Should've 2.0
The beauty of “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” lies in its simplicity. You only need to see a “Should’ve” ad once to get it. It’s this creative simplicity that is its superpower. The right media can elevate this simplicity, stretching the mishap (and impact) even further. Our strategy was to match the media to the mistake.
On the surface, our channel mix was traditional, but we looked for opportunities throughout it where mistakes could have happened naturally through human error – placing creative in highly visible places but with even more visible media mistakes. This strategy gave us an incredibly tight plan of AV, OOH, digital and print where every media mistake multiplied the humour of the creative message and grabbed attention by being unexpected and incongruous. In a UK media first, we convinced ITV and C4 to collaborate and make mistakes across their schedules, mixing up continuity announcements to promote the wrong show on the wrong channel. Four spots mixed up some of ITV’s and Channel 4’s most-loved, and most-viewed, shows and dayparts, giving the impression that continuity announcers had misread the script. ITV announced the start of Hollyoaks, the start of First Dates, the upcoming Loose Women and the resumption of Saturday Night Takeaway on Channel 4. Channel 4 announced the start and resumption of Coronation Street, the resumption of Dancing on Ice and that it’s Friday Night on ITV.
Specsavers saw recognition and awareness soar, with over 20,000 mentions across social media. And, most importantly, bookings for sight tests improved within the first week of launch.
Should’ve 2.0 received unprecedented levels of PR, dubbed ‘genius’ by industry figures. The special builds for the campaign reached the number 2 spot in Campaign’s The Lists 2022: Top 10 outdoor ads.
