Creating an education and awareness campaign for Dry Eye

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Dry Eye affects 1 in 5 peo­ple in the UK and is caused by a vari­ety of fac­tors, includ­ing com­put­er use, hor­mon­al changes, air con­di­tion­ing and the envi­ron­ment. Thealoz Duo eye drops are a preser­v­a­tive-free, clin­i­cal­ly proven solu­tion con­tain­ing a com­bi­na­tion of ingre­di­ents that pro­vides long-last­ing hydra­tion and protection.

Thealoz Duo per­formed bet­ter than Optrex in quan­ti­ta­tive research (92% of Optrex users found it to be more effec­tive), yet the lat­ter is still the UK’s lead­ing con­sumer eye drop. We need­ed to find out what was stop­ping peo­ple from a) using eye drops and b) choos­ing Thealoz Duo over oth­er brands. 

Our con­ver­sa­tions with con­sumers revealed a gen­er­al lack of under­stand­ing of Dry Eye. Despite suf­fer­ing from the most com­mon symp­toms – dry­ness, itch­ing and scratch­ing, blurred vision and tired eyes – most peo­ple thought this was a nat­ur­al reac­tion to their envi­ron­ment and not a con­di­tion that required treatment.

In addi­tion to this, research showed that peo­ple didn’t under­stand the ben­e­fits of preser­v­a­tive-free prod­ucts or the fact that pre­served eye drops can some­times make the DRY EYE symp­toms worse. Aware­ness of Thealoz Duo as a brand was also low. Those that did recall the brand, cit­ed high cost and clin­i­cal pack­ag­ing as a bar­ri­er to purchase.

Plan

To sup­port Thealoz Duo’s list­ings in nation­al phar­ma­cies, such as Boots and inde­pen­dents, we need­ed to devise a jour­ney to raise aware­ness of symp­toms, dri­ve peo­ple to find out more about Thealoz Duo and pur­chase at local retailers. 

To reach our audi­ence of forty-some­thing ABC1 females, a TV advert placed dur­ing day­time tele­vi­sion seemed the obvi­ous answer. In just 20 sec­onds, the cam­paign need­ed to help peo­ple under­stand the symp­toms of Dry Eye in a sim­ple, mem­o­rable way and cov­er off all the pro­duc­t’s USPs — preser­v­a­tive-free, unique for­mu­la­tion, ster­ile for up to 3 months and con­tact lens friend­ly. Oh, and ref­er­ence the impres­sive research results! 

This was a lot to fit into one short TV spot. To enable us to expand on this fur­ther, we devel­oped a con­sumer-fac­ing web­site, which would edu­cate peo­ple on Dry Eye Dis­ease, the impor­tance of choos­ing preser­v­a­tive-free eye drops, and why Thealoz Duo was the best eye drop to treat their condition 

Deliver

To work with the client’s tight bud­get, we decid­ed to use a series of colour­ful illus­tra­tions, cre­at­ed in-house. The 20′ sec­ond ad was designed to be split into two 10′ sec­ond ver­sions to max­imise usage online or in prac­tice. The advert aired on the ITV Cen­tral Region dur­ing and was sup­port­ed with a dig­i­tal cam­paign as well as POS in opti­cians and phar­ma­cies, all dri­ving traf­fic to a new con­sumer web­site to find out more. 

We designed, wrote and devel­oped www​.youreye​health​.co​.uk with bold graph­ics and a friend­ly tone-of-voice. To gen­er­ate dis­ease aware­ness and gen­er­ate trust, we want­ed the site to feel like a vir­tu­al phar­ma­cist with a symp­tom-check­er on the home­page. While a prop­er diag­no­sis should always be sought from a qual­i­fied med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, this sim­ple tool allowed vis­i­tors to make an instant link between their symp­toms and Dry Eye. 

The web­site also allowed them to research their prob­lems and receive help­ful edu­ca­tion and advice before being direct­ed to rel­e­vant eye care prod­ucts based on their answers. Edu­ca­tion and aware­ness well under way, we also built in the facil­i­ty to search for their near­est stock­ist, so cus­tomers could quick­ly find and pur­chase products.

This was just the begin­ning of wider activ­i­ties to pro­mote Thealoz Duo on- and off-line which has con­tributed to year-on-year growth for the brand.

Take a look at the web­site: www​.youreye​health​.co​.uk