Anatomy of a product launch: Ray-Ban Stories
How Facebook and Ray-Ban partnered to launch a controversial new product.
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It’s not every day that the world’s largest social network launches a hardware product, so when they do, people (including me) take notice.
Facebook and Ray-Ban partnered this past September to launch Ray-Ban Stories, tech-enabled sunglasses that can take pictures, record video, and play audio.
While the partnership between Facebook and Ray-Ban was announced almost exactly one year ago, the launch was the first look at Facebook’s take on smart glasses.
This launch was interesting for several reasons:
Facebook got to create a smart device that helps fuel unique content for their platform while leaning on Ray-Ban for product design and ecommerce/retail distribution. Each company played to its strengths to develop a product in a new category with enormous upside.
Recording-enabled wearables are a controversial topic and Facebook is constantly embroiled in PR scandals around their technologies, with a growing emphasis on privacy matters. There was a certain amount of brand risk for Ray-Ban to launch a controversial product with a controversial partner.
With two high-profile brands, how did they work together to pull off the launch? Launching a product of this magnitude is hard enough for one brand to do it, but two? Each has their own strategies, creative vision, and work styles so bringing this product to market is even more impressive.
No matter what you think of the product (or Facebook for that matter), there’s a lot to learn from these two massive brands and how they worked together to launch this new product.
Here’s how Facebook and Ray-Ban launched Ray-Ban Stories:
🚀 Launch Video
📺 TV Advertisement
🌐 Marketing Landing Page
🛒 E-commerce Page
🏠 Ray-Ban Home Page
📣 Facebook Press Release
📣 Luxotica Press Release
💻 Tech-focused Landing Page
🔐 Facebook Privacy Webpage
🤳 Retargeting Ads
👀 Google Search Ads
✍️ Tech Reviews
✨ Teaser Landing Page
📧 Email Marketing
🏬 Retail Partners
📱 Social Media
🚀 Launch video
As a digital-only launch with no in-person event, Ray-Ban and Facebook produced a launch video to demo the new product. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talks about the technical capabilities of the new product and Rocco Basilico, the Chief Wearable Officer of Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica, talks about the product design and styles. Wrapping up the video are three creators/influencers sharing their experience using the new product.
📺 TV Advertisement
The 60-second spot launched as part of their large-scale media buy.
🌐 Ray-Ban Landing Page
The primary destination of the launch is this dynamic side-scrolling landing page that is just as polished and content-rich as any Apple marketing webpage I’ve seen. It highlights product features, blends benefit statements and brand messaging, shows off 3D mockups, has interactive elements, gives technical specs, and ends by highlighting user-generated content created with the new product.
🛒 Ecommerce Page
The actual e-commerce product page where people can purchase the product.
🏠 Ray-Ban Home Page
Ray-Ban committed prime real estate on its home page to the launch, promoting the marketing page, e-commerce pages, and announcement video.
📣 Facebook Press Release
Facebook made the announcement in their corporate newsroom with a press release that featured embedded video and photos.
📣 Luxottica Press Release
Luxottica also released a fairly standard press release on their corporate website.
💻 Tech@Facebook blog post
As part of the launch, Facebook also created a blogpost on their Tech@Facebook microsite that talked more about the technical challenges of creating the product. Tech@Facebook blog posts are largely a recruiting tool to show off all the innovation happening at Facebook across engineering, hardware, AR, gaming, and more.
🔐 Facebook Privacy Page
Knowing that a product like this was going to face backlash from privacy advocates, Facebook created a landing page dedicated to how Facebook and Ray-Ban have designed the new product with privacy controls in mind. A clearly defensive measure against negative PR, the page was linked to in the press release to signal to journalists that Facebook wasn’t launching a new product without thinking about the possible negative consequences
🤳 Retargeting Ads
Every good DTC company employs retargeting ads and Ray-Ban was no different for this launch.
👀 Google Search Ads
They also launched Google Search ads around more non-branded terms like “Facebook glasses” that people were sure to search for.
✍️ Tech Reviews
Facebook and Ray-Ban gave early production samples and produce info to prominent tech journalists to review on an embargoed basis. By giving early access to these influential reporters, Facebook gave them a chance to review how the product actually works and prepare a story (and videos) to coincide with the launch day.
NY Times: Smart Glasses Made Google Look Dumb. Now Facebook Is Giving Them a Try.
Techcrunch: Review: Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories make the case for smart glasses
The Verge: Facebook on your Face
Wall Street Journal: Smart Glasses by Facebook and Ray-Ban Mix Cool With Creepy
Engadget: I wish Ray-Ban's Stories smart glasses were made by anyone but Facebook
Wired: Facebook’s New Camera Glasses Are Dangerously Easy to Use
In addition to these tech reviews, the product announcement was picked by hundreds, if not thousands, of news websites, blogs, broadcast TV, and newspapers.
✨ Pre-launch Teasers
Two days before the launch, Ray-Ban created a teaser page that got picked up by the Verge. The announcement coincideed with some teaser videos from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and virtual and augmented reality head Andrew Bosworth.
📧 Email Marketing
Teaser email - sent two days before launch
Launch day email
Post-launch email - sent 3 days after launch
Post-launch email - send 6 days after launch
🏬 Retail Partners
EssilorLuxottica, Ray-Ban’s parent company, also owns Lenscrafters and Sunglasses Hut and leveraged their massive retail empire to launch the product in their stores and on their websites as well.
📱 Social Media
Teasers
Mark Zuckerberg posted three teaser videos in the days leading up to the launch, using video from the Ray-Ban Stories to show him paddling in an outrigger, fencing with his daughter, and playing ping-pong.
Facebook’s official Facebook page posted an official teaser video (and Ray-Ban as well on their page) the day before the announcement.
Launch Day
Facebook’s official Twitter announcement post (yes Facebook is on Twitter)
On-going promotion
Sept 23rd: Ray-Ban Facebook post (influencer content)
Sept 24th: Ray-Ban Facebook post (influencer content)
Sept 26th: Ray-Ban Facebook post (influencer content)
Sept 28th: Ray-Ban Facebook post (influencer content)
Sept 30th: Ray-Ban Facebook post (influencer content)
Kendall Jenner paid promotion to her 193 million followers - seems to be the only paid influencer content outside of the ones integrated into the launch.
All of Ray-Ban’s social media content was also cross-posted to Instagram and Twitter.
Ray-Ban does have a Tik-tok account but it is not active and did not post anything for this launch – seems like a missed opportunity given the audience but due to Facebook’s involvement in the launch, also not surprising.
Final Thoughts
It was really fun going through every aspect of this launch and seeing how these two huge brands worked together to launch an innovative product. Not often is there a product launch that has so many interesting variables: tech, privacy, e-commerce, retail, PR, partnerships, controversy, and more.
My rating: 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎 / 5
What do you think of this launch? Anything you would add or improve upon?
I’d love your thoughts – leave a comment below!