The brand began in 1886; the Hovis process was patented on 6 October 1887 by Richard "Stoney" Smith, and S. Fitton & Sons Ltd developed the brand, milling the flour and selling it along with Hovis branded baking tins to other bakers. The name was coined in 1890 by London student Herbert Grime in a national competition set by S. Fitton & Sons Ltd to find a trading name for their patent flour which was rich in wheat germ. Grime won £25 when he coined the word from the Latin phrase hominis vis – "the strength of man". The company became the Hovis Bread FlourCompany Limited in 1898. When the abundance of certain B vitamins in wheatgerm was reported in 1924, Hovis increased in popularity.
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 more easily identify their train. A 1926 advertisement widely deployed on the railways showed five such trains carrying headcodes H ō V I S along with an explanation. The fact that the "clockwise" Hounslow Loop head-code was a slightly height-reduced 'O' topped by a bar led to the rendering of the brand as HōVIS – a rendering that significantly outlasted the advertising campaign. where Ridley Scott filmed the 1973 Hovis commercial In 1973, Hovis ran a television advertisement, Boy on the Bike, written by advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce and directed by Ridley Scott, who later directed Alien. The advert featured the slow movement of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 rearranged for brass. Filmed on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset, Scott's advert has been voted Britain's favourite advertisement of all time. An original film print was restored by the BFI in 2019 and is available on their Advertising Collection. This advertisement was repeated on British television for a 10-day run inMay 2006 to commemorate the firm's 120th anniversary. The soundtrack had to be re-recorded owing to a claim that wouldn't meet advertising standards. The boy on the bike, Carl Barlow, then aged 13, left acting and eventually 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. Hovis included a number of its employees in the advert. In the opening scene a boy can be seen taking a loaf of bread from a baker dressed in white who says to him, "there ya go lad". This baker was actually an employee of Hovis who had worked in the Wigan bakery since 1978.
Hovis map books
Hovis Ltd. published a series of map books which included advertisements for their products. In 1899 the company produced eight books of maps, covering England and Wales, designed for cyclists. In 1920 the company published Where to Go and How to Get There: Hovis Road Map of England, Wales and Scotland, and several versions of this book were later printed.
Hovis biscuit
Since 1980, Hovis have licensed Jacob's to produce a digestive biscuit, branded as Hovis. Now a United Biscuits product, they are shaped like a miniature flat copy of the traditional Hovis loaf, and like the bread have the word "HOVIS" stamped on their top surface.
In a bid to help the environment and sustainability, Hovis collaborated with TerraCycle in The Bread Bag Recycling Programme. The objective of the programme is to drop-off your bread bags at public drop-off locations across the UK, or simply mail them to delivery services like those provided by UPS. These are all listed on an interactive map. After that the bags are recycled in a specialist plant. Those who take part in the programme are able to get TerraCycle points. These can be redeemed for a variety of charitable gifts or a payment to the non-profit organization.
