In order to invite people who were not even aware they had astigmatism for treatment, we decided to develop a test that could be reachable for all people with or without astigmatism. We created shelter ads with a certain diopter. This made the special shelter ads to be only seen by people with astigmatism clearly. People with astigmatism read the message on our ads easily. Through the small test, they understood that they had vision problem.

The test that we prepared had the shelter ads manufactured in a way that can be clearly seen only by those with a low diopter of astigmatism. We executed this through using a special glass which is normally prescribed for the treatment of astigmatism. The people with astigmatism read our message of ‘if you can read this, you may have an eye problem’ in the ad easily and realized their condition. We implemented our work for a week in September, 2017 and picked strategically busy places in Istanbul in order to achieve maximum reach.

Our creative work resulted in success, particularly in drawing attention and changing people’s perception and behaviour towards eye health care. After the implementation, an average of 2 million people saw our shelter ads. This caused a significant increase of applications to the hospital for astigmatism by 28%.

Prescription Board case essentially aims to raise awareness among a certain group of people, but it does that through including them into the process. Having turned into an eye examination test accessible to anybody, the shelter ad undertakes a significant task, rather than just being an ordinary ad. Its shocking impact in awakening people creates a call to action for the eye examination.

To enhance people’s quality of life, it was important for us to consider Turkey as a whole as our audience. After careful research on people’s attitude towards eye health care, we realized there were two groups of people. One the one hand, there were the ones that did not associate themselves with any vision problem simply because they rejected the treatment or wearing any glasses or lenses. On the other hand, there were the ones that always had their own explanation, ‘diagnosis’ for their symptoms, mostly as being tired or using computer for long hours. For them to understand it is important to have comprehensive dilated eye exams, we needed to get their attention in their daily lives, when they were not that busy with something else. The shelter ads, in that sense, were effective and simple enough to make them realized it affects their daily lives negatively.

According to Turkey Health Interview Survey in 2016, only 35,6% percentage of people in Turkey were wearing glasses or lenses. A great number of people lacked awareness for the importance of eye health care and a possible eye problem. When it came to conditions like astigmatism that could be ignored easily, people did not have the necessary knowledge. Astigmatism is a common vision condition, and yet people can have mild astigmatism and not know about it, especially if they do not have any symptoms. The problem was that people in Turkey did not frequently have their eyes examined. They either did not have the knowledge that they should repeat it in every 2 to 4 years or they just did not find it necessary until a symptom affects their lives greatly. In this environment, we needed to raise awareness for early diagnosis to prevent distorsion to progress faster.