Straight-A Vision for a New School Year
Problem: Key element of scholastic success falling by the wayside
VSP Global knew that children’s comprehensive eye exams don’t happen as often as they should, and felt a responsibility to educate parents about the importance of getting their child an eye exam from an optometrist. A survey created by VSP and YouGov found that half of U.S. parents skip their child’s annual comprehensive eye exams, and most parents simply aren’t aware that six months old is the recommended age to start meeting with an eye doctor annually. According to the American Optometric Association, good vision is key to academic success, with as much as 80 percent of a child's learning occurring visually.
To amplify the importance of annual exams and build a sense of trust with families, VSP partnered with WE to catch the attention of key decision makers—moms.
Solution: Partnering with trusted resources to break through
The first priority was to identify the right moment and method to convince busy parents to add one more thing to their never-ending to-do lists. The beginning of each school year is an exciting time for parents and kids alike, when scholastic success is naturally top of mind. However, parents often feel overwhelmed with messages and recommendations during the back to school timeframe, and need any communication to be straightforward and actionable. VSP looked to WE to create a compelling, unique campaign that would cut through the clutter and motivate busy parents to act—with measurable results.
WE’s content, focused on results of the survey proposed by the agency, directed parents to the VSP website so they could find a nearby optometrist. We grounded the campaign in a content strategy with Red Tricycle, a trusted online parenting resource, in order to meet moms where they already were. As this was VSP’s first fully integrated communications campaign, they leveraged WE’s expertise in execution and measurement to educate and ultimately encourage parents to prioritize and schedule a comprehensive eye exam for their child.
“We gave clients a lot of counsel on investing in platforms to meet moms where they are already spending their time,” said Seema Bhende, senior vice president at WE. “We knew that partnering with Red Tricycle would allow VSP to break through the noise and connect with moms in a way that felt meaningful and authentic.”
In addition to earned media outreach, social amplification, and owned content tactics, WE also created branded audio bite lines (ABL) featuring a VSP network optometrist to lend a trusted voice to the campaign.
Impact: Keeping our eyes on what matters
Children, education, public health—this integrated campaign was near and dear to our hearts, so we were delighted at the results. WE-developed messaging yielded more than 9.8 million impressions on Red Tricycle and directly drove customer action, with over 3,700 clicks to VSP’s Find An Eye Doctor webpage. Further, the ABL netted over 11 million listeners, and our push to major media generated 18 earned placements in publications such as US News & World Report, Consumer Affairs, and Optometry Web. Owned and social content also outperformed expectations, demonstrating that easily digestible “news you can use” resonated with our target audience—raising awareness and laying a foundation for additional outreach and growth.
“Working with WE has been incredible, they have such an experience in integrated campaigns, and we’re thrilled with what we were able to achieve with these efforts” said Pat McNeil, chief communications officer for VSP.
Generating strong outcomes for our clients while also helping kids—it doesn’t take 20/20 vision to see the value in that.
