Who: KITS Eyecare and OstrichCo for creative and media, with Untitled Films, Saints Editorial and The Eggplant for production.

What: “Open your eyes,” a new North American campaign for the Vancouver-based digital eyewear brand. It is KITS’ first major brand awareness campaign, and the first work from OstrichCo since winning its creative and media assignment in September.

When & Where: The campaign launched this month and will ultimately comprise more than 70 creative assets ranging from 30 and 15-second TV spots to dozens of six-second and static social posts. The brand will also make its Canadian Super Bowl debut next week (more on that below).

Why: There are a lot of competitors in the eyewear space, but there hasn’t been a lot of emphasis on brand-building within the category, said OstrichCo founder and CEO Patrick Scissons. This is an attempt to develop KITS brand identity, complemented by a performance digital component designed to communicate key attributes such as ease, speed and affordability.

KITS positions itself as a digital eyecare platform that in addition to glasses and contact lenses, also offers a suite of online vision tools including digital fitting, virtual try-on and online vision tests. Earlier this month, it closed a $55 million IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

KITS CEO Roger Hardy previously launched Clearly.ca, Coastal.com and Lensway.se, and also served as an investor and board member of the sunglasses brand PriveRevaux.com.

“They understand the customer experience side, they understand the technology side, and they understand the importance of brand-building,” said Scissons. “It’s very easy in the technology space to go directly to the product proof points or the value proposition, without understanding how it ladders up [to brand].”

How: The Vancouver-shot campaign is built around a series of ads featuring an eyewear guru who enlightens his followers about KITS.ca’s stylish and affordable eyewear. All of the video ads are set in a wilderness retreat, where the guru helps his followers quite literally see the light when it comes to purchasing eyewear.

Scissons said that “Open your eyes” positioning is aimed at helping people see what’s available in digital eyewear ecommerce, a category that was relatively slow to develop. “People who didn’t think they could buy glasses online are being enlightened to the fact that it is possible,” said Scissons.

The guru represents that enlightenment and awareness, while the creative strategy also nods to the growing consumer trend of self-actualization and self-awareness, said Scissons. “It was ripe for opportunity culturally to land on a figurehead [who is] humorous, affable and tongue-in-cheek… [He shows that] every time there’s an issue that arises, the solution is KITS.ca.”

The 30-second anchor spot, “Open your eyes,” features the guru telling his followers to open their eyes to his “revolutionary” one-step system, Kits.ca: “Glasses, contacts, low prices, fast delivery” and a first pair free offer.

Other ads focus on specific brand attributes, such as affordability. In the 30-second “Miss smiley” ad, for example, the guru asks a woman how much she paid for her designer frames. When she says $250, he responds “and did that make you feel… happy? And when you sat on them two weeks later and had to pay another 250 bucks?”

On that Super Bowl appearance: “This is a brand we wanted to introduce to Canadians and have kind of a coming out, and there’s no better way to come out than the Super Bowl,” said Scissons. “They’ve got a lot to say, a compelling product and a great customer experience proposition, so it was something they wanted to do.” The “Open your eyes” and “Fear” spots are the likely candidates to run during the Super Bowl, said Scissons.

And we quote: “With KITS, we make buying glasses and contact lenses online fun, easy, affordable, and fast. We’re excited to announce our new campaign and to invite customers everywhere to experience KITS and order from the comfort of their home… even in their jam jams.” — Joseph Thompson, KITS co-founder and chief operating officer