WHAT BLINDNESS FEELS LIKE:

People have strong expectations of the content they consume and older people even moreso. Any change would cause them to viscerally question the situation. Knowing this, we wanted to “blur” ads and experiences they’ve felt like they’ve known for years so they can experience what it might feel like to go blind and better connect with the FFB.

In our brief to our partners, we designed a presentation that became exceedingly more difficult to read by using increasingly lighter font colors as the brief progressed so that the words eventually “vanished.” The end of the was impossible to read and conveyed the experience that many people experience but don’t realize until it is too late.

The campaign was launched with a media/creative/PR first during live TV on “The Morning Show” where viewers experienced a blurred image of the show’s regularly scheduled content. The obscured segment’s live V/O advised viewers: “There’s nothing wrong with your TV. That’s what it’s like to live with something called Retinitis Pigmentosa” followed by a live segment featuring a blind FBB spokesperson focusing on the devastating effects of blindness.

We also enlisted help from our local Kellogg’s client to leverage its well-known Mini-Wheats TV spot to deteriorate to blackness adding FFB copy directly over that ad to create the first ever ad on an ad. Editorial in publications was obscured to disrupt people’s content experiences with bespoke copy created to leverage the context of each of the environments. Copy ran in The Hockey News and Mode Media’s digital brands such as Men’s Health and Foodie.

Even without any involvement from a creative agency, FFB became visible for the first time and achieved its objective to grow awareness which created dialogue and action.

Awareness: Unaided awareness increased 129% while all other sight-related organizations’ awareness levels remained flat. Aided awareness grew 6x versus pre-campaign measure.

Dialogue: During the campaign, weekly Twitter mentions of FFB grew on average 2.8x vs non-campaign weeks while average monthly Twitter impressions grew 16%.

Action: E-newsletter CTR’s increased by 53% vs the month prior to the campaign. Facebook ‘Likes’ grew by 310% vs same period YA. LaForce Racing, a Canadian NASCAR team, saw the campaign and immediately donated $6K and added FFB logos to its cars for a racing season.

But most importantly, the number of daily donations to the FFB grew by 78%. For FFB, being visible means hope is now greater than ever.