PR Blog
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Matt Heafy- Eyewear Model Featured in New York Times!
April
23rd, 2012
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Metal Model
By STUART ELLIOTT
A marketer named Moscot has a new mascot, in the form of the heavy metal music community.For a campaign now under way, Moscot, a family-owned firm in New York that sells eyewear, is turning to heavy metal performers like Chris Adler, of Lamb of God; Matt Heafy, of Trivium; Scott Ian, of Anthrax; Alex Skolnick, of Testament; and Zakk Wylde, of Black Label Society.
Those musicians, along
with metal figures from television and radio, serve as the models in ads for
five varieties of metal frames from Moscot. The frames, in the Moscot Originals
line, are a departure from the usual acetate styles sold by the company, which
traces its heritage to Hyman Moscot, who sold eyeglasses from a pushcart on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan.
The campaign includes the
Moscot Web site, at moscot.com; print ads; social media like Twitter, where
Moscot has the handles @Moscot and @MoscotMusic;
and ads in stores. There are two Moscot stores in Manhattan and one in
Brooklyn, and Moscot products are also sold by eyewear retailers around the
world. The campaign is being
created internally at Moscot by Wendy Simmons, who is co-president of the
company along with Harvey Moscot. (Mr. Moscot, and his brother, Kenny, are the
fourth generation of Moscots.)
Moscot typically spends
about $650,000 to $750,000 each year on marketing and public relations.The jest in asking heavy
metal musicians — clad in colorful garb, resplendent in copious facial hair and
flashing hand signs — to don metal eyeglasses is, of course, meant to draw
attention to the campaign. To give the ads the proper setting, they were
photographed in a heavy metal bar in Williamsburg named Duff’s Brooklyn.
Moscot is not alone in
seeking to market eyewear with a stylish pitch. Perhaps the best example is the
long-running campaign for L.A. Eyeworks, which features black-and-white photos
of offbeat celebrities and carries the headline “A face is like a work of art.
It deserves a great frame.”
The L.A. Eyeworks
campaign, photographed by Greg Gorman, has even been gathered in a book,
“Framed: Greg Gorman for L.A. Eyeworks,” which L.A. Eyeworks sells on its Web
site. Then, too, there are
online purveyors of eyewear like Warby Parker, which are also peddling their products
with panache.
“The category, it’s
incredible what has happened,” says Ms. Simmons. “We’re amazed.” “Eyeglasses were a
medical device,” she adds. “You bought a pair disgruntled, because you thought
you were getting older. Now, it’s an extension of your personality.”
“To see the category
blow up as it has is great for us,” Ms. Simmons says, because “it only makes
people more interested in eyewear.”
“Moscot has a unique
position,” she adds, because “we have this wonderful history,” pointing to the
opening of the first Moscot store in 1915. “But we do not rest on history
alone.”
Along with history are
fashion, Ms. Simmons says, and humor, and “all three things are present across
the brand.”
“The trick is, it has to
be in equal measure,” she adds.
When it comes to humor,
“we’re a goofy bunch,” Ms. Simmons says, “We love what we do, we love the
brand. There’s not a great filter.”
But “we make sure it’s
in balance,” she adds, “never ‘too cool for school,’ never too witty,” because
if the ads are perceived as snooty or snobby, “people will not want to go into
the retail shops.”
Likewise, in the style
realm, “we never want to be too anything, too fashion-y, too hip,” Ms. Simmons
says. “The goal is to make it accessible.”
“It’s a very delicate
balance as you become more known,” she adds, to “entice the new people and not
lose the people who found you first.”
For instance, five or
six years ago, a campaign for titanium frames was “very slick and beautiful,”
Ms. Simmons says, but “it was off-brand, much too fashion-y for our brand.”
“It was absolutely not
Moscot,” she adds. “Our distributors actually complained.”
In this instance, the
metal campaign may seem a departure, she adds, but the idea is to link the
Moscot brand to attributes that the heavy metal performers have.
“There are all these
symbiotic qualities,” Ms. Simmons says, in that the musicians are
“trailblazers” who “do what they want” and “that’s what works for them.”
The campaign also
implies that if the frames “looked good on these guys, they’d look good on
anybody,” she adds, “and they look great on them.”
Mr. Heafy, of Trivium,
recalls being introduced to Moscot by a friend in Britain “who said, ‘There’s
this killer glasses company and I think you’d look good in them.’ ”
“She mentioned a
campaign for metal frames with metal guys,” he says, which intrigued him
because “most metal guys” are not comfortable wearing glasses.
Mr. Heafy, a guitar
player and singer who is 26, describes his philosophy this way: “Be who you are
is always what I think.” He says he will “stick to contacts mostly” when he is
out in public, but “offstage I look the way I am, glasses, short hair.”
The experience of
appearing in the campaign was “awesome,” says Mr. Heafy, who lives in Orlando,
Fla., because, for one thing, he had “never been to Brooklyn.” He jumped at the
opportunity to see “the legendary metal bar Duff’s,” he adds, “and meet the
Moscot family.”
And as a “major food
freak, I’ve always known Brooklyn is the epicenter for some of the major food
in the United States,” says Mr. Heafy, who writes a food blog, Kiichi Chaos, which
refers to his middle name, Kiichi. (And “Chaos” is certainly a good word for a
blog by a heavy metal musician, yes?)
Mr. Heafy says he was
also able to visit “a gourmet greasy spoon diner” in Williamsburg, known as
Diner, which he had seen on an episode of “No Reservations” with Anthony
Bourdain on Travel Channel.
“There’s no logo; it’s
inconspicuous,” he adds. “It looks like what could be a subway station.” He
liked it so much, he says, “I went back two weeks ago, and re-met with the
Moscot folks.”
Appearing in the ad “was
cool, it was very natural,” Mr. Heafy says, adding: “I brought several outfits.
I felt I was overly prepared. They said, ‘Wear what you’re wearing right now.’
I wish we could have hung out longer.”
The campaign was
photographed by Ms. Simmons and Bianca Pizzoferrato, marketing coordinator at Moscot. The other musicians who appear in the ads are Jesse Leach, of
Killswitch, and two members of Acrassicauda, Marwan Riyadh and Faisal Talal.
Also featured in the
campaign are Juliya Chernetsky, a host of metal-inspired shows on the Fuse
cable channel, and Jose Mangin, who programs the Hair Nation and Liquid Metal
channels on Sirius XM satellite radio.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Friday, April 20, 2012
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
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