bridge Street Consultants. The latter was appointed as the primary adviser on remuneration matters in January 2003 and was later acquired by professional services firm Aon in 2008.
Implications for the retail sector
A spokesperson for the supermarket said the chain is “a very straight talking supermarket” and has “no time for CEOs and leaders that haven’t got a real strategy”.
Iceland is a very straight talking supermarket.
The public jab may prompt consultancy firms to be more transparent about fees and outcomes, and could encourage other retailers to scrutinise their own advisory spend. With UK food inflation at a five‑year low, Iceland is positioning itself as a price‑focused competitor, a stance echoed in recent coverage of supermarket discount strategies here.
Going forward, the cartoon serves as a reminder that costly external advice does not guarantee turnaround success, and that governance choices remain under the spotlight for investors and consumers alike.
