Specsavers’ Marketing Director Shaun Briggs told the story of the company’s UK founders from 1984. The husband and wife team of optometrists started the company with the purpose of “changing lives through better sight (and now hearing).”
He told the Mumbrella360 conference that the purpose was at first the main focus of the company, with advertising less important at that time, so they ended up using humour in their ads.
“We sort of did it, and it worked… The glasses category is boring, so we just tried to have a sense of humour.”
Showing a series of Specsavers ads through the decades, Briggs shared the company’s learnings about using humour in advertising:
Humour has come in and out of fashion over the years, it is low at the moment. “We’ve kept humour in our ads consistently over time and this is what we have learnt.”
- Do purpose AND humour. They are not in conflict with oneanother…. You can have both a purpose and be funny. Not everything has to be seriously purpose driven.
- Don’t overlook the obvious. Don’t be too clever, what is it that the brand offers. The brand makes people see better so ‘should have gone to Specsavers is obvious and funny, as well as selling the purpose of the company.
- Familiarity is your friend. If you’ve got a brand and you are delivering it consistently you’re on the right track. Use repeatable jokes. Specsavers uses knock knock jokes for its hearing aid products and mis-reading jokes for the glasses products.
- Don’t always be serious about serious. Laughing releases dopamine and endorphins. You have to be sensitive of course, there is a fine line in health related products, but ”if you get it right then serious can also be entertaining.”
- No to right or wrong. There’s no perfect right or wrong idea. Just keep working on it and learning. “Don’t worry about perfection, just do the best you can. We don’t overthink and over judge our work.”
- Trust your creative team to get the creative right.
- It’s a journey make it fun
If you didn’t get the joke in the main picture above… look again. Briggs was speaking at the Mumbrella conference, Ad News is the competitor 🙂
Example: Specsavers ad at SYDNEY airport.
