This contest was announced in the Christmas 1923 edition of “The Graphic” magazine - a publication similar in page size and contents to the “Illustrated London News”. The set of 16 Bovril posters in thumbnails comes from the cover of “The History of Bovril Advertising”. This was an undated in-house production (no ISBN) issued in about 1970. The book tells us that the aim of the contest, (which required a donation of £5, equivalent to £13.50 in today’s money to enter), was to rank the first 12 out of 16 examples in order of popularity. For prize winners, the sums were impressive - out of a total of £30,000 (£1.6 million today) prize money, £12,000 (£648,000 today) went to the overall winner. The equivalent of £3.8 million was donated to hospital charities.
Bovril’s viscous charms may hold little attraction for the modern consumer but its distinctive red labels on black jars can still be glimpsed on the lower supermarket shelves but the days when it was one of the most intensively advertised products will not be returning. It began life as a Victorian product in an era when anything new in the marketplace had to fight hard for attention. Outdoor advertising was virtually unregulated and popular magazines catering to an increasingly literate public, swelled their revenues with pages and pages of implausible and outlandish claims that largely went unchallenged - consumer protection was not a thing. Relentless publicity campaigns put the Bovril name into the public eye at every opportunity with constant appeals to patriotic fervour while building a strong association with good health and physical strength. In 1893 its factory manager, S H Benson, left to start his own advertising agency with Bovril as his first client. It would go on to be one of the most successful British agencies of the 20th. century until it was acquired by WPP in 1989. Two examples of Victorian advertising are at the end of the post.
More on Bovril can be seen at Prevents That Sinking Feeling (2007) and British to the Backbone (2017).
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