AOA members urged to support public relations campaign for eye exams

SALT LAKE CITY – Mike Daley, president and executive director of the Foundation for Eye Health Awareness, asked the American Optometric Association House of Delegates to endorse the Think About Your Eyes campaign and encourage corporate sponsorship.

Mr. Daley told the delegates at Optometry's Meeting that the goals of the campaign and the foundation are to “create awareness of the importance of eye health, educate about the importance of an annual comprehensive eye exam and engage the eye care practitioner in this vision. We need your support.”

The campaign has reached 22% of all Americans, Mr. Daley said, through social media, television, radio and digital advertising in nine cities: Portland, Ore.; Sacramento, Calif.; Denver; Los Angeles; Houston; Chicago; Atlanta; New York and Cleveland.

As a result of this broad public relations campaign, “there has been a 6% improvement in eye exams, or 1.6 million incremental eye exams in these markets; 36% increase in exams for new patients; an average of 100 new patients per year per practice and more than 300,000 incremental diagnosed cases of eye disease,” Mr. Daley reported.

“Everyone wins in the vision community with an increase in eye exams,” he said. “There’s also been an increase in revenue. Growth was $337 million in sales just in those markets; $129 million increase for retailers; 46% overall increase in the vision community and 27% in major retailers. We’re not just increasing eye exams, but improving the health of the community.

“Our goal is to be nationwide,” Mr. Daley continued. “If we extrapolated those numbers nationally, the overall industry growth as a result of this increase in eye exams would be more than $3 billion. While the campaign costs more than $25 million to run, that’s a small investment to get those kinds of results.”

He noted that Luxottica, Essilor and VSP have been the sole supporters of this campaign through the first 2 years.