Leo Burnett Sri Lanka hijacks a popular teledrama to spread the important message of eye donation
Sri Lanka has 200,000 legally blind people and over 400,000 visually impaired persons, out of a 21 million population. In many cases blindness can be cured if a healthy pair of eyes are available. But at any given time the eye depositories have less than half the required amount.
The Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society, the main organization involved in devising strategy and programmes for the country’s blind problem, wanted to use the White Cane Day to leave a lasting message with the sighted public about the importance of eye donations and encourage more pledges.
In this campaign by Leo Burnett Sri Lanka they ‘temporarily’ removed sight from the sighted public to create empathy for the blind. Thereby, drawing attention to the cause, and generating response.
Sri Lanka is predominantly a stanch Buddhist country. Lord Buddha firmly advocated the act of Dåna or giving, not just material things but one’s own self. Yet without a national donor registry, organ donation is usually a forgotten practice.
Therefore Leo Burnett Sri Lanka needed a disruption that could jolt the sighted Sri Lankan public in to understanding that their privilege of sight could be shared with another.
The fanaticism for Tele-dramas in Sri Lanka is the widest spread national obsession. So in it they found a medium for disruption.
They 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.
They then picked the most intense 30 seconds in the actual Tele-drama, and removed the visual component leaving just the audio. As they 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 for the rest of their lives. Please give them sight, when you don’t need it anymore’.
The day after the activation, the organization received the highest number of ‘eye donation pledges’ they have received in a day.
Since then, the number of call-ins and the walk-ins at Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society has tripled on average.