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, the inclusion of several tabloid journalists as extras in the production, and the release of a making-of documentary featuring extra scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with the cast and crew. 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, 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. 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."Hovis: Britishness", Utalkmarketing.com, 13 September 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2010. ITV, the broadcaster of Coronation Street, were persuaded to cut the length of the programme by two seconds to accommodate the ad's unusual 122-second length. The full version of the commercial continued to air in cinemas for four weeks, with 90- and 10-second cuts appearing on television into early 2009. Reception Reaction to the release of the campaign within the media industry was immediate. Features on the campaign and on Brian Mackie appeared in several national newspapers, including The Independent, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star. Coverage was also given to the story in local newspapers in Northern England and Scotland such as the Yorkshire Post, the Liverpool Echo, the Eastern Daily Press, and the Scottish edition of the Daily Record. 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 and Loose Women; 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. 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."The Thinkboxes Winner - September 2008: Hovis - Go On Lad ", Thinkbox, September 2008. Retrieved 18 May 2010. Research by the qualitative assessment organisation Millward Brown showed that Hovis' brand