The Campaign

‘Temporarily’ removing sight from the sighted public to create empathy for the blind. Thereby, drawing attention to the cause, and generating response.

Creative Execution

We negotiated with the Media to hijack the most watched Teledrama in the country –‘Mey Adarayai’- with a viewership of over 80% of the total TV audience. We then picked the most intense 30 seconds in the actual Tele-drama and removed the visual component, leaving just the audio. As we took away the sight from the audience, and as they became irritated by the visual impairment, the TV screen read ‘if 30 seconds of blindness is unbearable to you, imagine those who have to live with it everyday. Please give them sight, when you don’t need it anymore’.

The day after the activation, the organization marked the highest number of calls and pledges they have received in a single day. Since then, the number of call-ins and walk-ins at Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society has doubled, on average.

Eyes provide us with continuous entertainment, yet we take them for granted. Some of us, however, are not that lucky. The work, therefore, combines both the involvement in the specific entertainment we have chosen (tele-dramas) and a primary sense of enjoying that medium (sight) to enhance the idea’s impact.

Sri Lanka is predominantly a staunch Buddhist country. Lord Buddha constantly advocated the act of Dåna or giving, even of one’s own self. Yet without a national donor registry, organ donation is usually a forgotten practice. Therefore we needed a disruption that could jolt the sighted Sri Lankan public into understanding that their privilege of sight could be shared with another. The fanaticism for Tele-dramas in Sri Lanka is cult-like, but widespread. So in it we found our medium for disruption.