Quirky Eyewear Brand Tries TV as an Ad Medium

By STUART ELLIOTT

A nontraditional e-commerce company is testing a traditional advertising medium, television, but with a twist.

The company is Warby Parker, which sells prescription eyeglasses online at cut-rate prices, at warbyparker.com. Until now, Warby Parker's marketing efforts for its $95 eyewear (prescription lenses included) have been focused online and on promotions and events like pop-up shops, kiosks in Standard hotels and film screenings.

Beginning on Thursday, the company is entering the realm of television advertising, which is usually the province of much larger companies. But the budget is small, $250,000, and the time frame is short, four weeks.

To be thriftier with its dollars, the company will run the spot on Dish TV and DirecTV using addressable technology, which enables the spot be aimed more precisely to the Warby Parker demographic target: men and women ages 18 to 34 who like to buy designer-style eyewear at lower prices.

Commercials can be steered on a household-by-household basis; the house at 1313 Mockingbird Lane or 5133 Kensington Avenue sees a certain spot, while the house at 1315 Mockingbird Lane or 5135 Kensington Avenue is shown something different.

The effort is a test by Warby Parker to see if television advertising is worth the money. Such tests are common among marketers, large and small, particularly in uncertain times, but for a brand that cultivates an offbeat image it is a bit surprising.

“Our growth strategy is, how do we get more people to learn about Warby Parker, because once they learn they're interested in the value proposition,” said Neil Blumenthal, the co-chief executive at the company with David Gilboa. (They are also the co-founders.) “Our assumption is that TV has the biggest megaphone,” Mr. Blumenthal said, “especially for an unknown brand.”

If the test is deemed successful, he added, there may be “a larger a d buy toward the end of the year” with an eye toward “a larger buy for 2013.”

The idea to use addressable TV came from the Warby Parker media agency of record, Spark, part of the Starcom MediaVest Group division of the Publicis Groupe.

The campaign is only the second using the technology for a Spark client, said Tracey Scheppach, executive vice president and innovations director at SMGx, which works with Spark and the other Starcom MediaVest Group agencies. The first client, two weeks ago, was Allstate, she said.

The concept was that “a cutting-edge brand” like Warby Parker would benefit from trying to “do something with cutting-edge technology” like addressable TV, Ms. Scheppach said.

The commercial is being created for Warby Parker by Partners & Spade in New York, which handles a variety of brand communication tasks for the company. Visitors to a section of the Warby Parker Web site will also be able to watch the spot there.

The commercial is very much in the whimsical style of the Warby Parker brand, featuring animated versions of offbeat images like eyeballs, trains, apartment buildings and stylish young people. The spot looks like a mélange of the opening credits of the “Monty Python's Flying Circus” TV shows, ads for Hendrick's gin and the video for the Peter Gabriel song “Sledgehammer.”

The Warby Parker commercial begins with two eyeballs, each riding a unicycle, and a British-sounding voice asking, “Looking for a new pair of glasses, are we?” The voice continues: “Seek no further than the Internet. There you'll find us, Warby Parker, designers of superlative eyewear as worn by these stylish citizens.”

The spot ends with the eyeballs, together, behind a pair of Warby Parker glasses. “Now that's a good-looking pair of eyeballs,” the voice says. “Warbyparker.com. Don't delay!”

The look of the commercial, and the brand image, stem from “a correlation be tween eyewear and intelligence and reading,” said Anthony Sperduti, who runs Partners & Spade with Andy Spade. After all, Mr. Sperduti and Mr. Blumenthal noted, the Warby Parker name comes from two characters in the works of Jack Kerouac, Warby Pepper and Zagg Parker.

Stuart Elliott has been the advertising columnist at The New York Times since 1991. Follow @stuartenyt on Twitter and sign up for In Advertising, his weekly e-mail newsletter by clicking here.