Glaucoma affects 250,000 Canadians – but only half of them know that they have it. Since early detection and treatment is essential to prevent severe vision loss or blindness, CNIB needed to raise awareness about glaucoma and the importance of screening.

With the Eye Remember campaign, we had the opportunity to engage Canadians around glaucoma in a unique way – through an online photo contest – while at the same time providing credible, easy-to-understand information that would enable people to care for their eyes and prevent unnecessary vision loss. We also had the opportunity to educate the general public about glaucoma, and encourage Canadians to visit a free CNIB glaucoma screening clinic in their community. All of this information was on the website Edelman developed – www.eyeremember.ca and www.laprunelledemesyeux.ca.

Eye Remember involved a carefully planned and phased approach over a period of five months with a number of program components, including: glaucoma omnibus survey; contest and media launch; submission of photo entries; updated information online about free community glaucoma screening clinics and local media outreach; and finally, voting by celebrity judges and the general public on the top-five entries and announcing the winner locally.

A successful media strategy with a phased approach, coupled with survey results, effective spokespeople and an interesting contest, helped generate 217 media hits and 40,318,407 media impressions. A $0.002 cost-per-contact was also achieved, with an MRP Quality Score of 84.45 per cent. Finally, participation in the campaign exceeded expectations, with 128 national contest entries, resulting in 13,064 website visits and 4,192 votes cast.

As a result of the Eye Remember campaign, whether it was by submitting a photo, casting a vote or participating in one of CNIB’s free glaucoma screening clinics across the country, CNIB and Canadians helped raise awareness about the dangers of glaucoma – and helped many Canadians improve their vision health. Qualitatively, the campaign also raised the profile of CNIB, whose mission it is to be Canada’s leader in promoting vision health.