"Optometry Gives Me Life" Campaign Launched

The Association of Schools and Colleges (ASCO) has launched its national public awareness campaign – Optometry Gives Me Life.

This campaign was born out of the concern among ASCO and its optometric institutions with a troubling decline, in recent years, of qualified applicants to each institution’s first-year class.

Optometry Gives Me Life campaign features three young and successful Doctors of Optometry:

• Dr. Jeffrey Lewis of Champaign, IL
• Dr. Muriel Martinez of Houston, TX
• Dr. Miki Lyn Zilnicki of Riverhead, NY

These Doctors of Optometry and their stories are shown through the new, lively, and vibrant website, www.futureeyedoc.org, as well as through other related marketing materials.

Optometry Gives Me Life is reaching college-aged students pursuing STEM degrees who have expressed an interest in a health profession, but may not yet be considering optometry. Implementation is through specialized and targeted social media outreach, publications, ancillary promotional materials, emails, direct mail, and the campaign’s landing page at www.futureeyedoc.org.

Campaign materials show what a wonderful career optometry is: how it offers an enviable work/life balance, an excellent salary and quality of life, the various settings one can practice optometry in, the many ways Doctors of Optometry can give back to their community and positively affect the lives of others, and so much more.

The metrics and outreach of the campaign, in little over four months have been extremely promising. For instance, the paid ads have been seen by more than 14 million people. The benchmark for click to open rates of these types of ads is 0.1 % and the campaign is showing open rates of .14% — that’s 40% higher than average.

Through the futureeyedoc.org landing page, the viewing through completion rate is 75.39%. The benchmark is 30% completion; Optometry Gives Me Life is showing more than 140% higher than average completion.

So far, there is a 151.5% increase in applications through our OptomCAS system compared to the same time last year.

The campaign was heavily promoted at Optometry’s Meeting 2019 through various presentations, at the ASCO exhibit booth promoting the campaign with honored guest Dr. Muriel Martinez, and at the ASCO Corporate Contributors breakfast. 

ASCO wishes to thank its sponsors VSP Global, Allergan, Cooper Vision, Essilor, HOYA, Luxottica, National Vision, and VisionWorks for their support to the Optometry Gives Me Life campaign.

For more information about this campaign, please contact Paige Pence, Director, Student and Residency Affairs, at ppence@opted.org, or Kim O’Sullivan, Director of Communications, at kosullivan@opted.org.