Warby Parker Class Trip

Warby Parker, producers of oh so fine yet still affordable eyewear, recently launched the Warby Parker Class Trip. It’s a beautiful content project that perfectly encapsulates the brand’s identity, which I interpret to be fun, stylish and “alternative”, not in the aggressively exclusive hipster sense of the word, but rather along a “refreshingly different” vein.

The great Class Trip of 2013 is an endeavour to bring the Warby Parker showroom to life and share it with nine American cities over six months. The mobile showroom takes the form of an original school bus “reimagined as your favorite professor’s library, complete with leather sofas, wood paneling, vintage books, and more”. The “more” in this case refers to display shelves which showcase the full Warby Parker range. How wonderful!

Read more about what went into building this amaze-mobile here.

 

Beyond the brand

One of the things I love about this project is the extension beyond the immediate brand story. Each of the cities on the class trip route is filled with interesting people and interesting places, and Team Warby Parker have enthusiastically made it their business to blog these stories in a genuine and engaging way. They’ve gone the extra mile to unearth the less obvious characters in seemingly obvious destinations like New York, Los Angeles and Nashville, and the result is unique and charming. Each featured character is of course beautifully photographed in a pair of fetching WP eyewear, further showcasing the range in an unobtrusive way.

First content, then channel

In our local South African social media marketing space, and most probably in similar spaces all over the world, too many brands are still diving into various channels without a solid content strategy. This often leads to awkward silences or the all too unnatural “content for the sake of content” (a topic this blog will discuss at length in the coming months).

Another win for Warby Parker’s Class Trip is the fact that it provides a constant stream of rich, highly engaging content for the brand’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels that never feels forced. We do love a good channel integration.

Prize incentive

Though this project is compelling enough to stand and thrive on it’s own, an engagement incentive was introduced by way of the “Class Rep” angle. Warby Parker announced a mission to identify ambassadors / class reps in each city. Users were called to submit 60-second videos motivating their status as the brand’s super fans for a chance to win a year’s worth of designer eyewear, a sponsored happy hour with mates, and “epic hang-out sessions” with the Warby Parker Class Trip team. A tasty prize indeed.

As prizes go, this one is great in that it’s designed to attract only loyal fans of the brand, as opposed to Apple devices or piles of cash which appeal to errbody.

Warby Parker’s Class Trip project is the kind of brave content investment that most brands are not yet prepared to make. But it’s yielded the kind of material that people will stumble upon and appreciate for years to come, whilst weaving a natural, highly consumable brand story.

Bravo, Warby Parker!

[All images from the Warby Parker Class Trip site]