How Specsavers got ITV and Channel 4 to ‘mix up’ their announcements

The Media Plan

Specsavers has pulled off a coup getting ITV and Channel 4 to collaborate as media owners for its latest ad campaign. How did the brand pull it off?

There was a time when such a collaboration would be considered unthinkable.

But earlier this month, Specsavers carried off a a UK media first as part of “Should’ve 2.0”, the optician brand’s revamped version of its 20-year ad campaign “Should’ve Gone to Specsavers”.

ITV and Channel 4 agreed to mix up their continuity announcements for some of their top shows including Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, First Dates and Dancing On Ice.

During the opening weekend of the campaign from 4 March, there were eight confused announcements on Channel 4 and four on ITV.

But how did Specsavers and its media agency, Omnicom’s MG OMD, manage to convince the rival broadcasters to act as collaborators? When a relaunch of the campaign was considered, Specsavers’ in-house creative team (called The Agency) and MG OMD planned a £4m multimedia campaign to reach a broader audience than ever before.

Matt Mint, executive director at MGOMD, told The Media Leader: “People get bombarded with brand messages every day and so together we wanted to do something that would stand out and make people smile, which it has.”

“It only worked if they were both up for it. It would not have worked if it had been one on their own but they were super receptive to it.

“They could see how it would work and work well.  It was an easier sell as you could say: you all know what it is about and it was going to be a really fun and creative way of doing it. If we had to sell in a platform we had never used before, it would not have worked,” Mint added.

He said the sales teams at both broadcasters were very involved in the creative process and had an attitude of “let’s make it happen”.

And then were contractual obligations to overcome. All of the continuity announcements had to carry #ad and make sure they matched each individual brand’s identity with tone and guidelines.

There were also licensing costs, and agreeing scripts in advance to consider, but Mint insisted everyone was “very happy” with the outcome of the collaboration.

‘It’s a commercial thing, but also a reputation thing’

John Ahern, sales and partnerships manager at ITV, told The Media Leader that conversations with MG OMD about the campaign started back in September 2021, so these mix-ups were six months in the making.

He said: “I think originally MG came in with ideas around amplification. They were asking media owners if there was anything they could do to amplify the ‘Should’ve’ message. Ourselves and Channel 4 realised that there was an easy win here playing around with each other’s brands. It was quite a simple thing to do.”

It was a special case, as Ahern added there are not many brands they would have agreed to do this with but, “because it’s Specsavers, people get it”. He added: “Obviously there are commercial parts but sometimes you do things because they are reputational. It was such a good idea, you need to ask why would you not do it.”

Ahern said it is something they could do again moving forward and his favourite continuity announcement was the the mix-up between Chester’s most famous soap Hollyoaks and Manchester’s most famous soap Coronation Street. He said it also tied in with ITV’s “Better Together” ethos which he said also includes competitors.

A broader more diverse audience than ever before

The aim of the campaign was to reach a broader audience than ever before and Specsavers’ media plan encompassed not only TV but also cinema, digital, social, OOH, print, radio and in-game executions.

There were eye-catching out-of-home executions (pictured- main image), adverts printed upside down in national press, social media strategy promoting real people’s “Should’ve moments” on Twitter and Specsavers’ first gaming activations with Anzu (pictured- below). The “promoted by Specsavers” on Twitter aspect nearly did not happen as it can be “very laborious” to find the Tweets in the first place and then come to an agreement with the user to promote them. Specsavers worked with agency Tangerine to make these “Should’ve moments” happen on the platform.

Apologies to my mum who, despite living through two years of pandemic, saw the photo I sent her of my positive covid test, mistook it for a positive pregnancy test, and got overexcited.

— Robyn Drury (@robyn_drury) February 17, 2022 

Mint said: “We wanted to reach new audiences, people who aren’t yet Specsavers customers or may not have seen previous iterations of Should’ve, so it was crucial we had an accurate view on where we believed those audiences were and how best to reach them.”

“‘Should’ve’ is one of the best loved and most effective pieces of TV advertising ever, but only rarely has it extended beyond TV, whilst naturally it lives organically in social through people’s own Should’ve moments every day.  This gave us a huge opportunity to extend our reach through new channels,” he added.

Richard James, creative director at The Agency, added: “Obviously the 30-second TV ad is the centrepiece, but we were keen when writing for this to create a world that could hold multiple executions to promote different business areas. The block of flats and our hero’s interactions with it, gave us this opportunity.”

In terms of measuring the success of the campaign, Mint said: “We measured that [extended reach] at a planning level through our Channel Planner tool which utilises inputs like previous campaign performance and TGI [target group index] to maximise investment across channels to deliver against a KPI like reach.

“Then it’s about looking at that plan for optimal reach with The Agency alongside the work and deciding how we utilise the strongest creative executions to deliver the most effective reach.”

“At the end of the campaign, we are then able to drop in the actual media delivery numbers into Channel Planner to deliver a consolidated reach figure which we’ll compare back at previous ‘Should’ve’ campaigns,” he added.

The Media Plan is a regular feature for Strategy Leaders, The Media Leader’s weekly bulletin with thought leadership, news and analysis dedicated to new ideas, challenges, and excellence in commercial media strategy.
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