Specsavers advert: Contact Lens Rookies Welcome shows the awkward first try

Specsavers has launched Contact Lens Rookies Welcome, a campaign aimed at a group most contact lens advertising ignores: people in their late forties and fifties who have worn glasses for years and never tried lenses. Instead of pretending lenses are effortless, it shows real people, influencers and comedy creators fumbling their first attempts before getting there, as Decision Marketing reported.

What the Specsavers campaign does

The work is aimed at glasses wearers aged 45 to 59 and tackles what the brand calls the “icks”, the squeamishness about touching your own eye that stops people trying. It is Specsavers’ first fully integrated influencer campaign, running across video on demand, subscription streaming, YouTube, digital, social and outdoor from this week until November.

It was made by Specsavers Creative, the brand’s in-house agency, with Manning Gottlieb OMD planning the media and Tangerine handling social. Richard James, global creative director at Specsavers Creative, said the starting point was to admit “something that anyone who has tried them will know: it can be a bit weird at first”.

Why it matters

Most category advertising sells the ideal outcome. This sells the awkward middle, and that is the smarter brief, because the barrier to contact lenses is not a lack of desire but embarrassment about the first try. Showing the fumble makes it normal, and normalising the thing people fear is a well-proven way to change behaviour.

It also fits the brand. Specsavers has spent decades making its name with self-deprecating humour, from “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” onwards, and a campaign about being bad at something at first is entirely in character. For the long story of that work, see our review of the Specsavers advertising, which also won the Broadbent Prize at last week’s IPA Effectiveness Awards.