1-800 Contacts Becomes An Integrated Agency Partner

DRAPER, Utah and PORTLAND, Ore., – June 12, 2019 – Online vision care pioneer 1-800 Contacts today announced it is unifying all paid marketing efforts to Portland agency R2C Group. The contact lens retail giant decided this year it would shift all its marketing and creative work from multiple agencies to R2C Group as the customer-centric brand looks to supercharge its marketing programs.

1-800 Contacts was one of the first disruptors in vision care, first by trailblazing the now-popular online direct-to-consumer model and later by championing patients’ rights to access their own vision prescriptions. Now as a leader in the D2C vision space, 1-800 Contacts plans to stay ahead of the curve by tapping R2C Group’s full suite of marketing and advertising services including data-driven creative, media and analytics. R2C Group has a deep history of building disruptive D2C companies–including Wayfair, SimpliSafe, Chewy, Peloton, Consumer Cellular, and Smile Direct Club, to name a few.

“For over two decades, 1-800 Contacts has been an unapologetic disruptor on behalf of consumers in the vision care space,” said Phil Bienert, Chief Marketing Officer at 1-800 Contacts. “As we look to the next phase of the company’s growth with new offerings, such as ExpressExam –our online vision exam–and our house contact lens brand AquaSoft, it became clear that R2C was the right partner to get our message in front of consumers.”

“For several years, we saw a trend of clients hiring marketing specialists for creative, production, offline media, social, search, and analytics,” said Jane Crisan, President and Chief Operating Officer of R2C Group. “Now we’re seeing the pendulum swing back in the other direction—consolidating marketing partners makes sense for an established yet innovative company looking to scale and stay competitive with the current market. It means cohesive work, and more holistic measurement to re-disrupt the space and do it better than the competitors.”

The transition is in progress and expects to be completed by early June.

About 1-800 Contacts
1-800 CONTACTS, founded in 1995 as one of the original Silicon Slopes companies, has spent the last 24 years in pursuit of a better way to provide the absolute best customer experience to those seeking vision care options. vision care and the absolute best customer experience for contact lens wearers everywhere. The company is part of the Internet Retailer Top 500 and employs 1,000 people between its Utah and North Carolina campuses. Visit www.1800contacts.com for more information.

About R2C Group
R2C Group is an independent, women-led, performance-minded advertising agency for direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands. We link strategy, creative and production with state-of-the-art audience targeting, dynamic media buying and advanced analytics to deliver on sales and branding goals simultaneously, without compromise. Our approach, called Transactional Brand Building, is proven to produce transformational growth for clients ranging from D2C fast companies and category disruptors to established brands with traditional models. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon and co-founded in 1998 by Michelle Cardinal, R2C now has over 200 employees in four offices across the U.S. For the last 20 years R2C has been scaling businesses such as Humana, Consumer Cellular, 23andMe, Chewy, SimpliSafe, SmileDirectClub, and Wayfair. For more, visit https://www.rainforgrowth.com