Specsavers becomes the latest brand to reference the Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry’s arrival in the UK has prompted some prime creative, with Specsavers addition proving irresistible.

Some ad setups riff on fleeting moments in the zeitgeist, but Specsavers recent punchline picks a moment one thousand years in the offing.

Even those who know the basic details of the masterpiece’s backstory could hazard a guess at which element Specsavers might draw inspiration from. That’s right, they lifted the most famous image associated with the work: the figure traditionally identified as King Harold taking an arrow in the eye.

The resulting line: "Something in your eye? Should've goneth to Specsavers" is all the joke needed to leap off the page.

The campaign draws on what remains one of Britain's most recognisable advertising lines, proving how effectively Specsavers has been refining the same joke for roughly 24 years.

Cometh the hour

With over 100 stores across London alone, Specsavers is a bit of a beast. Its marketing includes a landmark two-year sponsorship of Channel 4's Countdown, the show it first sponsored over 17 years prior.

Its Bayeux Tapestry execution, of course, coincides with the 11th-century, 70-metre (230-foot) embroidery coming to London for the first time in nearly 1,000 years.

Featuring over 600 human figures and 200 horses, this historic moment has seen brands rush to capitalise on the column inches.

Bakery chain Greggs partnered with the Design Museum and royal embroiderers Hawthorne & Heaney to launch the 'Greggs Ta-Pastry', an eight-metre, hand-embroidered artwork displayed at London's Design Museum.

Mastercard, meanwhile, unveiled its own version of the tapestry: a ten-metre woven history of money, running from cowrie shells in 1,200 BCE through to a prediction of robots doing the weekly shop by 2030.

Fifteen scenes, each drawn by a different child, were woven by hand onto a Jacquard loom over 200 hours and roughly 35,000 passes, under the direction of Mia Hansson, a textile artist who has spent close to a decade building her own full-scale replica of the original Bayeux Tapestry.

Let’s all Harold this historic brand moment.