Are you part of the two-thirds of adults that spend 6+ hours a day engaging with screens? Our nationwide survey of patients and doctors found what most of us might expect: screen time is unavoidable, and on the rise. And for many people, all that screen time can lead to dry eye disease.

Too often, people ignore their symptoms and live with dry eye disease rather than talking with their eye doctors. So we set out to raise awareness of dry eye disease, help people recognize the risks, and get them talking to their doctors—without demonizing the screens that they depend on.

It’s no secret that screens are everywhere. From our work desks and in our pockets, to the backseats of taxi cabs and on our refrigerators, we can’t keep our eyes off of them. All that excessive screening can take a real toll on our eyes, leaving them chronically itchy, irritated, and dry. But in this case, love is blind: would you believe that 55% of adults surveyed would rather give up sex than give up their smartphones?

Rather than trying to end this romance, we decided to accept and embrace the growing dedication of our eyes to screens. And from this, we started to ask new questions: what if our screens could talk? Would screens be bitter about the way we drop tortilla chips on them during our Netflix binges? Or, would they be more concerned about their serial-viewing girlfriend letting her eye health fall by the wayside?

We leveraged an agency-partner-conducted survey, historical eyelove campaign insights, and syndicated resources like MRI to determine audience segments and understand consumer psychographics. This data, along with past channel learnings, allowed us to develop an effective distribution strategy for the “If Screens Could Talk” creative messaging.

Our primary target, women 40-60, not only are more likely to be affected by dry eye symptoms, but also over-index in time spent on mobile devices.

The strategy of our multi-channel media campaign was to drive engagement with the “If Screens” messaging to increase awareness of dry eye symptoms. To generate the hype for this social-first media campaign, we utilized a tentpole event that would trigger the question, “What would my screen say about me?”

Ultimately, our goal was to reconcile the gap between loving your screens and loving your eyes by encouraging people to talk to their eye care professional about dry eye symptoms.

Acting as a launch catalyst for the “Screen Responsibly” campaign, eyelove was the premier sponsor of the first annual Popsugar Play|Ground festival, a two-day event that gave attendees an interactive experience with dry eye symptoms, a focus on screening, with opportunities for shareable moments on social media. Capitalizing on that initial buzz, digital and social channels launched to reach consumers with brand familiarity, encouraging engagement with “If Screens” messaging.

Targeted media on high-reach channels brought the creative to life by intersecting these women on the devices and sites they look at most. To elevate engagement, custom content seamlessly integrated “If Screens” within four lifestyle sites: Buzzfeed, CondeNast, Thrive Global, and Popsugar. Social media focused on retargeting and influencers. Using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, broad targeting to Women 40-60 as well as retargeting were applied to continuously tell the “If Screens” story.

In just six months, the “Screen Responsibly” campaign reached over 21 million people, with about 15% of those reached ultimately being diagnosed with dry eye disease – a rate that is 3.1x greater than the online prevalence rate. 50% percent of POPSUGAR Play|Ground attendees engaged with the eyelove interactive experience. Following the event, there were 70k+ social engagements with screen responsibly posts, an 89% increase in Paid Search “eye strain” traffic, and a 55% increase in average daily visitors to the eyelove website. Overall, our audience remained intrigued with eyelove’s “If Screens” social media, custom content, digital banners, and pre-roll, racking up close to 14.8 million engagements. These engagements drove over 830,000 visits to myeyelove.com; leading to over 50,000 high-valued actions taken on the site and over 3,500 Doctor Discussion Guide downloads.