Leo Burnett opens millions of eyes to blindness

Saturday, 12 March 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Sri Lanka has a population of 20 million. Of these, around 200,000 people are believed to be blind and over 400,000 are having low vision. In many cases the low vision can be cured with a replacement and the availability of a healthy pair of eyes. The Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society wanted to use the White Cane Day to encourage donors and enlist more. Leo Burnett, Sri Lanka was entrusted with the reposnsibility to come up with a strategy to achieve this objective.

Sri Lanka, predominantly a Buddhist country where Dåna or giving, compassion is heavily encouraged. Yet without strong prompting organ donation is usually a forgotten practice. In order to find a medium of disruption, Leo Burnett, Sri Lanka looked at the viewerships for teledramas in Sri Lanka. Afterwards the agency partnered with Sirasa TV to use the most watched teledrama in the country, ‘Mey Adarayai’ as a platform to implement the strategy. With a viewership of over 80% of the local population, they picked up the most intense or the most looked out 30 seconds of the tele-drama. The visual component was disable during the selected duration leaving the viewer just with the audio. A message emphasising the importance of donating and sharing sight followed this sudden disruption on the most watched TV program.

The distruption campaign was very well-recieved and the results were visible from the next day onwards as the organisation received the highest number of eye donor pledges received within a day. Eversince then the number of call-ins and the walk-ins at the Sri Lanka eye donation society has doubled.

The media innovation now has been recognised around the world for its effectiveness and stands as a testament to the power of meaningful communication and the impact it has on positive change.