- By building and hammering home its distinctive brand assets and codes across markets, channels and messaging, Specsavers has truly become a household name.
- Specsavers is the preferred brand of over half the people in the Eyewear & Eyecare category in the UK, with 51% Preference.
- Specsavers punches above the category average for “Really stands for something” (brand purpose), “Is for people like me” (relatability) and “trust”.
Specsavers has just won Brand of the Year, opens in new tab at the Marketing Week Awards 2025 – beating out the likes of Adidas, Monzo and Warburtons to snatch the crown.
It’s not a hyperbole to say that Specsavers is a household name, with its distinctive cheeky brand tone and iconic tagline setting the foundations for very delightful out-of-home activations – such as the “crashed van”, opens in new tab in the middle of the street, or the roll-out of upside-down billboards – and various other TV spots, partnerships and brand sponsorships. You know you’ve hit the jackpot when your brand’s calling card (“Should’ve gone to Specsavers”) has entered the everyday vernacular, whipped out when someone’s made a silly mistake.
The consistency of applying these brand codes from market to market and across every channel has clearly paid off. That’s a fundamental rule of brand marketing: run with it till you’re sick of it – and then when you’re sick of it, keep running with it. The Head of Brand Marketing from REFY describes this as “considered repetition”, saying in our recent webinar, “We’re guilty of thinking customers see everything we put out. They don’t. It used to be that you needed to interact with a brand 12 times before considering a purchase. In beauty, it’s something like 37% more – nearly 20 interactions.”
Of the win, the editor-in-chief at Marketing Week, Russell Parsons, said that “Specsavers is a brand that has a strong sense of self, that is true to its purpose – an actual, authentic purpose that dictates what it does and how it does it.”
Over half of UK Eyewear & Eyecare consumers prefer Specsavers
Specsavers is the category leader in the UK, with 92% Awareness. They’ve pipped Boots Opticians, at 86% and Vision Express, at 80%.
Awareness is even higher in the 45 to 54 years, 55 to 64 years and 65+ year category, with awareness for these groups at 97%. This may be reflective of last year’s “I don’t go to Specsavers” campaign, which flipped the script to help promote Specsavers home visit proposition, aimed at the elderly and disabled. That campaign won gold at the IPA effectiveness awards.
They’re also killing the game in Preference. Preference is the gold-star metric; the one we always describe as the hardest to win. That’s because consumers can only choose one brand that they prefer. Specsavers is the preferred brand of half the people in this category, with 51% Preference. Its closest competitor here is, again, Boots, with only 15%.
This means that Specsavers converts people down the funnel (from Awareness to Consideration, then Consideration to Preference) more effectively than its competitors.
And, despite being the category leader, Specsavers is still experiencing growth. For example, between December 2024 and May 2025, Consideration increased 4-percentage-points from 67% to 71%, in a time period when all other brands remained stagnant or decreased in Consideration.
People think the brand has purpose – and is for people like them
Our data backs up the idea that Specsavers is a brand with purpose, with 25% believing that it “really stands for something”, which is above the competitor average.
In addition, Specsavers is a winner when it comes to the statement, “Is for people like me”, with 49% believing it’s for them, above the competitor average of 28%, and again with the statement “Is a brand I trust”, where 56% of the category agree with this statement.
When compared to its closest competitor, Boots Opticians, unique associations that come forward include “Friendly”, “Value”, “Budget friendly” and “Great.”
Three things to learn from Specsavers
- Reiterate for audiences, channel and platform: Specsavers sets the gold standard for evolving their main campaign concept (Should’ve gone to Specsavers) to fit different audiences (e.g. using drag queens to appeal to a specific demographic) and platforms (being more meme-ified on social).
- Entertain, or die: Our joint report with Small World, opens in new tab shows that entertaining brands grow, which Specsavers are a perfect example of, ensuring that they lean on bringing humour and levity into its hero brand touchpoints.
- Choose your main propositions to double down on: Specsavers consistently promotes that it provides the “best value”, which reflects strongly in the Tracksuit dashboard (with customers frequently referring to the brand as "budget friendly" and "value"), showing that this positioning is resonating with consumers.
