Snap announced that actor and producer Robert Downey Jr. will work alongside the company’s augmented reality team to develop original content, Lens experiences, hardware collaborations, and more for its SPECS AR glasses.
The News
Robert Downey Jr. has joined the company’s Specs team as honorary Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCEO), which the company says will help “guide customers to understand and imagine what’s possible with SPECS.”
The company says the Iron Man star will work across “different parts of the SPECS organization to explore new capabilities, shape new Lens experiences and develop original content.” Downey Jr. will also collaborate on hardware and in-person experiences, the company says.
“Trying is believing. Having tested practically every wearable tech that’s come to market in the last 20 years, and been largely unimpressed, I was absolutely sold on SPECS within 40 seconds,” said Downey Jr. “The applications are endless. Families can share experiences instead of hunching over devices, skills can be honed, big business can streamline development. In short, it delivers on the promise of AR glasses made by a certain techno optimist superhero I portrayed. Life imitates art – imitates life! I’ve never experienced the confident, warm and creatively inviting atmosphere that Evan has cultivated at SPECS anywhere else in the tech sector. Wait’ll you see what we create for you to enjoy.”
This follows last month’s big Specs event, where the company unveiled a host of new software and partnerships for the device, chief of which was Specs Intelligence, an anticipatory AI service that surfaces contextual information.
Snap also revealed immersive entertainment streaming, Spotify, interactive Harry Potter experiences, NBA/WNBA training tools, multiplayer games, navigation, translation, and 3D shopping.
As the company’s first consumer-oriented pair of AR glasses, Specs is expected to ship sometime this fall in the US, UK and France starting at $2,195, with an optional cellular charging case bundle costing $2,395.
My Take
As reported by Mixed in June (via Skarred Ghost), Robert Downey Jr. was offered some $100 million in company stock to essentially try to make Specs look cool. The details of that report still haven’t been verified, and it wasn’t specified whether that included stock in Snap, or in the now-separate Specs entity.
Still, having played Tony Stark for nearly two decades now, Downey Jr. is in a unique position to relate to consumers and help them understand what augmented reality actually is, and what it isn’t. And let’s face it, ‘honorary CCEO’ really just means he’s a high-profile brand ambassador, or long-term marketing asset.
To boot, Downey Jr. launched a collection of short videos showing Specs in action, which the company debuted as adverts during the New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers game on October 20th, with plans to release more during Game 1 of the World Series on October 23th.
It shows him using Specs as a private screen, golf tutor, tracing guide for a portrait—the sort of not too far out things sport-watching middle America can latch onto. One fairly hyperbolic video though should raise some eyebrows at what the company, and Downey Jr., are ultimately trying to achieve with Specs:
While Specs may turn out to be the best AR platform consumers will be able to get their hands on in the near future, it’s far off from replacing one, let alone a table-full of devices Downey Jr. throws in the trash for his iconoclastic “this changes everything” moment.
I’m not old enough to have ever actually seen one before, but it all reminds me a bit of IBM Simon from 1994. Impressive, expensive, not really at all for consumers, and more of a precursor of things to come. I don’t think we’ll have to wait 10 more years for AR to have its iPhone moment, although I wouldn’t expect it from a first-gen consumer device either.
I get it though. Robert Downey Jr. can say almost anything (but the name ‘Iron Man’ or ‘Tony Stark’, since he doesn’t own the IP), and America will listen. Whatever the case, I’m just hoping the next spot doesn’t include any whales leaping out of gym floors.
