"Go On Lad" begins in 1886, with an over-the-shoulders view of a boy in a flat cap and brown jacket buying a loaf of bread in a bakery.

The boy weaves through a crowd of marching women bearing placards, emerging into an open square during World War I, where he spies a column of young soldiers on parade.

After saluting the soldier he had marched next to, he climbs down the other side into the interbellum, and runs past a couple engaged in a conversation beside a period car.

The music turns sombre for a moment as a family of refugees passes by, and an excerpt from Winston Churchill's delivery of the "We shall fight on the beaches" speech plays from a radio in a nearby home.

He crawls under the table, takes a biscuit and a glass of lemonade, then runs on into 1966, where a group celebrating England's victory in the 1966 FIFA World Cup chant "Champions!"

[5] The continuing failure of the brand began to affect Premier Foods as a whole, with the company's share price dropping from £3.50 to £1.80 in the 18 months following the acquisition.

Its reported profits, while declining, still amounted to £387m, making it the fourth largest grocery brand in the UK, behind Coca-Cola, Warburtons, and Walkers Crisps.

[2][7] To this end, Premier Foods consolidated its marketing across all brands into two advertising agencies, Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy (MCBD) and McCann Erickson, with the latter originally taking on Hovis.

[2] A pitch was put together by creative team Gavin Horrance and Danny Hunt of MCBD,[10] comprising a set of "mood films" constructed from stock footage, and the idea of "the perilous journey a young boy takes through 122 years of British history to bring the small brown load back to his mam.

[10] With only four months set aside for production of the commercial, work began in earnest on scouting for locations and cast capable of presenting the desired tone for Go On Lad.

[13] In all, over 1750 people were hired to act as extras in Go On Lad,[19] including over 200 members of historical reenactment societies for the World War I scene alone.

[13] In casting for the role of the boy, Ledwidge wanted to eschew the "stylised blonde healthy child seen in most modern European advertising" in favour of someone who would evoke memories of the actors in productions such as Kes or Great Expectations.

This included simple work such as removing anachronistic yellow road markings, satellite dishes, and replacing PVC windows.

More complex work included the removal of several buildings with modern architectural styles or features, the creation of a CGI colliery, a Spitfire and a Concorde jet aeroplane (which was later cut in editing), crowd multiplication for the striking miners and suffragettes, and the recreation of the Millennial fireworks display.

[1][10] The campaign surrounding Go On Lad was conducted on a budget of £15m,[2] and comprised extensive public relations work by Frank PR,[22] the launch of a new Hovis website,[2] new packaging using a bolder typeface and stronger colours,[7] the re-launch of the unsliced "little brown loaf" featured in the campaign,[23] and changes to the formulae of other Hovis lines,[7] as well as a series of in-store deals and promotions.

[19] Public relations work in the lead-up to the release of Go On Lad included stunts such as the deliberate leaking of a false rumour that footballer Wayne Rooney would be appearing in the ad as the new face of Hovis,[22][23] the inclusion of several tabloid journalists as extras in the production,[1] and the release of a making-of documentary featuring extra scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with the cast and crew.

[22] The impact of the PR work was such that the Hovis campaign received an estimated £2.5m of free publicity even before Go On Lad's first broadcast,[23] prompting competitors Kingsmill and Warburtons to vastly increase the number of in-store special offers and deals on their products as a defence tactic in the four weeks leading up to the ad's debut.

[1] The first broadcast of Go On Lad was at 8:45pm on Friday 12 September 2008, as the final advertisement of a commercial break in the popular soap opera Coronation Street.

[22] Stories on the launch also appeared in other media: in television, the ad was discussed during segments of ITV programming such as the Granada Reports[18] and Loose Women;[22] in radio, over 300 national and regional stations made mention of the campaign; online, a version of the commercial uploaded to video sharing website YouTube received over 180,000 hits and 1,000 comments.

[23] The public's response was equally impressive; within 24 hours of the first broadcast of Go On Lad, Hovis received over 1,000 unsolicited e-mails and letters praising the commercial.

[2] Over half of this larger budget went towards the production and release of a new television and print campaign designed to emphasise the family-owned nature of the brand.

[28] The 60-second television component of the campaign, titled Foreign Businessman, premiered on 4 October 2008, during a commercial break in the talent show The X Factor.

Simply titled Rolls, the 60-second television commercial continued the theme of switching from the Victorian period to the present day, and was once again written by Gavin Torrance and Danny Hunt of MCBD.

[39] While Ledwidge was originally interested in reprising his role as director,[40] production company Rattling Stick eventually assigned Ivan Bird to oversee the project.