Around the world one in 12 men and one in 200 women suffer from color vision deficiency (CVD), according to the Colour Blind Awareness organization. That’s 350 million people globally with almost 3 million in the United Kingdom alone. In fact, some of the world’s most influential people, including Mark Zuckerberg and Prince William, are colorblind.
For over a decade now, Enchroma, which produces glasses that help wearers with colorblindness, has been on a mission to help support those living with the issue to be able to see the whole spectrum while spreading awareness of CVD, which the company says is rarely discussed.
Over the last year, the brand has begun building in Europe, running its first campaign in the U.K., the idea for which came to the team when they considered how colorblind people used the London tube map, which features colors green, yellow, pink, red, purple, gray, black and blue.
This led to the idea of running a direct-to-consumer Christmas out-of-home campaign around train stations in the British capital to make more people aware that their friends and colleagues may have to deal with this problem.
Created by the Enchroma in-house design team to feature colors such as red and green, which can cause confusion, the ads have been designed so that colorblind people are unable to see Santa, Rudolph or a glass of beer that are featured in each of the executions. The campaign, which began on Nov. 15, features three posters with an image in the center and text above reading “Five of your friends can’t see this.” Below it is an image of Enchroma glasses and the suggestion to “Give the gift of color.”
A remedy for colorblindness
Co-founder of the business Tony Dykes told Adweek that the aim of the campaign was to make people with CVD aware that the company’s glasses could be a remedy for them.
“We want to get people talking about it. It’s [not] something that colorblind people [talk about] themselves; they clam up and don’t make an issue. We want to be part of their experience,” he added.
Media company Global produced and distributed the posters at sites across London in stations such as Kings Cross, Victoria, London Bridge, Waterloo, Liverpool Street, Paddington and Euston.
“We’ve been looking at the different possible advertising methods because colorblindness is quite a phenomenon still in the U.K. … we’re not quite there with household name status here,” explains Chris Dykes, director of operations for Enchroma U.K. “We looked at digital streaming, advertising, podcasts and radio, but Enchroma’s medium is color, and digital print outdoor seems to be one of the best ways to capture this.”
The company has also begun to supply its glasses to museums and galleries in the U.S. to allow colorblind attendees to borrow a pair to appreciate the artifacts on display in their full glory. This is an initiative that Enchroma intends to bring to Europe in 2022, but it has yet to outline which venues it has formed agreements with.
