The Campaign

Background: 1. Even though cataracts are a familiar illness (aging phenomenon), most people don't know about the disease. 2. The onset of cataracts often occurs in women over 40. 3. Vision becomes yellowish as cataracts progress, which is a little known fact about the disease. The main goal for this project was to increase general awareness regarding cataracts among the aging population. The idea was to produce a video to send by e-mail on Mother's day with the message "call me tonight" written in bright yellow at the end. - If their mother can read the yellow message, it means that their vision is normal, and she would call her son or daughter that night. - If their mother cannot read the yellow message, she would not call her son or daughter that night. The son or daughter can then call to recommend their mother get checked at an optometrist. We constructed a homepage right before Mothers Day, and in the three days before Mothers Day, we already had 20,000 page views. Over 100 online media outlets throughout Japan reported on the video, including the Japanese version of the largest news site in the world, The Huffington Post.

The Brief

The main goal for this project was to increase general awareness regarding cataracts among the aging population. A secondary goal was to provide an opportunity for young people throughout Japan and the world to show their mothers that they are about their health, and express gratitude that they feel but may not always show on a daily basis. The target audience was young people in their 20s, who have mothers who are likely in their 40s, when vision problems due to aging start to occur.

Creative Execution

Two videos, the "Magic" video which is meant to be sent to the mother, and the "Explanation" video which explains the purpose and meaning behind the project, were uploaded to Youtube right before Mother's Day on May 5th, 2014. The website http://mom-eye.jp/, which also contains the videos, was launched shortly after. The video and website both still remain active to this day, despite Mother's Day having passed. We felt that the idea of being able to check the vision of a loved one simply by sending a video and awaiting their reaction was something that hadn't been done before, and we were eager to work with our client, an ophthalmology clinic, to make it happen.

We constructed a homepage right before Mothers Day, and in the three days before Mothers Day, we already had 20,000 page views. Over 100 online media outlets throughout Japan reported on the video, including the Japanese version of the largest news site in the world, The Huffington Post, and the Nishinippon Shimbun. The article on The Huffington Post website boasts 1,700 "Likes" on Facebook, along with 288 Facebook shares, and 188 Retweets on Twitter. An article about our video became the most talked-about under the keyword "Mothers Day", which topped #1 on Google Trends.

The idea was to produce a video to send by e-mail on Mother's day with the message "call me tonight" written in bright yellow at the end. A: If their mother can read the yellow message, it means that their vision is normal, and she would call her son or daughter that night. B: If their mother cannot read the yellow message, she would not call her son or daughter that night. The son or daughter can then call to recommend their mother get checked at an optometrist, since her inability to read the message may indicate a problem with her vision. This project provides an opportunity for mothers and children to talk about the health of their mother's eyes on Mother's Day. It was important that the finished product be something that could be easily shared and didn't take a lot of time.