Men beware, your girl may love SunSensors

This is so typical of boys. And men too. A pretty dame walks by and the male gaze travels to the point where she becomes a speck in the distant crowd. Ah! What gratification. But girlfriends can be a spoilsport. A little shift in the perpendicular gaze, and the guy is declared unfaithful. Corning Opthalmic, the maker of SunSensors plastic photochromic lenses, capitalises on this insight to offer a way out for bespectacled-helpless-chronic onlookers.

This is how. The TVC by Gurgaon (Haryana) based creative shop, Bounce Design, opens on a bespectacled boy chatting up with this girlfriend. Then, a girl with drop-dead looks enters his field of vision. Pupils dilate. Lips part. That's it, he is doomed. The poor guy gets angry looks from his girlfriend.

The guy then opens the blinds fixed to the window. And voila! Those transparent spectacle lenses turn dark, looking like sunglasses. Now there's no way his girlfriend can catch his roving eye going about some shady business behind the glassy darkness.

But hey! In the next frame, the girl too is wearing SunSensors now. But she is not looking at her boyfriend. Perhaps, she has now taken a fancy to the hunk behind her man? The ad concludes, introducing SunSensors as 'High performance lenses'. (Comment on this ad)

Corning Ophthalmic, a dominant player in the glass photochromic lenses and also the inventor of photochromic technology, is now launching plastic photochromic lenses brand SunSensors. And, because the company is actively seeking the youth to endorse SunSensors, the agency's brief was to project SunSensors as a trendy product.

Pradeepak Malvai, director, sales and marketing, South Asia, Greater China and Korea, Corning Ophthalmic, says, “Photochromic lenses as a concept was first introduced in India about 30 years ago and was restricted to glass lenses. Now that Corning is launching SunSensors, plastic photochromic lenses, the current generation, which is not as educated about this product, needs to be made aware of the product.”

Awareness was one issue. The other was the need to position SunSensors as a lifestyle-cum-convenience product where SunSensors acts both as prescription spectacles as well as sunglasses.

Thus, for the brand to relate to the youth, Bounce Design picked up a common instance from the lives of young boys and girls and added a bit of humour. “We have used humour in the TVC to make it stand out from the clutter and at the same time, drive home the point about the convenience of one pair of glasses with dual use. In the TVC, we have used a very obvious situation, something most people relate to,” explains Anisha Shakdher, founder and creative director, Bounce Design.

But mainstream advertising is not the only strategy that Corning is adopting to create awareness for SunSensors on a national scale. The advertising will be supported by road shows, direct marketing activities as well as a merchandising activity at the retail end.

However, the road ahead is not an easy one for Corning, when viewed against the current market reality. The size of the glass photochromic market is about 20 million pairs a year and plastic photochromics is approximately 5-7 per cent of the glass photochromic market.

Also, stiff competition comes from another quarter as well – contact lenses.

Malvai is aware of market SunSensors has to contend with, but he makes his point by saying that finally, the proof of the pudding lies in its taste. “What differentiates our product from the competition is that SunSensors is a natural photochromic with the lens material itself having inherent photochromic properties. As opposed to this, the competition uses a plain plastic lens with a coating of photochromic material. In addition to that, SunSensors has a refractive index of 1.56, which means thinner lenses for higher powers, whereas the competitive lenses have an index of 1.498.”

So, would you gift your girlfriend a SunSensor?

© 2005 agencyfaqs!