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Adventures With A.I. Sparked Stunning Ads for Georgetown Optician

'A-EYE' offers a surreal visual treat

It’s unlikely that A.I. will take your place in advertising or any creative industry anytime soon. But one thing’s clear—it helped make a helluva memorable campaign for Georgetown Optician!

Design Army worked with A.I. (or did A.I. team up with Design Army?) to create “Adventures in A-EYE” for the D.C.-based eyewear chain’s latest new store opening.

The work is running on Instagram, with elements appearing in stores and as window displays. A project video rocks the vibe of an old-timey yet elevated sci-fi movie that wouldn’t seem out of place on an installment of Svengoolie. Who are Eyesaih, Eyereen and Eyesaac? Where is their beautiful pink planet? Where’s Eyeleen? It does not compute!

Video Reference
Georgetown Optician

“How do we make opticians sexy?” akas Pum Lefebure, co-founder and CCO of Design Army. “Georgetown Optician is already known as a one-stop shop for eye care, as well as the latest trends in eyewear retailer but since Covid there’s not been a lot of eyes on the brand. We concepted a bizarro storyline about distant travelers visiting a planet to see the unseen. The Eyeliens (aka Giant Eyeball) are native the planet, but to live on this land rife with harsh environmental conditions, they must wear glasses to protect the eye. The A.I. approach allowed us to create a campaign in just one month and will allow us to change up the campaign seasonally and keep it fresh.”

Click images to enlarge:

Lefebure began experimenting with A.I. last year and used MidJourney for the Georgetown Optician project. Eyewear was added in post-production leaving viewers eyeballing a futuristic past combined with stylish, modern, present-day.

“For keywords, we had to experiment with a ton of them until the formula was getting consistent, especially to create the human visitors,” Lefebure tells Muse. “And the beloved giant eyeballs were a little tricky to get right as we wanted them to be quirky and whimsical—not evil or scary. We drew upon sci-fi and movie stars from the 60s for many of the character finishes but spiced them up with pink safari spacesuits with a dash of Comme Des Garcons. The great thing about AI is there your prompt doesn’t need to make sense. The weirder the better.”

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