22/09/2008

Hovis, through its London-based ad agency, Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, has just returned the UK to TV advertising that we'll actually talk about. 

The Hovis 'Northern Lad' ads have been running off and on since 1973 and clearly the planning team at MCBD have spotted that this advertising institution would benefit from a bit of nostalgia.

It's a 120-second romp through British (well English, really, but we won't carp) history and features a young lad (who apparently is a Scot) buying a hauf loaf in a Victorian back street grocer and running home through a twelve-decade timeline picking up the sinking of the Titanic, WWI and II - complete with Churchillian calls to arms, the Swinging Sixties and the miners' strike.

It is breathtaking in both its scope and the brave choice of landmarks that it evokes.

You can see it here.

Quite clearly, this epic, and it is nothing less than that in advertising terms, will have cost rather a lot of money (dare I say dough?) to produce and to screen. But the emotional punch that it packs and the resonance it will strike - way beyond adland - makes this the greatest example of advertising communications I have seen for several years.

It is arguably flawless. Okay, one could gripe about all sorts of technical issues, costume, music, acting, etc but it is so close to perfection on every one of those levels to make griping simply pedantic. 

It's the way in which it unashamedly picks up an advertising institution (the Hovis northern lad) at a time where staples such as bread have seen eyewatering price rises and then layers on pound upon pound of unapologetic and hugely emotional nationalism that makes the ad what it is.

Team GB will love it.

The Daily Mail does, that's for sure.

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Mark Gorman has over 20 years’ experience in the Scottish advertising scene, having started out at Hall Advertising in 1985 before moving to The Leith Agency and establishing his own agency, 1576 in 1994.

Over the last five years, he has focussed more on the delivery of strategic advice on marketing for a range of private clients in a consultancy role.

He is currently chair of the Scottish Marketing Association, steers the Scottish Marketing Communications Action Group and is a member of the Marketing Society’s council. He is a past chair of the Scottish division of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising and is a fellow of the IPA.

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