This is not Warby Parker’s first time marekting around a solar eclipse. The 14-year-old brand first distributed ISO-certified eclipse glasses around 2017’s “Great American Eclipse.” As co-founder Neil Blumenthal told Glossy, “Who doesn’t love a celestial event?” Ahead of the 2024 Total Eclipse on Monday, the brand began distributing the same glasses through its 240 retail locations on April 1.
“With anything we do, we ask ourselves, ‘Does this align with our core values and who we are as a brand?'” Blumenthal said, noting that one of Warby Parker’s brand tenets is to “inject fun and quirkiness” into its strategies. Another tenet is “learn, grow and repeat,” and the 2024 eclipse provided “an awesome opportunity,” to implement its 2017 learnings, he said.
In addition to offering the glasses to customers in-store, the brand also distributed them in Delta lounges, in schools, at the Top of the Rock observation deck and at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The Garden is usually closed on Mondays, but it will be open this week to host a large solar eclipse viewing, Blumenthal said.
As Blumenthal stated, it can be dangerous to observe the solar eclipse without eye protection. So, Warby Parker wanted to make safe, ISO-certified viewers widely available. “The beauty of the internet is that you can get a lot of stuff pretty easily and cheaply,” he said. “[But] the challenge of the internet is that there’s a lot of stuff on there that isn’t safe.”
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Leading up to April 8, the brand has been providing information about the eclipse on its Instagram. One carousel post was created in partnership with the magazine Scientific American, which Blumenthal called a “reputable expert.”
As for Warby Parker’s goals for the eclipse activation, Blumenthal said the brand wants to engage with and give back to its local communities. To determine its success, the brand will consider how many glasses it ultimately distributed, as well as the number of visits to and sales made through its website and stores from April 1-8. In addition, the brand will analyze its social media comments, with a focus on the general sentiment about the activation, as well as related calls and emails received by its customer service team.
“Our call volume is right now the highest it’s ever been because people are calling in and asking where they can get the viewers. And traffic to our stores is elevated,” Blumenthal said. “That will make our conversion metrics go down, because not everybody that’s coming in looking for solar eclipse glasses is going to buy a regular pair of glasses. But, we’ll take that negative impact on a metric to engage with folks.” The brand declined to comment on the marketing spend for its eclipse campaign.
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For Herbivore Botanicals, the “clean” skin-care brand launched in 2011, the eclipse aligned with the launch of its first-ever SPF, dubbed Star Seed. “We’ve always mentioned celestial moments and events in our product naming and in our campaigns. We send out horoscopes, which we call Herbiscopes, every month,” said Betsy Seale, Herbivore’s head of digital. The brand sees a 30% higher click-through rate on those emails than others, Seale said.
Timed to Monday’s eclipse, the brand is launching a campaign called Eclipse Sun Damage. For the campaign. it curated a list of 50 influencers, geographically located along the eclipse’s path, who were sent a mailer. The package included two pairs of branded eclipse-safe glasses, the Star Seed Silicone-Free 100% Mineral Facial Sunscreen SPF 30 with Vitamin C + Prebiotics, and the Dream Jelly Vegan Multi-Oil Lip Balm for Hydration and Plumping, which is another new launch. Recipients included Courtney Shields, Kennedy Eurich and Spencer Jennings.
It felt like a “super natural” moment to engage, Seale said. “[We always talk about] how to bring in new customers and what we should talk about that’s not been done before. And this is a once-in-a-100-years moment,” she said.
Seale noted that the campaign also provided an opportunity to connect with influencers outside of the East and West Coasts. The mix of a “hypercurrent event” and the on-brand feel for Herbivore provided the perfect opportunity to engage shoppers, she said. In addition, she added, moments like the eclipse are “hyper-sharable.”
In addition to promoting Herbivore’s latest launches, the campaign laddered back to Herbivore’s bestselling product, a brightening serum called Nova. On its Instagram, the brand hosted a giveaway through which followers could win eclipse glasses, the new SPF, the Nova serum and the brand’s Super Nova 5% THD Vitamin C + Caffeine Brightening Eye Cream.
Customers who purchase from Herbivore’s e-commerce site on April 8 will receive a deluxe sample of its Nova serum. “It’s a SKU that we’re always trying to support by sharing what’s great about it in new ways,” Seale said. Finally, the brand is also activating on Pinterest, where, like Warby Parker, it has created and shared eclipse-specific content.
