The creative effect: how Specsavers parodied Lynx
Specsavers talk us through their new advertising campaign parodying the Lynx effect.
The spoof TV commercial mimics Lynx’s original ad which shows bikini-clad girls running towards a guy on the beach - but it finishes with a twist that incorporates both Specsavers' and Lynx's straplines to create ‘The should’ve gone to Specsavers effect’.
It was shot on location in Colombia featuring nearly 100 bikini-clad girls who were multiplied in post-production by Framestore. The idea was developed by Specsavers’ creative team Simon Bougourd and Neil Brush and they were given permission to spoof the original ad from Unilever, owner of the Lynx brand.
"If you think of 'the Lynx effect' and 'Should've gone to Specsavers' they're polar opposites, so we thought it would be fun really to bring those two together," art director Brush said.
"We didn't want do to a viral, YouTube version of it," he added. "We wanted it to feel as big and as epic as the original."
Brush's copywriter partner Bougourd said it was "a difficult challenge" to parody an ad that, although four years old, remained engrained in the public consciousness.
He said: "The original ad is just one of those iconic ads. If you just mention the Lynx effect people remember it. We were taking on quite a challenge there.
"When the idea is completely your creation you can go anywhere and do anything with it. With this one we had to be quite disciplined. We had to tell the story of the original ad, and then spoof it, and achieve that in 30 seconds. It took a lot of thought."
The challenge of refreshing the four-year-old ad for today's TV screens fell to director Daniel Kleinman. "We think he did a fantastic job in both respecting the old ad and making something new out of it," said Specsavers' creative director Graham Daldry.
"He's got a great way of bringing humour to life in ads and he said himself that it was interesting to do a parody of something that was already comedic, and he enjoyed the challenge.
"We had the idea of the 'Should've Gone to Specsavers Effect' parody and the Lynx ads but the question then was which Lynx ad to parody. That one really stood out. It seemed to be the purest expression of the Lynx effect. It was a bigger challenge because it was already a great ad," Daldry added.
The commercial is now running across national TV with media planning and buying handled by Mediaedge:CIA.