2017 Winners & Shortlists

The Campaign

In 10 years, half the world’s population will suffer from myopia. Today, 1 in 10 children suffer from vision problems. Screens are an integral part of children’s lives. The problem is they hold the screen too close to their eyes. It’s a daily struggle for parents to change this behavior. We needed to make sure children watch responsibly. So, we created Samsung Safety Screen, an app that helps children hold the screen at an optimal distance from their eyes.

Execution

The app operates in the background. It uses facial recognition technology to calculate the optimal distance. When the screen is too close to the child’s eyes, the app will block the screen. It will only become unblocked when the child moves his face back to the appropriate distance.

-50K downloads in first 2 weeks -Google top trending app in the world -#1 education app -#7 free app -#20 all categories

The Strategy

We spoke with a generation of “tablet parents” from around MENA and uncovered the daily inner battle they faced regarding their kids and their screen time. They were torn between using tablets as a way to keep them occupied and a genuine concern for the health repercussions this could cause. We set out to discover whether the age-old idiom of “you’ll get square eyes if you sit too close” [to a screen] had any truth to it. After consulting a number of medical journals and professionals, including The Vision Council of America, we found that the distance someone sits from a screen dramatically impacts the health of their eyes. This is especially true of children whose eyes are still in their formative years. This was a story that parents needed to be made aware of so we leveraged PR and our own channels to spread the word and educate.