Here’s how Specsavers won over Gen Z by sponsoring the nation’s worst football team

One: Drive positive appraisal of the already-famous brand Specsavers with new Gen Z audiences

Two: Drive awareness of Specsavers all year round. Unlike other brands that have daily relevance e.g Heinz, Gymshark... people only get their eyes tested once every two years. How do we stay front of mind all year round?

Three: Amplify and engage (do not alienate) your secondary (core) audience of 35+ as part of the campaign.

Background

Specsavers is a well-known brand, synonymous with the strapline, ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’, (SGTS) now part of the vernacular amongst our core audience. Its success can be largely attributed to the power of above-the-line advertising; twenty years of very successful TV campaigns.

Problem One: Only 30% of this audience were being reached by scale driving media of this nature. Why? Gen Z audiences and younger are social natives, they spend less time watching TV, than any other age group, so a large proportion of our target audience were simply not as familiar with the Specsavers’ brand.

Problem Two: Whilst Gen Z audiences spend nearly 11 hours a day online, the landscape is saturated with content, making it incredibly hard to get cut through with this audience.

To make matters worse, what was once a celebrated slogan, SGTS, that had worked wonders ATL, wasn’t working for this audience, it was seen as the ‘ultimate dad gag’.

Challenge

How do you take one of the most famous ad lines of all time and reframe it as fresh and positive, and make it stand out online, with a socially savvy, values conscious, Gen Z audience overloaded with content… without alienating your core?

Insights

Should’ve Gone to Specsavers has become synonymous with sporting mishaps, particularly with football, having, in more recent years, become intrinsically linked with VAR discourse across social platforms.

Football also has mass appeal with both Gen Z and core audiences, with over 55% of Gen Z audiences classing themselves as football fans. Thanks to clip culture and reality content, grassroots football is a Gen Z obsession 93% of these fans want brands to support. (1)

Strategy

Reframe ‘Should’ve gone to Specsavers’ in a new positive light for our online audiences and give it a new meaning, as a force for good.

How?

Support the underdog of football, instead of ‘poking fun’ at them.

Find the nation’s worst team and provide Premier League levels of sponsorship to show them and the nation why everybody, should go to Specsavers.

Execution

We made the nation’s worst team the focal point of a compelling real-life, rags to riches documentary, that captivated our Gen Z audience as well as our core.

We delivered the narrative to our audiences in a format that can be consumed anywhere, anytime, via an online content series our audience will want to watch from start to finish, episode after episode.

The eight-part content series was published on YouTube, with episodes narrated by Lionesses legend, Jill Scott OBE, with channel-bespoke cutdowns and traffic driving teasers produced for Specsavers social.

The campaign was further amplified through PR, influencer activity and a series of special build OOH, with Wales Online documenting the entire campaign from start to finish.

Activation

1. Phase One – Finding the Ultimate Underdog

We kicked the campaign off asking the UK public to nominate amateur football teams that needed serious help. Phase one was rolled out across all social channels and amplified through PR.

We received over 1,500 nominations in total, triaging every nomination, looking for teams with a particular set of specific characteristics that allowed us to craft an entertaining season-long narrative packed full of heart-warming storylines and real people.

2. Phase Two – The Best Worst Team Series Launches

We chose Swansea-based club, Cwm Albion, as Specsavers’ Best Worst Team and kicked off the ambitious production schedule with a weekend shoot in South Wales on the opening game of the new season. The series consisted of 8 episodes in total.

3. Phase Three – Unearthing Headline-Grabbing Human Moments

We peppered the narrative, episode after episode, with carefully selected media hooks, that don’t just entertain our Gen Z audiences, but also garner the attention of more traditional media, thereby engaging and amplifying the message amongst our core, secondary audience.

Premier League Coach: Episode 2 saw the big reveal of Harry Redknapp as this season’s star coach, treating Cwm Albion to the legendary manager’s knowledge and expertise, amplifying reach and entertaining the audiences. This episode alone achieved 7 million impressions and gained blanket coverage, including a slot on This Morning, which saw the team interviewed by Emma Willis and Rylan Clark for a whopping ten minutes.

Emotive Narrative: We identified engaging individuals to build the series around. Take 73-year-old John Rees. He’d been at the club since the beginning and wants his ashes scattered on the home pitch. Or Chris Pippins, a man who almost quit before the start of the season but finished the series reinvigorated mentally and physically.

Influencer partners: To drive greater awareness amongst Gen Z audiences specifically, we featured influencers such as Chunkz and Elz the Witch. Chunkz alone generated 1m views across his TikTok and YouTube channels, with an average watch time of 5.27 minutes.

Media Partnership: We partnered with Copa90, specialists in unlocking the power of global football fandom, to help amplify the campaign and connect with more fans and content creators. Episodes were seeded through the Copa90 Football YouTube channel to an additional 1.4m of our target audience.

Working with the media partners, we provided Cwm Albion with exclusive, money can’t buy experiences to create more talkability and PR opportunities for wide scale press coverage.

We:

Painted a 50-foot mural featuring the team in Cwm Albion’s hometown

Invited ex-pros Garry Monk and Lee Trundle down to support the team

Took the players to the premiere of football movie Next Goal Wins in London

Organised an open-top bus tour of Swansea following a 7th placed finish

We partnered with MG to execute tactical OOH buys across Wales and England, with digital screens, murals, video projections and ad vans circulating key audience locations, such as Swansea city centre and Wembley.

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Results

Objective: Raise awareness amongst Gen Z audiences.

Communication: 56M impressions

Brand impact: 12% more incremental reach and brand recognition

Objective: Drive positive appraisal and consideration of the already-famous brand Specsavers with new Gen Z audiences.

Communication:

5 minutes average watch time for YouTube video Series

23.3M views

79% saying the campaign stands out from the crowd

"They are the only opticians that makes these unique ads, you can see it a mile off.”

Brand impact:

Brand perceptions have grown throughout the campaign (avg 10pp increase)

35% increase in brand consideration

Objective: Amplify and engage (do not alienate) your secondary (core) audience of 35+ as part of the campaign.

Communication:

320 pieces of coverage to date 23 broadcast hits including

This Morning sofa slot, Sky News and Talk Sport

Total 77.9M PR reach

Wales Online covered the campaign from start to finish, reporting on the team’s progress in a professional capacity.

Brand impact:

100% positive brand sentiment

Client Testimonials: Lisa Hale, Head of Brand Activation PR and Social commented, ‘I trust Tangerine completely. They get our business, and they approach PR and Social in a genuinely progressive way. The results for this campaign speak for themselves.’

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