Meta Spends Big To Make Its Ray-ban Glasses A True Mainstream Hit

Meta isn’t awkward astir its ambitions to make its Ray-Ban smart glasses a mainstream gadget. So overmuch so, it’s made not 1 but 2 Super Bowl ads featuring not one, but 2 Marvel actors. (And Kris Jenner.) And arsenic a mini cherry connected top, Meta announced it’s creating a constricted type Super Bowl type of nan glasses that won’t beryllium for discarded to nan wide public.

You tin already watch nan first of nan 2 Super Bowl ads, which features Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pratt causing chaos successful Kris Jenner’s individual creation collection. The actors are shown asking nan Meta AI to spot creation pieces, arsenic bully arsenic construe overseas languages. Jenner, meanwhile, is shown asking nan AI glasses to ringing up her lawyer aft an incident pinch a $6.2 cardinal banana.

In a blog astir nan ads, Meta says nan constricted type glasses will beryllium a brace of matte achromatic Wayfarers pinch either gold, mirror-like lenses aliases lenses featuring nan squad colors of nan Super Bowl finalists. The glasses will too recreation pinch a custom-etched case. However, they won’t beryllium disposable for purchase, hinting that these will apt beryllium seeded to celebrities and influencers to drum up buzz.

There are a mates things astatine play here. For starters, smart glasses personification recreation a agelong measurement pinch nan nationalist from nan debacle that was Google Glass. Meta announced past week that nan Ray-Bans personification sold complete 1 cardinal units successful 2024. That’s nan type of occurrence for an emerging gadget people that could warrant an costly Super Bowl ad. Second, Meta has precocious shown it’s keen connected pushing that occurrence further utilizing caller styles and constricted type versions, not dissimilar really Nike aliases different sneaker companies create hype. Meta will purportedly merchandise Oakley-branded smart glasses later this twelvemonth for athletes, and past year, it too had a limited-edition translucent exemplary of nan Ray-Bans for its Meta Connect event.