Hovis puts £4m behind first campaign under ABF ownership

Hovis has put £4m behind a national advertising push that began on 1 September, its first substantial campaign since Associated British Foods took control of the business in July.

The campaign, “Strength Baked In”, runs to November across TV, video on demand, YouTube, out-of-home, radio, social, consumer PR and retail media in Morrisons, Tesco and Waitrose. Hovis expects it to reach 79% of main household shoppers. The 30-second film, made by VCCP, tracks the ghost signs still faintly visible on brick walls around the country and sets them against small everyday acts of endurance. City centre murals follow through the autumn.

The film is not new. Hovis first put it out online last year, on a much smaller footprint. What has changed is the budget and the owner signing it off. ABF completed its takeover on 8 July, folding Hovis into its own Allied Bakeries to create Hovis Bakeries: 26 sites, roughly 5,500 staff and the Hovis, Kingsmill, Allinson’s and Sunblest brands under one roof. The Competition and Markets Authority cleared the deal in June after a ten-month examination.

Mark Brown, chief marketing officer at Hovis Bakeries, said the ad “is going on wide release across the nation”, speaking to Talking Retail.

Heritage is a defensible place for Hovis to stand. It owns one of the most recognised pieces of British advertising in Ridley Scott’s 1973 Boy on the Bike, and the ghost sign idea works on the same logic: age as evidence of trust rather than nostalgia for its own sake. The harder question is weight. Warburtons holds 47.2% of branded plant bread sales against 30.6% for Hovis and Kingsmill combined, and £4m over three months is a modest lever against a gap that size.