‘Manly’ HP Sauce returns to TV in tabloid-style M&C Saatchi campaign

HP Sauce (Houses of Parliament sauce as it used to be) is one of the hardy perennials of British life, as is its agency M&C Saatchi.

And this new campaign, the brand’s first TV effort for five years, is very M&C Saatchi.

Why? Well it’s Maurice Saatchi’s celebrated (by him anyway) ‘Brutal Simplicity of Thought.’ HP Sauce, it avers, is all about men, sport and bacon sarnies so position it as ‘the sauce of manliness’ which can turn a sandwich into a ‘manwich.’ Forget about those namby-pamby males (and all women of course) who don’t fit the stereotype.

But it’s the tabloid kind of thing M&C probably does best. I wonder what Paul Arden, the late creative director of Saatchi & Saatchi in its pomp, would have made of it? Paul was most definitely not a footie and bacon sarnie kind of guy.