Advertising
In 1915, when the London and South Western Railway inaugurated their first electric train services, they introduced alphabetical head-codes in lieu of the traditional discs used on steam locomotives so that the general public could easily identify their trains. There were five routes, and when combined together they spelt 'HOVIS'. It featured heavily in early advertising.
In 1973, Hovis became lodged in the public imagination through an evocative television advertisement, "Boy on Bike" (a.k.a. "Boy on the Bike" and "Bike Ride"), produced by the Collett Dickenson Pearce advertising agency and directed by Ridley Scott, who six years later would come to the public's attention when Alien was released. The advert featured the slow movement of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 rearranged for brass. The advert has been voted Britain's favourite advertisement of all time. The ad was filmed on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.
This advertisement was repeated on British television for a 10-day run in May 2006 to commemorate the firm's 120th anniversary. The boy on the bike, Carl Barlow, then aged 13, became a firefighter in East Ham in 1979.
In 2008 Hovis departed from the "boy on a bike" format by commissioning Go On Lad a retrospective advertisement documenting the 122 years of British history since the brand's launch. Go On Lad was voted "Advert of the Decade" by the British public in December 2009.
Read more about this topic: Hovis
Famous quotes containing the word advertising:
“The same people who tell us that smoking doesn’t cause cancer are now telling us that advertising cigarettes doesn’t cause smoking.”
—Ellen Goodman (b. 1941)
“Now wait a minute. You listen to me. I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex- wives, and several bartenders dependent on me. And I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”
—Ernest Lehman (b.1920)
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)