SOUTHFIELD, Mich.--The D.O.C Optics chain has revived its successful "Sexy Specs" ad campaign for 2005, part of what president and chief executive officer Richard Golden said is a move "back to cool, and back to a strong, music-oriented ad campaign."

Added Golden, "It's time to show our competition who's really boss in the fashion segment of the optical business."

Richard Golden

At D.O.C's annual Expo last month, held during a four-day cruise on the Royal Caribbean ship Spirit of Enchantment, the company unveiled a new ad campaign that combines its trademarked Sexy Specs theme--first introduced in the mid-1990s--with a new slogan" "D.O.C is everybody's optical."

New TV commercials feature Golden himself making plays on words, describing the chain's targeted customer base--virtually all consumers, he said--as "mom-and-pop-tical" or "traffic-cop-tical."

"Our ads feature a cross-section of people who look good in D.O.C glasses--which is just about everyone," Golden declared.

"We made a conscious effort early in 2004 to go for a much broader customer base than we'd previously targeted," he told VM. "That strategy definitely paid off for us last year--which we finished with positive comparable-store sales--and will be central to our strategy in 2005."

But since D.O.C's market position has long been that of a fashion-forward optical retailer, the chain's marketing this year will offer "a strong dose of 'value' blended with a stepped-up fashion emphasis," Golden said.

As part of its move to address a broad customer base, D.O.C is now "actively pursuing managed-care business," which represented just under one-third of its total volume in 2004, according to Golden. "It's a fact of life these days, and few retailers have the luxury of saying they won't do managed care," he noted. D.O.C has become a vision-care provider for several segments of the locally based automotive industry in the past year, and is looking to expand that role.

The company is also broadening the reach of its newest store brands, City Eyes and SEE. A second urban-oriented City Eyes location will open in the Detroit area in the next few months, Golden told VM. "We'll be promoting that concept more during 2005," he added.

As for the all-private-label SEE concept, "we were very pleased with its performance in 2004, with a double-digit comp-store increase," Golden said. "We're opening a new SEE store in Chicago this spring, plus another in a market people wouldn't expect us to go into. Moving further ahead, we've identified 10 or 15 new cities as possibilities for SEE and are looking at them to find the best locations."