Everyone loves a sing along but if you are like me you probably get the odd lyric wrong, or maybe a few more than that…and it’s normally hilarious.
People avoid getting hearing tests as it makes them old but mishearing can be funny.
Specsavers wanted to create a hearing test that people wanted to listen too.
Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” is one such iconic song that people mishear all the time with people making up their own lyrics. So they got Rick to record the classic hit with a misheard lyric version.
It was released to the UK market with no explanation over the airwaves and social media exploded and started a national conversation on hearing loss. It was such a clever concept and it drove Specsavers hearing test bookings by over 1200% on target. Now that’s a campaign that’s never gonna let you down.
Hear it from the man himself.
The result
The teaser tweet on Astley’s own social channels became his most-viewed tweet of all time. The campaign also earned push media on This Morning, The Times, Sky, Mail Online and drove a Google Trends spike.
According to the agency, hearing test bookings increased by 1,220% above the initial target, with Specsavers reporting a 66% year-on-year increase in bookings during launch week versus the target of 5%. The song was played over 20 million times in the first eight hours of the campaign, driving a 138% increase in hearing loss searches and making hearing the UK’s number one trending topic.
The campaign garnered 400 pieces of coverage, more than 100 million reach. Earned coverage also directly drove business impact: Lorraine TV coverage resulted in +19% on forecast (call centre volume), and This Morning coverage drove +15%.
At the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, it won a Grand Prix and a Gold in the Radio & Audio category, and the Grand Prix in PR.
