A Bifocal Lens on Production at Specsavers
Viewing the world in three dimensions requires binocular vision. Two eyes that see things from slightly different angles, to create a rounded picture of the world, with depth and perspective. Given the company that they work for, that’s an apt analogy for the working relationship between Sam Lock and Danny Bush.
The pair are producers with striking similarities in their backgrounds, stumbling into agency production from seemingly unrelated backgrounds (Sam started out with dreams of being a makeup artist. Having studied beauty therapy and wig-making selling makeup at Miss Selfridge she lucked into a temp job at an agency; Danny was a teller at Belgravia bank, and his long hair prompted a customer to tell him he ought to go into advertising). They’re also both seasoned producers who are driven by a deep care and passion for the work.
But at Specsavers, the international opticians brand headquartered in Guernsey and with a presence across the UK, Nordics, Australia and Canada, the pair are also tackling production from different vantage points.
Sam has been with Spescavers in-house agency The Agency for 20 years. She joined the company after Anthony Falco - who had been head of TV at CDP when she was a producer there - and Specsavers legendary creative lead Graham Daldry pitched it to her at a surreptitious meal at Pizza Express. Now the head of broadcast and content production, Sam has helped realise those peerless comedic spots the business has built a brand upon. She’s worked on iconic ads that have become adland masterclasses, such as the Chris Palmer-directed Sheepdog, the deadpan Vet and the stomach-lurching Rollercoaster. When it comes to understanding the nuance and complexity of tone that underpins Specsavers’ seemingly simple humour and tone, or understanding the trust and talent necessary to translate the jokes to the screen, Sam has become not just a producer but a shepherd of the brand.
Meanwhile, Danny is a relatively recent arrival to the team. His CV includes creative beacons like Mother and Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam, and he's freelanced for the likes of VCCP and The&Partnership. It's not his first time working as an in-house producer though - his first taste of that life came with a three month freelance stint at The Body Shop. Drawn by the openness and collaborative spirit fostered by Specsavers’ in-house dynamic between agency and marketing client - not to mention that beachy Guernsey lifestyle - Danny’s onboard to bring that tone and humour to new channels and different spaces. The brand has been pushing into special OOH builds, cheeky social activations and even in-game advertising and as integrated production team lead, Danny’s looking at production from a cross-platform perspective.
As a pioneer of in-house creativity, the team at The Agency has noted a shifting of attitudes over the years, as Specsavers has proven itself through its award-winning work and as a growing number of brands have adopted one form or another of in-house model. From a production point of view, Sam reflects back when she made the switch from traditional agency producer to Specsavers, the wider production community didn’t quite know what to make of it.
“It has changed over the last 20 years. I used to feel a little bit like even sending scripts out from Specsavers confused production companies. And then the work started getting really good - I do remember the change and that was it. It didn’t matter, we operated as an agency,” says Sam. She said there were some teething problems as production companies didn’t quite get the chain of demand, for example assuming that approval from a creative director at The Agency was the same as client sign off, not realising that The Agency still serves its ‘clients’ in the marketing department.
All that’s changed of course. The brand’s in-house set up has become much more familiar territory for the production community. Indeed, laughs Danny, as soon as he announced his new role on social media he was inundated with messages from his director pals. “Every director with a comedy ‘thing’ that wants to make good work knows they can make something really great,” he says.
However, while the relationship between The Agency and Specsavers’ marketing department is still one of agency and client, it also inevitably sees creative and production having a deeper understanding of the business and closer ties with ‘the client’ on a personal and professional level.
As a relative newcomer, Danny’s already found that closeness and access has removed all sorts of barriers to his work as a producer. “You feel closer to the clients because they’re in the same building - there’s still a working relationship that is professionally still the same, but you feel a little bit closer because you’re sitting around the corner,” he says. “In a traditional agency there’s a lot of red tape.But you can talk to the people that make the decisions really quickly and go, ‘ there’s the business case for doing it, it makes sense - what’s best for the business?’”
Nicola Wardell is MD at The Agency and she’s got a pragmatic view of the same-but-very-different agency-client relationship. “I don’t think you can keep that distance between the disciplines and the clients when you’re having fish and chips in the canteen. I mean, it would just feel a bit odd, wouldn’t it? It’s just more fluid, the way we work. All of that formality has gone. We’ve still got bigger but without the formulas.”
That connection and collaboration goes two ways - Sam says she feels her understanding of the wider business and the language of marketing has informed her approach to production. But, equally, she’s been able to keep the marketing team up to date with developments in production, such as the Ad Green Levy.
