{audio:0:00:00} If you could just provide some background on IWC’s heritage and brand positioning when you joined?

{audio:0:00:11} When I joined, which was in 2002, IWC was a very niche luxury brand. That’s to say niche in terms of it’s positioning as a luxury watch brand in the Germany-speaking part of Switzerland, basically, the only one because all of the other well-known brands whether Rolex or even Breitling that sounds remotely German, but it’s not. They’re all in the Europe part of Switzerland, so in the very Francophone part of the country. All the way down to Lake Geneva. That already made the brand slightly different. Far more than that in terms of product, it was a brand that was very technical.

There was nothing about glamour, nothing about ostentatious luxury, it was all about the technology and watch-making and craftmanship, which in turn meant that the clients were very much people that were engineers, doctors, pilots, people caring about technology very much. Not people looking out for necessarily a status symbol, something of perfect quality, but very understated, down to earth, and very niche. The markets were the German-speaking countries and a little bit of Italy and that was more or less it. Even though the brand was distributed to a certain extent in Asia, it was never really done whole-heartedly. It was not a global brand, it was basically a Germanic, very niche technologically oriented luxury brand. Far away from the worldwide luxury global brand it is today.

{audio:0:02:13} IWC was always a company that never had the need to focus an to expand globally because the production was always sold anyway. It was most of the time a family owned business. It changed hands a few times over the course of the 150 years that the brand exists. At the end, it was part of the German management group Les Manufactures Horlogères SA ("LMH"). It was basically a toy of the managing directors who were happy to have that little jewel in their portfolio. Nobody really wanted to make it into a global brand before we bought it. Yes, it had a happy existence but never very much ambition to turn into a global brand.

{audio:0:03:15} What was the core strategy of Richemont when they purchased IWC?

{audio:0:03:22} They didn’t only purchase IWC, at the same time they purchased the two sister brands jaeger-LeCoultre (JLC) and A.Lange & Sohne. For at the time, created some money. People said Johann Rupert must have been completely out of his reasoning to pay that amount of money for it. They were all proven very wrong because the brands are now worth a lot more. Richemont just saw that there was a huge opportunity of uncut diamonds there that could be developed from a niche brand into a global luxury brand. You must also remember at that time there was no IWC boutique available or anything like that around the world. There were no online sales. It was basically just sold to the classical retail channel with jewelers in the Germanic countries. To have the vision that that brand had the right DNA to be turned into a global luxury brand was truly visionary Johann Rupert. He was proven right 20 years later.

{audio:0:04:35} What do you think it was about that brand DNA that made it possible to make it into a global brand?

{audio:0:04:44} It’s basically a heritage in credibility because customers even 20 years ago couldn’t be fooled, especially at those price points. We’re talking about products that, on average, would have retailed back then at around €5,000. It was very clear; the company was founded in 1868. Always produced outstanding time pieces. There was a real history there. Nothing fake. It was true. It could be traced back. There were archives there. There were spare parts available for pocket watches made 100 years ago. All the basics were there, there was a small museum, which later on we extended to a big museum. We could really trace where the company came from. It was all very clear. Much clearer than many other brands. There were no white spots in the history. The products today and the collector’s marker proves it. We’re always superb. It was clear the basis was there to build a brand that people could believe in and that they were happy to part with the substantial sums of money because they knew they were getting value. There were no fake marketing ideas. It was just a solid foundation.

{audio:0:06:18} Why do you think heritage is so important to building a brand?

{audio:0:06:24} I think it’s absolutely key. It doesn’t mean that you can’t build a new brand out of a brilliant idea or some superb design, but especially for hard luxury goods, say, watches and jewelry. The heritage is key because people want to buy a product that has a timeless value. That’s what’s so important about it. If you buy a piece of clothing, we’re not talking about fast-fashion, even if you buy a piece of clothing that’s worth a lot of money, you know that it’s going to go out of fashion at some point. With a watch, that’s not the case. If you buy a classic such as an IWC Portuguese or a Rolex Oyster or whatever, you know that you can probably pass it on as Patek Philippe says in the advertising, you pass it onto the next generation or even more than that. That’s why having the background, seeing the brand has been around for so long, it gives you the comfort of believing that the intrinsic value stays and you’re not squandering your money, it’s quite simple.

