EssilorLuxottica

Internal Brand Launch

Client

The Players: The Italian and French. In 2017 Essilor and Luxottica began one such megamerger, involving two global companies dominant in their industries.

On one side was Essilor, a company with more than a hundred years of history, maker of sophisticated optical lenses and equipment. Essilor as an organization is deeply committed to its mission, spending hundreds of millions of Euros every year on research and development, with half of its employees shareholders in the company, and dozens of philanthropic programs around the world to make eyesight available for everyone.

Luxottica is an Italian eyewear conglomerate, the largest company in the eyewear industry. Founded in 1961, The company started out as a small workshop and today designs, manufactures, distributes and retails its eyewear brands around the world. Its best known brands are Lenscrafters, Lens Hut, Costa, Ray-Ban, Persol, and Oakley. It also sunglasses and prescription frames for designer brands you might have heard of: Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Michael Kors, and Coach.

With the research showing that employee buy-in was going to be crucial, we looked at how we could equip people in the organization for their changing environment. How could we help Essilor's committed employees understand and appreciate their new combined family?

"Herald helped us solve a wide range of brand and marketing challenges with creative solutions." 

— VP of Corporate Communications, Essilor Group

Client

The Players: The Italian and French. In 2017 Essilor and Luxottica began one such megamerger, involving two global companies dominant in their industries.

On one side was Essilor, a company with more than a hundred years of history, maker of sophisticated optical lenses and equipment. Essilor as an organization is deeply committed to its mission, spending hundreds of millions of Euros every year on research and development, with half of its employees shareholders in the company, and dozens of philanthropic programs around the world to make eyesight available for everyone.

Luxottica is an Italian eyewear conglomerate, the largest company in the eyewear industry. Founded in 1961, The company started out as a small workshop and today designs, manufactures, distributes and retails its eyewear brands around the world. Its best known brands are Lenscrafters, Lens Hut, Costa, Ray-Ban, Persol, and Oakley. It also sunglasses and prescription frames for designer brands you might have heard of: Chanel, Prada, Giorgio Armani, Burberry, Versace, Dolce and Gabbana, Michael Kors, and Coach.

With the research showing that employee buy-in was going to be crucial, we looked at how we could equip people in the organization for their changing environment. How could we help Essilor's committed employees understand and appreciate their new combined family?

Process

The Setup: The Hardest Part is Getting Together

Mergers are notoriously difficult. Studies show that they may fail between 70% and 90% of the time. For very large companies, the stakes can be enormous. Names like Daimler and Chrysler, AOL and Time Warner, HP and Compaq all come up when two giants consider tying the knot. While market, financial, and operational aspects are always important, those are points most likely to be solved - they are easily measured and tracked. Much more difficult are the more immeasurable aspects: people and culture.

Luxottica and Essilor corporate logos

Project

For the Head: Informational Website

Simply explaining the changes is not enough, they'll also want to know the new partner. As we've seen, it can be tough enough to know your own company. So we created a website specifically for Essilor employees to showcase Luxottica. We paid specific attention to the mission and values of the company. 

While both companies may see different from the outside, they had a lot in common regarding their scale, mission, products, and priorities. Both companies are committed to tackling the largely unreported global epidemic of myopia, or shortsightedness, which has doubled among young people within a single generation. The more you learned, the more the merger made sense.

A promotional webpage for a collaboration between Essilor and Luxottica with a headline about expertise in lens and glasses market, featuring images of a woman with glasses and a professional setting with two people exchanging glasses in an office.
A webpage titled 'Luxottica's DNA' features two main images. The left image shows a woman with long hair, glasses, and a striped shirt, holding a snack and looking surprised. The right image displays a pair of sunglasses held up by a hand, with a nat
A webpage layout with six sections showing different people, each with a photo, a time estimate, and text. The top left section shows a man in glasses examining a pair of glasses with a blue shirt, labeled 'Sem Cursus'. The top right shows a silhouet

For the Heart: Leadership and Mission Videos

No matter how much information you deliver, people will still have questions. The reason for that is often not factual - it's emotional. Helping people feel comfortable and confident about their changing world requires open and confident communication from the top of the organization on down. How will it feel to these two companies united?

Our solution was video to tell the story.

This started with a multi-day shoot in a global city that wasn't the companies' Milan and Paris hometowns: New York City. We joined Hubert Sagnières, Essilor’s chairman and chief executive on a tour of Luxottica brand locations as well as the independent eyecare professionals that will also benefit from the products of the newly combined company. Sagnières was able to communicate details, but also his absolute enthusiasm for the company and the future.

Man smiling and gesturing with open arms in Times Square, New York City, surrounded by billboards and a crowd of people.
Large billboard showing a man and a woman smiling and laughing, the man wearing a white suit and the woman wearing sunglasses, against a plain background.
An older man with glasses smiling and shaking hands with a Statue of Liberty replica that is painted in a light blue color, holding an American flag in Times Square, New York City.
An older man with glasses and gray hair, wearing a white shirt and gray sweater, speaking in an eye glasses store with numerous eyeglasses displayed on the wall behind him. A younger man in black in the background at a counter.
Two young women taking a selfie on a city street, wearing sunglasses and looking at the camera.
Pink neon sign on white brick wall that reads 'Love You' with a heart shape in the middle.
Close-up of a man at an eye examination, looking into a slit lamp device used by ophthalmologists.
Close-up of a person's face looking through an eye examination device, with the device's circles and mirrors visible around the person's eyes.
A row of sunglasses on a store shelf, with prominent sunglasses featuring reflective lenses in the foreground.

The second video series reinforced the company’s global mission. Even with this merger, the company was still just as committed to its community-building and philanthropic work with people who needed it the most. This allowed employees to see Essilor through the eyes of far-flung communities and the stories they had to tell.

A smiling elderly man in an orange safety vest holds a black magnetic pick-up tool near his eye, pointing it at the camera. He is wearing gloves and giving a thumbs-up.
A man wearing sunglasses and a white coat standing outdoors next to a white vehicle with Chinese and English writing on it. Behind him are closed green shop shutters and a sign with Chinese characters and a URL for taobao.com.
A smiling woman with glasses showing tooth discoloration and missing teeth.
A young boy looking at the camera while holding a black spoon over his right eye.
Close-up view of a vintage sewing machine with black body and colorful floral designs, a person sewing white fabric with their hands visible in the background.
Smiling elderly man with glasses in a short-sleeved, striped shirt standing beside a sewing machine against a blue wall.
A woman in a white medical coat with a logo on the chest, holding a marker, standing in a room with a vision chart on the wall behind her.
Group of women in blue shirts attending an event, smiling and engaged.
A young woman in traditional Indian clothing, with bacterial acne scars on her face, looking pensively to the side, with a blurred background of a green wall and shelves.

"In seven centuries of spectacles, there has never been anything like it. The new entity will be worth around $50bn (£37bn), sell close to a billion pairs of lenses and frames every year, and have a workforce of more than 140,000 people."

— The Guardian

"Herald helped us solve a wide range of brand and marketing challenges with creative solutions." 

— VP of Corporate Communications, Essilor Group

Strategy

  • UX

  • Analytics

Brand Development

  • Website Design

  • Content

  • Research

Content

  • Research

  • Animation

  • Video production