“I’ve noticed recently that the more I’ve been brought into the business, I’m understanding more how it works. I’m learning a new language, actually. That’s definitely changed, I would say and it does make you think about everything when you’re going into production,” says Sam.
Outside of Specsavers HQ, though, there’s a broader sense of connection for both Sam and Danny - being part of of business that employs 38,000 people across 2293 stores, is a fixture of the British High Street, and that’s very essence is to help people.
“It’s such a big pull for me, working for a company that really cares about people and not just talking about it. It’s everyone connected with Specsavers: the shops, the supply chain everything, Everyone’s treated with respect,” says Danny. “Specsavers was set up to make things affordable, to make it for the people. It’s such a big pull to work with a brand that’s got a really good heart.”
Sam agrees - and it’s something that she feels every time she goes into an outlet and talks to the people who work there. “When you go into a local Specsavers - they are actually the client. I can’t always say what I’ve been up to but we have a good chat. They tell me what they like, what they don’t like. And that always reminds me who we’re working for at the end of the day.”
Regardless of the medium or channel, one of the most important things for a producer working at Specsavers to grasp is the distinctive Specsavers tone. Sam says that she’s had plenty of script pitches from friends and family - and has tried writing a few herself - all of which has served to prove to her just how complex that deceptively simple sense of humour is. Luckily, as a producer, she doesn’t have to write the scripts, but she does have to understand the sort of talent necessary to bring them to life, both in front and behind the camera. The iconic Sheepdog ad was an instructive lesson in finding great talent and trusting it.
“The tone is the most difficult thing. I think it’s a testament to the creatives actually working with the director. Sometimes when I get a script I look at it - and this is why i love working with creatives and why I love the creative process - I think ‘how are we going to bring this off the page? And I’ve been really wrong. For example , I remember getting the Collie scripts and thinking… how’s that going to work?” laughs Sam. She recalls heading to the Faroe Islands to shoot the spot with a tiny crew and director Chris Palmer. When he said that he wanted to shoot the script in black and white, she says she remembers thinking ‘this is mad’. But, of course, it worked and the spot was used for many years. “Trust in great creative and great directors. It’s run up until quite recently - I think it’s a brilliant investment.”
With every new campaign, the journey of finding the correct tone starts again. Sam recalls the discussions preceding 2009’s Rollercoaster ad. It sees an older couple looking for somewhere to sit down to eat a sandwich. Having settled on what they think is a bench, they soon discover it’s actually one of the UK’s most infamous rollercoasters. It’s the sort of idea that could have, in the wrong hands, come off as cruel - the challenge in the writing, casting and directing was to make protagonists the viewer could empathise with.
“The creatives are really good at that. There’s constant debate with clients and all through the pre-production and it’s sort of intangible, but it’s really, really important. Heroic failure, liking the character is so important. The delivery guy, I think he was just brilliant. Casting is everything,” says Sam, referring to the recent campaign directed by Ric Cantor, which sees a short-sighted deliveryman lug a TV up to the top of a multistorey apartment block with a broken lift - only to find he’s misread the address.
More generally, creativity, craft and brand have always been The Agency’s focus. Performance marketing and e-commerce sit in a slightly different part of the internal machinations at Specsavers. And, according to Nicola, The Agency also works with external partners, such as media agency Manning Gottlieb - and these partners help bring an important outside view to a team that is largely based in the lush but remote island of Guernsey. But as an agency that doesn’t need to hustle for other clients, The Agency has much more time and scope to question how it can best serve the wider business. “All of that is a work in progress, to be honest. The model evolves because our business is constantly evolving. So, as an agency, our model, our structure, our size, our areas of focus are constantly in flux to respond to what the business needs from us because we don’t have any other clients apart from Specsavers.”
Specsavers has recently celebrated the 20th anniversary of ‘Should’ve Gone to Specsavers’, a slogan so embedded in British pop culture that it’s become a well-used Dad joke punchline that continues to fuel the brand. As well as the big campaign ads, it also gives the brand a license for cheeky responsive ads and satirical commentary on current events. But while the sensibility and slogan remain, so much else is changing. There are new offerings to market (hearing services and home visits, for example). There are new markets to create for - some of which require a slightly different tone - and an endless array of places and platforms to show up. And that means that, for clear-sighted and experienced producers like Sam and Danny, there are plenty of exciting new challenges to focus on.
