How Optrex Ditch the Itch Turned Hay Fever Season Into a Creative Moment
Optrex's Ditch the Itch campaign is a 2021 UK healthcare film created by Havas London that positions Optrex ActiMist as a fast-acting, preservative-free spray for itchy and watery eyes caused by seasonal hay fever, promising up to four hours of relief through a product designed to repair the eye's protective lipid layer.
Launched in April 2021 across digital and social platforms in the United Kingdom, the campaign arrived precisely as pollen season began to build. Optrex ActiMist occupies a distinct product niche: a spray applied to closed eyelids rather than drops administered directly onto the eye. This delivery mechanism — the product collects at the edges of eyelids and works inward as the user blinks — formed the functional backbone of the campaign's communication. By dramatising the biological mechanism, specifically the disruption of the eye's lipid layer by allergens, the campaign elevated what could have been a routine seasonal promotion into a piece of educational healthcare advertising.
The campaign carried a dual identity. Archived under the title Ditch the Itch, it was also known publicly as Open Your Eyes to Spring. Both framings served coherent strategic purposes: the former addressed the immediate, physical discomfort the product resolves, while the latter connected the brand to the optimism and renewal that spring represents for consumers who are not held back by hay fever symptoms. Produced by UNIT9, the campaign was planned to run in multiple formats throughout the summer of 2021, reflecting a commitment to sustained seasonal presence rather than a single burst. The media agency Zenith handled channel planning, anchoring the campaign in contextual and data-driven placement across the United Kingdom.
Optrex competes in a fragmented over-the-counter eye-care market where brand salience during peak allergy windows is decisive. In the United Kingdom, hay fever is a widely experienced seasonal condition, and the spring and early summer months represent the highest-demand period for eye-care relief products. Rather than running undifferentiated awareness activity, Havas London and media agency Zenith anchored the campaign's distribution strategy to contextual targeting driven by pollen levels, weather data, and cultural calendar variables. This approach meant that advertising reached consumers at the precise moment their symptoms were most likely to be active — a media logic that compressed the distance between exposure and purchase intent.
The strategic continuity behind the 2021 campaign deserves attention. Ditch the Itch continued a Havas-led, ActiMist-focused hay fever platform that had been established as far back as 2018, rather than pursuing an entirely new direction. That 2018 campaign, also created by Havas London, promoted Optrex ActiMist for identical symptoms, indicating that Reckitt — Optrex's parent company — had committed to a long-term brand-building approach around seasonal eye discomfort. The 2021 execution represented a creative evolution of that platform, refreshing the visual language and production ambition while maintaining the core strategic proposition.
Within the competitive landscape, Visine holds strong mass-market recognition for redness relief, particularly in North American markets, while Rohto has built significant international scale, holding a dominant market position in markets such as Vietnam according to Euromonitor. In the United Kingdom, Optrex's documented market presence and its continued investment in campaign activity positions it as a leading branded name in OTC eye care, differentiating through product format, medical device classification, and sustained creative investment rather than price or volume alone.
Director Adam Bolt helmed the Ditch the Itch film for Optrex, working with production company UNIT9 to realise a creative concept built entirely around an arresting visual device. The campaign's central idea translated abstract, biological discomfort — the watery, itchy, puffy, bloodshot state of hay fever eyes — into exaggerated painted eye illustrations applied directly to human skin by makeup and body painting artist Claire Dimopoulou. The result was a series of stylised, hyper-real images of afflicted eyes that transition, after ActiMist is applied, into footage of real, clear, comfortable eyes. The before-and-after structure is familiar in healthcare advertising, but the artistic treatment elevates it considerably.
The creative team at Havas London responsible for the execution included Creative Director Dave Mygind, creative Amy-Rose Lynch, and planners Flo Sharp and Asa Nowers. The campaign's broader leadership came from Global Executive Creative Director for Reckitt, Elliot Harris, with account management handled by Camille Le Senne and Anne Puech. Film production was overseen by agency producer Charlotte Lonngren, with print production managed by Flavia Casa, and executive producer Andrew Davies leading on the UNIT9 side.
The tonal register of the work sits precisely at the intersection of healthcare information and visual creativity. The product's mechanism — a spray applied to closed eyes, not drops — demanded a communication format that could make an invisible, microscopic process comprehensible and compelling. The painted eye device achieved this by making the lipid layer disruption legible at a glance, using the language of art and illustration to explain biology. The transition from stylised to real footage then served as the campaign's emotional payoff, grounding the creative flourish in a concrete, credible product benefit. The film's dramatisation was clearly labelled as such in the campaign's own disclaimer language, maintaining regulatory integrity appropriate for a classified medical device.
The Ditch the Itch campaign generated over eight million views on the primary campaign film, with seventy-seven likes and sixteen comments recorded against that asset. For a healthcare product campaign in the United Kingdom operating in a category defined by functional rather than entertainment value, a view count of that scale reflects meaningful organic and paid reach across digital and social platforms. The Clapboard Score for the campaign stands at 63 out of 100, indicating competent and strategically coherent work that executes its core brief effectively while leaving room for greater measurable impact or creative distinctiveness at the highest level.
No independently verified sales uplift data, brand tracking results, or share-of-voice metrics for the Ditch the Itch campaign are publicly available. What the structural evidence does support is that the campaign's contextual targeting approach — tying distribution to live pollen and weather data in the United Kingdom — would have optimised delivery efficiency during the peak hay fever window, reducing wasted impressions and increasing the probability of reaching consumers at moments of active symptom experience. The decision to plan the campaign across multiple formats throughout the summer of 2021, rather than concentrating spend in a single burst, also reflects a media logic designed to sustain brand presence across the full duration of the allergy season rather than spike and retreat.
The campaign's classification of Optrex ActiMist as a medical device, and the responsible inclusion of regulatory disclaimers within the creative itself, also signals a degree of brand maturity that carries reputational value in a healthcare category where consumer trust is both harder to earn and more consequential to hold than in most fast-moving consumer goods sectors.
The Optrex Ditch the Itch campaign is a 2021 UK healthcare film by Havas London promoting Optrex ActiMist for hay fever eye relief. Launched in April 2021, it used exaggerated painted eyes created by body painting artist Claire Dimopoulou and contextual pollen-based targeting to reach UK consumers during peak allergy season.
Adam Bolt directed the Ditch the Itch film for Optrex. He worked alongside production company UNIT9 and a Havas London creative team led by Creative Director Dave Mygind, with makeup and body painting executed by Claire Dimopoulou to realise the campaign's distinctive painted-eye visual device.
Optrex ActiMist is a preservative-free eye spray classified as a medical device in the United Kingdom. It is applied to closed eyelids, collects at the eyelid edges, and works into the eye as the user blinks to help repair the eye's protective lipid layer, providing relief from itchy and watery eyes for up to four hours.
Havas London and media agency Zenith used contextual targeting tied to live pollen levels, weather data, and cultural calendar variables across the United Kingdom. This approach delivered advertising to hay fever sufferers at moments of peak symptom likelihood, tightening the connection between ad exposure and active consumer need during the 2021 spring and summer season.
The Optrex Ditch the Itch campaign received a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. This score reflects a strategically coherent healthcare campaign that executes its seasonal brief effectively, with strong contextual media logic and a distinctive creative device, while indicating room for greater measurable impact or top-tier creative distinction.
Ditch the Itch continued a Havas London-led ActiMist hay fever platform established in 2018 rather than representing an entirely new strategy. Both campaigns addressed itchy and watery eyes caused by hay fever in the United Kingdom, demonstrating Reckitt's commitment to sustained, long-term brand building around seasonal eye discomfort under the Optrex name.
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