Calling the campaign an “insult” to local bakers, the group’s complaint centres on what it perceives to be the misleading nature of the advert.
The Real Bread Campaign is an initiative run by the charity Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming, focused on championing bread made without chemical raising agents, processing aids or artificial additives.
The group argues that the advert creates the impression that Hovis has maintained an unbroken tradition of traditional breadmaking, despite significant changes to its ownership, production methods and products.
Hovis’ campaign features small, independent neighbourhood bakeries and uses phrases such as “celebrates our heritage, our communities” and “the heart of what we do has always stayed the same”.
The Real Bread Campaign argues that Hovis now operates at an industrial scale, producing bread in large factories using the Chorleywood process rather than relying on skilled craft bakers working in local bakeries.
The group also highlights changes to the ingredients used in Hovis products. It notes that the company originally relied on its patented wheatgerm flour, to which craft bakers added just three or four natural ingredients.
It argues that today many Hovis products are made on fully automated production lines using ingredients including E471, E472e, E282, E300, soya flour and palm oil, while some products no longer contain the original wheatgerm flour.
The campaign also takes issue with what it describes as the advert’s use of local bakery heritage imagery. It argues that Hovis, parent company Associated British Foods and other industrial bread manufacturers played a role in the decline of many smaller independent bakeries.
Taking a strong stance against the creative, the campaign group said: “We [the Real Bread Campaign] believe that the ‘strength baked in’ advertising campaign for Hovis breaches rules 3.1 and 3.3 of the CAP Code for non-broadcast advertising.
“We further believe that invoking nostalgia for local, community bakeries, of the sort that Hovis, its now-parent company (Associated British Foods) and other industrial loaf fabricators helped to destroy, is totally inappropriate and an insult to the memories of the families who were forced out of business.”
