Toyota brought Snap Spectacles-wearing influencers to London event

Dive Brief:

Toyota placed 100 media and lifestyle influencers wearing Snap Inc.'s Spectacles in the front row at its London C-HR event, per a 3sixtyfive press release. The release stated that Toyota was the first car brand to use Spectacles.
Snap introduced Spectacles in September. Another notable brand to use the hardware at a live event was L’Oréal Paris, who rolled out the camera-equipped sunglasses at the Golden Globes last month.
Toyota Netherlands Social Media and Content Manager Yannick Colastica expressed interest in the technology in the press release, and John Meulemans, the founder of 3sixtyfive, said: "New technology always plays, besides creativity, an important role at our agency. It’s our job to stay up-to-date and continuously find new ways to reach the target audience of our clients. We’re super glad that Toyota gives us this opportunity."

Dive Insight:

One of the early questions about Spectacles was whether they would remain a relatively expensive novelty — coming with a steep $130 price tag and highly limited availability — or evolve into something more. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel even referred to Spectacles as a "toy" when announcing them last year, suggesting they might be more of a quirky experiment than a concrete signal of Snap's future.

But for brands looking to give consumers a behind-the-scenes or front-row view of big events, Snap's Spectacles continue to gain traction. L’Oréal Paris and now Toyota have laid out a bit of blueprint for how to effectively implement the device for real-time marketing, and were additionally smart to tap influencers as boots-on-the-ground reporters from their respective events.

As brands look more toward extra-short video content, Spectacles also provide opportunity, staying within the bounds of Snapchat's ephemeral content structure. Sour Patch Kids, VaynerMedia and Esquire Network were all early adopters of Snap's wearable product, which records up to 10 seconds of video that is automatically uploaded to Snapchat.

Snap recently filed publicly for its IPO, which is expected for March. Few social brands are currently developing significant hardware offerings, but if Spectacles continue to see adoption, the space may heat up in the future.