Good vision for life campaign: results and pivot to respond to the ‘new’ 2020

By Optometry Australia

Like many of us, Optometry Australia’s consumer awareness campaign, Good vision for life, was set for big things in 2020. Our aim to capitalise on the Year 2020 as the Year of good vision for life was derailed by the global pandemic making it impractical to implement our planned cross sector consumer campaign.

Optometry Australia’s National Marketing Manager, Trinity Scarf said, ‘We know that eye health awareness campaigns work.  Since September 2016, over 6.86 million Australians aged 18 and over claim to have been motivated to make an appointment to see an optometrist as a result of Optometry Australia’s Good vision for life campaign.

‘The four year cumulative results also reveal that there has been a 35% increase in the number of Australians reporting that they would now see an optometrist for eye problems resulting from such conditions as excessive eye watering and redness; a 22% increase in those citing they would now see an optometrist for loss of vision; and a 27% increase in those who think they should see an optometrist annually.’

Trinity explained that Optometry Australia’s 2020 goal was to elevate campaign results further through the delivery of our sector-wide initiative, 2020: the year of good vision for life.

Bolstering the organisation’s efforts was a Federal Government grant to be used to promote the 2020 concept.

‘In January we commenced rolling out campaign elements but the onset of COVID-19 meant having to place this campaign on hold. As a result, the Government agreed to extend the grant expenditure until 30 June 2021, enabling us to delay campaign promotions to a more suitable time, better aligned to the sector’s emergence from the pandemic’ Trinity said.

She explained that prior to the pandemic’s onset the 2020 campaign had delivered some excellent results including:

• Launching the inaugural 2020 Vision Index consumer research report in January highlighting Australians’ attitudes and lifestyle behaviours towards eye health. The report attracted nearly 250 pieces of print, radio and online media coverage which reached 8.9 million Australians. The data has continued to inform many of our media angles.
• #LookCloser social media and influencer campaign – we engaged 11 high profile influencers and charged them with helping educate their combined 1.6m followers about eye health and the need for regular eye examinations.
• Social media activity – GVFL launched an Instagram profile which, along with our well-established Facebook page, has become an additional and ongoing channel to our stable driving eye health messaging and traffic to the website.

With most of Australia now out of lockdown, marketing activity – specifically, media relations – has resumed.

‘The bulk of activity however, will recommence when the time is right; at this point, late October’, Trinity said.

 

2020 campaign theme pivots to extend longevity

With support from the Government, Optometry Australia’s planned 2020 campaign theme has changed to: “Make this your year of good vision for life” – a positioning that extends beyond 2020 and below is a summary of planned activity to support the grant roll-out.

• A suite of new creative assets (consisting of static and video ads) has now been built, to support existing assets, all to go into market this year. The assets bring to life the four key messages of: (i) Prevention and early detection; (ii) Children’s vision’ (iii) Your optometrist as part of your general health regime; and (iv) Screen time versus green time – all supported by the key message to make an appointment with your local optometrist for an eye examination.
• Publicity generation will continue with angles generated from the 2020 Vision Index and other key eye health angles.
• Paid media support and advertising will absorb a significant portion of the grant budget. Whilst still being finalised, we anticipate that this support will be split across the following channels:
  • National partnership with Network Nine
  • National metro radio campaign
  • Digital and social media advertising
  • National in-clinic allied health campaign with Tonic Media
  • Search engine optimisation – to build on results achieved in FY19/20
• ‘Patients Outreach Toolkit’ built for members and aimed at helping them promote that they are open for patient care. This toolkit will contain resources that members can customise such as template media releases, newsletter content, social media graphics and promotional messaging.
• Support for World Sight Day – Working with Vision 2020, we are collaborating to deliver consumer messaging around World Sight Day which encourages Australians to go to goodvisionforlife.com.au to book an eye examination with an optometrist.

Trinity said, ‘We will continue to update you as campaign elements roll out, and seek your involvement and support in helping us “Make this your year of good vision, for life”’.

 

Resources for members

Trinity has strongly encouraged members to “Make this your year of good vision, for life”, by incorporating the campaign badge within their own patient marketing materials.

‘This badge is designed to work alongside existing logos and marketing materials, but acts as a vehicle for us to send a united message to consumers.

‘Further resources will be coming your way in the Patients Outreach Toolkit, and we will draw your attention to those again at the time’, Trinity said.

 

Campaign results FY19/20:

In addition to potentially influencing 1.5 million Australians to make an appointment with an optometrist in FY19/29, the Good vision for life campaign achieved the following strong results:

• GVFL content sharing – shares of our consumer-friendly stories via members’ and consumers’ own social media platforms has continued to grow with stories in FY19/20 being shared 6,815 times – 56% more than the previous year.
• Media coverage – 365 articles were delivered in FY19/20 in consumer print, online and broadcast channels nationally – an 89% increase on the year prior.
• Search engine optimisation –we embarked on an extensive project to improve rankings and search-ability of goodvisionforlife.com.au. This involved engaging a third-party SEO specialist and re-writing a vast amount of content on the website for search optimisation. The results to date have seen 135.13% increase in organic visitors to the site from March (1,116) to June (2,624); positioned GVFL in front of 240,000 monthly searches; increased keywords in top 10 from 0% to 18%; increased search visibility from 0% to 15%.