ABOUT

CONCEPT
A surprising proportion of high-level athletes play without optimal, corrected vision, or corrected vision at all. Studies show one in five players have not been tested in the past five years. or have never had an eye exam. So, we needed an unmissable way to show the impact of seeing clearly on the pitch. Vision Direct sought to increase its brand visibility and market share within the European contact lens market, capitalizing on the cultural significance of football and growing emphasis on sports data science. To do so, we needed to leverage news generation to secure a larger share of the contact lens market, and establish Vision Direct as a key player in promoting vision health within the European football community, solidifying its position as a leader in the industry.

EXECUTION
We started by gathering data from diverse academic sources, including visual cognition, evolutionary biology, and cognitive psychology fields. Insights from light sensitivity studies guided our choice of shirt color, optimizing it to maximize relative luminosity in daylight vision. We drew from research on visual perception to design a shirt motif that would capture players' attention, leveraging insights into reaction times for object identification. Additionally, data from developmental psychology informed our understanding of elements effective in attracting and sustaining human gaze. Putting all this data into play, we meticulously tailored a campaign that leveraged scientific findings to drive innovation and effectiveness in both football performance and overall vision enhancement.
We collaborated with scientist Dr. Sherylle Calder to apply the gathered data to our football kit designs. After prototyping various designs, our final kit incorporated key elements of evolutionary and optical science data:
• An image of a large snake triggering high alert, leveraging the human visual system's ancestral response to immediate threats.
• The most visible color, a wavelength of 550nm (yellow), ensuring visibility against the green pitch backdrop.
• High-contrast black and white optical illusion patterns, along with reflective 'targets' resembling snake eyes.
• Black, yellow, and white color combinations creating the illusion of motion.
• Odd number patterns to naturally draw the eye and highlight irregularities.
• A visual acuity test designed to flag players in need of an eye exam if they struggle to read letters from 20ft away.

RESULTS
We gifted The World’s Most Visible Football Kit to grassroots team, Edgeware and Kingsbury FC, driving a tangible shift in perception for the significance of vision in sports and everyday life. Ellie Hersh, captain of the Edgware & Kingsbury FC team, attested to the kit's transformative impact: “Playing in the visible kit was such an eye-opening experience and was quite a ‘eureka moment’ in making me realize how important good vision really is…it even brought to light the importance of things like peripheral vision which I had never properly considered before.”

The campaign garnered extensive earned coverage, reaching a total audience of 56,447,840 through European sports and lifestyle media outlets.
Across social channels, our 50 hero campaign posts drove significant engagement, gathering 105,000 impressions solely through organic reach.
The average reach surpassed KPIs, while content achieved an engagement rate of 3.9%—tripling industry benchmarks and exceeding KPIs by 44%.

The campaign's success in driving behavior change and enhancing consumer experience translated into measurable business impact, solidifying Vision Direct's position as a leader in the contact lens market and reinforcing its brand visibility and market share within the European contact lens market.