Cannes Lions 2024: PR winners  /

UK optician and audiologist chain Specsavers has been awarded its second Grand Prix for The Misheard Version, by Golin, London.

Known widely for its optical services, Specsavers wanted cut through in the audiology space. Targeting 50-plus customers experiencing hearing loss, the retail chain teamed up with 1980s popstar Rick Astley to launch a re-recording of his song ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ – this time with some of the lyrics amusingly changed to reflect how people misheard the original.

The work was a strong example of ‘commercially led creative that delivered business impact’, said jury president Kat Thomas, founder and global CCO of One Green Bean. ‘No one wants to talk about hearing aids, no one wants to talk about hearing loss, [and there’s a] stigma attached to both,’ she added, pointing out that commercial, consumer-facing healthcare is ‘quite a dry category probably not known for its creative bravery’.

The jury also rewarded the creative approach to a challenging brief, said Thomas. ‘It’s very tricky to push and promote a new category… They leant into humour to tackle the stigma and push that to the side. By using humour they were able to disarm the challenges around that category.’

And no one could argue with the campaign’s impact: 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. 

Overall, the campaign ticked all the jury’s boxes, said Thomas: ideas that gain attention and momentum in the real world, cultural relevance (‘Does it make sense for the brand to be doing this? Is it authentic and credible in that way? Does it make sense to the audience and does it make sense to the world that we live in?’) and impact, ‘above and beyond reach and traditional metrics’. 

A few trends emerged out of the shortlist this year, added Thomas. ‘We’re always asked questions around AI – is this the year AI dominates creative work? My view would be that it hasn’t dominated but it has shown up in interesting and curious ways... People being brought back from the past, messages from the future, stories of reuniting and bringing people together. It was a compelling storytelling device but it didn’t dominate.’

Women’s football was prominent – ‘a sign that brands and sponsors are levelling up, which is interesting to see,’ said Thomas, and the jury observed an ‘increase in work harnessing audio as a channel’. Inclusion also played a major part in the work, whether it was women’s sport, transgender issues, or immigrant stories, as did safety in tech – ‘brands taking responsibility and leaning into the challenges of that’. Both might fall under the umbrella of purpose, about which the jury took a unanimous view: they were looking for purpose-led work that was much less about awareness of a cause, and instead backed up by ‘huge impact and scale’.

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