UK retail audiology group Specsavers sponsors record-breaking TV game show Countdown
If you are verbalist and mathematical, and watch TV, you'll know the format of Countdown, a UK game show that for the next two years will be showcasing the audiology and home visits services of the retail group, Specsavers.
Rob Brydon boosts entertainment factor
The well-known optical group – currently intensely growing and promoting its audiology business – has signed a two-year deal to deliver gently humourous visual idents, along with other short clips and bumpers, during the programme’s time slot. Actor Rob Brydon, the brand’s regular voice, will feature. Each ident reveals a sound within jumbled letters on the Countdown board – the correct word unveiled in a similar style to the Countdown conundrum.
This is a marketing coup for Specsavers, which has previously sponsored this highly popular TV standard. This time the deal, which began on February 3, was negotiated and bought by MG OMD.
Countdown and Specsavers – a “perfect fit”
Countdown is a quiz show on Channel 4, and was the station’s first ever programme back in 1982. Based on maths and anagrams, the show has run for over 7,900 episodes, in 2014 2014, receiving a Guinness World Record, for 6,000 shows, for the longest-running television programme of its kind (by then over 70 series).
The Countdown format is familiar across the globe, with a number of similar series boasting large followings: in France as Des Chiffres et des Lettres; in Spain as Cifras y Letras; in Netherlands as Cijfers en Letters; in South Africa as A Word or 2; and in Australia as Letters and Numbers.
Through its lifeline home visits service, Specsavers offers free comprehensive eye tests at home and in care homes to anyone who is eligible for an NHS eye test, and who cannot leave their house unaccompanied due to a physical or mental illness.
“This partnership is a perfect fit,” said Victoria Clarke, Specsavers’ Marketing Services Director. “People don’t pay as much attention to their ears as they do their eyes, but 1 in 5 people in the UK suffer from hearing loss. This partnership will initially support the recent Specsavers ‘Lost and Found’ audiology campaign, using its recognisable humour to raise awareness of the importance of hearing care before championing our home visits service.”
Source: Specsavers
