The Humble Carrot: Enduring Vegetable Icon of Vision Health and Optometry Marketing

By Stewart Gandolf, Chief Executive Officer

The vision-health benefits of eating carrots have stronger roots in popular folklore than in pure science. (The surprising origin of the carrots-for-better-vision is revealed below.) But the orange-ish root vegetable remains an enduring icon that pops up from time to time in optometry marketing.

Here are two creative examples we happened to see recently.

optometrist carrots sign advertisement — Produce Stand Media is Labor Intensive

Putting logo labels on dozens of supermarket carrots is clever but a bit labor intensive. The sign and the labels advise shoppers to see an optometrist “to know what’s best for your eyes.” It’s a fun expression of optometry marketing in advertising, but with limited audience reach and frequency.

Nebraska Foundation for Children Vision advertisement — Five Faces Billboard

The “Five Faces” billboards by the Nebraska Foundation for Children’s Vision (NFCV), with carrots in their logo, intend to increase vision problem awareness and the need for kid vision evaluations. The NFCV folks also have an interesting website with creative touches worth seeing.

SPOILER ALERT: Regarding the motherly advice that eating carrots results in improved vision: Snopes.com and other sources tell us that while carrots are a good source of vitamin A (important for healthy eyesight), the link between carrots and markedly acute vision originates as lore invented during World War II.

Snopes says: “Britain’s air ministry spread the word that a diet of these vegetables helped pilots see Nazi bombers attacking at night. It was a lie intended to cover the real success…[the new and secret] Airborne Interception Radar.”