Butcher and entrepreneur Simon Howie has said that the offering of the much disparaged in-house creative department at broadcaster STV, is the only reason his company has been able to launch a nationwide TV campaign.

Simon Howie, The Scottish Butcher has been running its first TV advertising campaign for the last year, the first time it has used TV in its 23 year history.

The company has begun running a new TV campaign to promote its bacon produce (see below).

“The flexibility that STV has given us has been a help alongside the fact that we now have this product in Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrison’s, so we now have the medium of the television to get it out there, but also when people do see us we have the geographical coverage to warrant it being on television. It would be difficult to justify a national advertising campaign if we only had shops in Perthshire,” Howie explained to The Drum.

STV Creative is the Scottish broadcaster’s in-house advertising production house which has been growing in recent years.

This year alone STV Creative has worked on nearly 250 campaigns, while last year it completed over 600, acting as either a creative or a production service, collaborating with feelance creatives, designers and TV production professionals.

In the last year the team has also worked alongside brands such as Arnold Clark, Gillette, Slater Hogg, The Sun, Stagecoach and Strathclyde Police and collaborated with creative agencies including The Union, The Leith Agency, and most recently, Whitespace and is currently working on a new TV campaign for window brand Penicuik.

The company has been criticised by some within the advertising community for offering low budget advertising productions, with some creative agencies claiming that the broadcaster has taken many clients out of the market place, and lowered the price of budgets over recent years in a period when marketing work has become scarce and budgets tighten.

The company’s website claims that it can create adverts from just under £1,000 to over £50,000.

Howie claims however that the broadcaster’s offering was the only way that his company would have been able to reach a nationwide audience.

The Simon Howie campaign focuses on specific products from the range, currently being sold in supermarkets across Scotland, and aims to raise the profile of the brand to consumers.

“The campaign is going very well – this is the fourth advert in the last twelve months and we’re very pleased with it,” added Howie.