Tuesday, 31 July 2018, Melbourne: A recent consumer survey has revealed that Optometry Australia’s flagship consumer awareness campaign, Good vision for life, has influenced more than 2.3 million Australians to make an appointment with an optometrist since its launch in September 2016.

The survey has highlighted that 1.3 million Australians aged 18 years and over were influenced by the campaign in the last 12 months to make an appointment with an optometrist compared to 1.07 million in 2017. Simultaneously the number of Australians who would now see an optometrist first for a range of eye conditions has also increased, meeting a primary goal of the campaign to influence key household decision makers.

Optometry Australia launched the Good vision for life campaign in September 2016, to ensure the community understands the value of good eye health, the need to have regular eye examinations throughout life and the role optometrists play as primary health care providers.

Optometry Australia’s National Campaigns Manager Trinity Scarf said the campaign, now in its second year, is continuing to hit its mark among consumers and members alike.

“Awareness campaigns are designed to foster understanding and create habits, so it is pleasing to see this upward trend, reflected by the results of the consumer survey,” she said.

The annual omnibus consumer survey, conducted by respected social research company i-View, is designed to reflect the broader view of Australians. The survey sample size was 1,158 people with results applicable to represent the entire population aged 18+ (19.1m).

Ms Scarf said “We are delighted with the results given that our budget is modest for a national awareness campaign of this nature. This means that we have had to be smart where we have allocated our promotional spend to ensure the campaign messages reach our targeted consumers.”

“We have worked closely with our media agency to carefully select progressive and innovative media channels, coupled with high-reaching traditional media, to grow our audience incrementally.”

Free-to-air radio remained a core channel for the campaign, and spreading the eye health message across two major networks, via a 30 second ad as well as repeated air checks delivered a strong increase in reach compared with the launch year.

Campaign messages also expanded into audio streaming via Spotify and iHeart Radio in the second year, to reach an additional audience, with an added objective of building a consumer database.

“In lieu of a TV-sized budget, a robust video strategy was required to continue to harness our strong video materialcreated in the first year of the campaign,” Ms Scarf said. “Cinema was identified as the main outlet for this strategy, due to its scale and targeted relevance to the audience, and we also introduced in-home catch up TV.”

Optometry Australia is encouraged by these strong campaign results and is focused on continuing to grow awareness and change consumer behaviour in the year ahead.