Hide Out



There was no way to hide from Ray-Ban as the Luxottica brand launched its “Never Hide” ad campaign with a breakfast for the media overlooking Rockefeller Plaza and a kickin’ party that evening at Guastavino’s tucked under New York’s 59th Street Bridge.

Working with the creative help of the TBWA\ CHIAT agency and the media planning expertise of Carat International, they conceived the campaign, which includes a short film and a series of reallife- themed situations that will appear in print media, outdoors and on such web sites as MTV, MySpace, YouTube and Ray-Ban.

The campaign rolled out last month with a special project in New York’s Times Square. Consumers were given the opportunity to upload their photos onto the Ray-Ban web site with the chance to have their face plastered on 12 screens right in “the crossroads of the world,” including the Nasdaq and Reuters billboards. The photos were formatted in the Ray- Ban campaign style. Check out the image above, which is a self-portrait of my own niece Brittany Consigli, 19, donning the Wayfarer frames preferred by one of her favorite singers, Peaches. In addition, Ray-Ban had roaming photographers on hand in Times Square snapping pictures of people in the area.

The images broadcast in Times Square were also captured by the photographers on location and loaded back on to the web site into a gallery where consumers could search and find the pictures of themselves on the screens.

“From a creative and media standpoint, we are really targeting a younger audience and also, which hasn’t been done a lot in the past, more of a female audience,” says Vittorio Verdun, VP of marketing for Luxottica. “It is a brand that is about lifestyle, it’s about personality.”

— Jackie Micucci