THE URBAN EYE TEST

TitleTHE URBAN EYE TEST
BrandOCO OPTOMETRISTS
Product/ServiceOCO OPTOMETRISTS
Category B01. Brand-led Education & Awareness
Entrant McCANN HEALTH London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation McCANN HEALTH London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Adrian Parr McCann Health London Executive Creative Director
Guy Swimer McCann Health London Creative Director
Steve Woodliffe McCann Health Design Director

Background

How can a QR Code help save your eyesight? Almost 2 million people in the UK are living with some form of sight loss. For over half of these, a simple sight test would help. A study by the UK College of Optometrists found that while over half of UK adults view eye tests as “very important” to their health, 1 in 4 people in the UK haven’t been for an eye test in the last 2 years, and 5 million haven’t been for an eye test in the last 10 years, or are unsure when they last had one at all. Most people understand the importance of eye tests, but they tend to put off taking them and 'soldier on' with poor eyesight. We wanted to change this and disrupt the audience to take action. We wanted to see if a QR code could make a difference.

Describe the creative idea

During Oct 2018, twelve coded floor panels were placed on streets and sidewalks around Central London, encouraging Londoners to check their eyesight using the urban environment around them. Each site, assessed by an optometrist, set an individual challenge e.g. ‘Can you tell the exact time on the church clock from here?’ ‘Can you read the words on the pillar?’ ‘Which year was the pub built?’ If the test exposed short or long-sightedness, a unique QR code tagged to each location enabled people to book an eye test via their smartphone, providing individual response data for each location in realtime. We placed the floor panels in high footfall locations and tailored the 'challenge' on each panel with something locally relevant.

Describe the strategy

OCO’s challenge was to persuade their audience of affluent ABC1 25-34yr olds to take an eye test. But previous offline & targeted Facebook campaigns had very little effect. Most leading high street opticians in the UK promote discount eye tests to drive footfall into their stores. With enough media spend behind it, it can be effective. But for OCO competing with the vast budgets of the multiples wasn’t an option - they needed cost effective advertising that targeted people at the exact time they were thinking about getting their eyes tested so they couldn’t put it off and 'soldier on' with poor eyesight. We wanted to see if technology could disrupt them to take immediate action.

Describe the execution

During Oct 2018, twelve coded floor panels were placed on streets and sidewalks around Central London, encouraging Londoners to check their eyesight using the urban environment around them. QR Codes have been placed on thousands of ads over the years, and rarely used, since consumers had little reason to download an app. But the changes to iPhone OS in 2017, meant you could simply hold a smartphone camera over the code, and it could activate the booking page for OCO, making it a frictionless journey from on street eye test, to realtime test booking. At 1200 x 800 mm, each panel was checked by an optometrist using the Snellen Visual Acuity scale, with a QR code 150-180mm wide, based on use of a smartphone camera from 1500 mm away The panels were made from AlumiGraphics, designed for all weather conditions, utilizing vivid colours for high contrast against grey sidewalk/city environment.

List the results

During the first two weeks of the activity, eye test bookings at OCO were 12x the weekly average, generating a 94% uplift from the same period in the year before. The campaign performed 3x better than any previous advertising, with 1 in 2 people who tried the floor panels going on to book a test. Across the campaign, the store received 12x the footfall from the same period in October 2017, and the opening day of the activity led to the highest recorded day of sales since the store opened.