Newsworks Planning Awards 2013 – Best Topical Campaign

Specsavers SHGTS “Ballboy” Tactical Campaign – 25th January 2013

Executive Summary

Using the immediacy and reach that only Newsbrands can provide, we were able to turn around a

tactical “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” campaign around a sporting news story inside 24 hours in

January 2013. Working against the clock we were able to deliver a topical campaign with huge

reach across relevant print and digital platforms. The campaign achieved remarkable results and

became the most successful SHGTS campaign to date.

Background and objectives

The Specsavers “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” strap line is as well-known as it is well loved. In

recent times, Specsavers have been phenomenally successful in turning big news headlines and

opinions into real-time “SHGTS” tactical advertising moments which capture public sentiment.

Previously successful examples of this have been the England v Ukraine football crossing the line

incident in Euro 2012 and the Korean flag mistake at the London 2012 Olympics.

On 23rd January 2013, Chelsea football Eden Hazard provided another SHGTS moment when he

kicked a ball-boy when trying to retrieve the ball in a Carling Cup Semi-Final versus Swansea in

which Chelsea were trailing. The ballboy had smothered the ball to waste time and had frustrated

the Chelsea star who took measures into his own hands in attempting to recover the ball. Hazard

was sent off for his endeavours and the incident provoked a huge reaction in the media and across

social networks.

As Specsavers are never one to miss a tactical opportunity, the next morning we were briefed on

turning around a short campaign for the 25th January poking fun at the incident as another SHGTS

moment while the story was still making the headlines in the front and back pages.

Insight and strategy

No other platform offers the immediacy and extensive coverage that Newsbrands can provide.

With 22million adults (43%) consuming a Newsbrand on a daily basis and with less than a day to

plan, sign-off and supply creative we needed a media which could deliver huge reach quickly and

national press and their digital platforms provided the perfect opportunity to do so.

The brief was not just to target huge number but also to be contextual in our ad placement. With

the ballboy news story making headlines and provoking widespread discussion and opinion, the

use of Newsbrands also provided the perfect environment to run topical adverts which would in

turn, generate a strong social and PR response.

Taking all of this into consideration, we planned a campaign across print and digital platforms

utilising Newsbrands only for a campaign to run on the 25th January when the ballboy story was

still relevant and making headlines.

The plan

Utilising Specsavers’ in-house design and creative team, the plan was to run tactical ad placements

around the ballboy incident underlining the difference between the ball and the ballboy.

In print, we wanted to make as big an impact as possible and ran full pages/page equivalents

across the market in the main news sections of Daily Telegraph, The Times, Guardian,

Independent, “I”, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Star on the 25th

January. As the incident happened in a match at Swansea, we also ran some regional tactical ads in

Wales with 25x4s in the South Wales Evening post, South Wales Echo, Western Mail and Wales on

Sunday.

In Digital, we ran activity with 2 of the 3 biggest Newsbrand websites in the UK in the Daily Mail

and Daily Telegraph. The humorous nature of the story made the Mail Online the perfect

environment for Specsavers’ tongue-in-cheek adverts and combined with telegraph.co.uk, who

perform so well for sport, we were able to reach a digital daily readership of just under 3 million to

supplement the reach achieved in print. We ran the activity for 2 days on the 25th and 26th January.

Similarly to the national press activity, we wanted to create as much of an impact as possible so

we used premium placements such as leaderboards to achieve maximum standout. We also ran

the activity in both main news and sports sections of both sites to ensure we surrounded the most

read and most topical areas.

Results

Within 24 hours, we turned the Eden Hazard “ballboy” incident into our most successful real-time

“SHGTS” moment yet. Spreading the campaign across Newsbrand’s print and digital platforms we

achieved:

Over 20 million impacts (or reached over 15 million people)

Over 150,000 interactions

Engagement rates that were 220x better than the UK Facebook average

Nearly 10,000 “likes” for the Specsavers Facebook page

Over 12,000 mentions of “SHGTS” on social media sites as a result of someone seeing the

“ball boy” ad.

The Most successful* “SHGTS” campaign to date! *based on engagement levels

In print

Despite planning and booking our placements less than 12 hours before issues went to print, we

achieved 1st or 2nd in format across every single one of our national press insertions. We also

secured tactical placements alongside ballboy editorial in a number of titles.

Our print insertions reached 36% of the UK adult population @ 1.2 OTS with 17.9m impacts across

one single day (national press only) which again shows the huge coverage which can be achieved

with the use of Newsbrands.

In Digital

In the 24 hours from going live on the 25th January to Saturday 26th, we achieved over 530,000

impacts, reaching over 290,000 people through the use of just two websites alone.

Mail online: 133,320 uniques

Telegraph: 157,010 uniques

Click through rate (CTR) levels far exceeded the norm for display advertising on both sites,

showing that the real time nature of the advertising has a huge effect on interaction levels.

The campaign achieved an average CTR of 0.6% (around twice as good as the usual Specsavers

online display advertising), with over 3,000 users clicking through to book an appointment or find

out more.

The “Ball boy” ad also provoked by far the biggest response to any SHGTS campaign we have ever

run and also achieved some fantastic PR from industry, fan and national news outlets:

Client view

Richard Holmes – Marketing Director Specsavers – “We’re constantly on the lookout for great

Should’ve gone to Specsavers moments and I’m always amazed at the speed in which our creative

team and media agency are able to react to incidents like this. They’ve worked closely together

with the marketing department to ensure this campaign hit newsstands in time.”