2014 Winners & Shortlists

Results and Effectiveness

The campaign helped grow awareness of Astigmatism from 7% to 33% in only 5 weeks . This was a remarkable achievement given the tiny budget of $40K that we had. Moreover, people’s intention of visiting an eye optician improved from 25% to 39%. (Source: Agency Tracking Research ) Our print experience helped reach 123,000 people and our Cinema experience engaged a total of 105,000 people in just 2 weeks (Source: Agency Evaluations)

Creative Execution

We created two blurry experiences that stimulated conversations about astigmatism First we created a blurred movie trailer that confused movie-goers. Imagine waiting for a 3D movie but instead of a perfect image you see a blurred movie trailer. You are puzzled and wonder if this was a 3D trailer. As you put on your glasses you see the on-screen message about astigmatism. Next, we ‘blurred’ the front page of UAE’s top newspaper Sports 360 with a message ‘Are your Daily Scores out of Focus’. Naturally, readers were confused wondering if there was something wrong with their eyesight. When they turned the newspaper, they saw the real front page of the newspaper with a message about Astigmatism. The executions sparked conversations about Astigmatism on social media. Experts and influencers from multiple spheres fueled conversation to further spread the word via television, radio and social media

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Imagine not being able to read this sentence clearly. Imagine seeing your life as a blur and not being able to see the things which matter to you the most. Astigmatism is an eye condition characterized by blurry vision. Nearly a million adults in UAE suffer from it but only 7% are actually aware of it ! The truth is that people rarely get their eyes checked. We needed to overcome this consumer apathy but this wasn’t easy given our shoe-string budget of $40,000. What if instead of telling people, we could let people see what Astigmatism was like for themselves? We identified media channels where vision is critical to the enjoyment of the experience. Watching movies and Reading newspapers were two occasions when seeing things clearly really mattered. What if we could interrupt these routines to educate people about Astigmatism?