{audio:0:07:39} How do you bring that heritage to life when messaging to younger people?

{audio:0:07:44} It’s really about the message, not so much the channel. Back then, there was no social media the way we know it today. We really transmitted that message to all of our channels, be it online through the websites with the detailed texts that explained it, with printed books, with a magazine that the brand brought out. A printed magazine that was sent out to clients. I think it was four times a year, that always illustrated parts of the history. Books were made. A museum was launched for people that visited the brands. We made a lot of movies about the watch-making aspect, about the history.

Basically, it’s an omni channel approach to communication. You really have to play all the channels. Today, of course, it’s extended to all of the social media channels that we didn’t have at the time. The message hasn’t changed. The vehicles maybe are slightly more digital now than it was back then, but the message is the same.

{audio:0:09:04} You have the same message across all channels, just delivered in different ways.

{audio:0:09:08} Exactly. The message is really again about that authenticity, it’s probably the most important word. You want to be authentic. You want to have an authentic quality. Especially in newer markets such as in Asia back then for us, it was really important for clients to understand that this brand had been there for a long time, even if they had not heard about it before because otherwise they would have not spent that amount of money on the product. They would have gone to a brand, to one of the bigger brands, say, Rolex, because they were sure that that brand delivered this continuity and this heritage. That’s why we’ve had to convince these new customers that IWC had the same stature.

{audio:0:10:08} Moving on to look at the customer base then, how did you segment IWC’s customer base in that luxury watch segment?

{audio:0:10:18} Do you know what? We didn’t. We really believed in a product focused strategy. We’re not going to sit down and say, okay, we’re going to create this and that watch for this type of person with this age group and so on. There were some basics that were clear. We’re a very masculine brand. That was for sure. All the watches at that time were focused on men, even though there were a couple of female models, but that was very much sidelined. It was a masculine watch. There had to be a technical watch. It had to be clear, it had to be no diamonds. Classic. That was clear. We never sat down and said, we’re making a watch for a 30-year-old or a 30 to 40-year-old man that’s interested. We’re going to have the product and the product will find its fans. It always did. This was very much the product was there and the market developed around the product, not the other way around.

{audio:0:11:30} Is that unique in this space or is that just a sign of the ultimate luxury item?

{audio:0:11:40} It’s not unique to the watch world. I think it’s unique to high luxury in general across all product categories, but especially for watches and jewelry. For watches, probably even more because you see what your company is capable of in terms of technology, in terms of innovation and you create the most fantastic product around it. The price normally is secondary, so you don’t go out and say, we’re going to develop a product and it is allowed to cost so much. You first develop the product; you say how much are intrinsic costs and then you say that’s the price. For many years, it may change now that the world is changing, but for many years, that strategy worked really well for our watchmakers, so this is the price, these are the margins we need to have. This is the retail price. Again, the product is king and the clients flock toward the product when it goes out on the market.

{audio:0:12:51} It’s very interesting when you get to that high-end luxury, it does become more of a product game versus the premium brand, whether it’s spirits, whether it’s more functional products, or even alcohol and food and beverage, that’s more of an understand your customer, market to your customer, get them to buy your products. It’s like the reverse.

{audio:0:13:13} It’s the reverse, yes. Luxury is very different in that. Probably fashion is somewhere in between, but the hard luxury, we really are creating a product that is meant to stand the test of time. The change of tastes, you’re trying to create something that is beyond fashion and beyond short-term trends and even beyond age because if you’re given an IWC or a Rolex watch for your 18th birthday, very likely you might still be wearing it when you’re 80 years old. It really is a product that’s meant to transcend time and trends. That’s probably why the product is king and less important than current consumer trends or tastes because it’s meant to be above all of that.

{audio:0:14:07} In terms of product policy then, is it really just driven internally where the craftsmanship of the product owners internally?

{audio:0:14:16} At least at IWC, it was very much like that. Our CEO would have an idea. We would sit down with the designers and sketch a product. Then it would go into the technological feasibility phase, see what we can do, what sort of movement developed and was necessary. It was very much something that sprang out of the ideas of a few into a product. It was not going out to the market saying, “This is the analysis of the competitive landscape as you do with many other products, so this is where we’ll fit in. This is the price point it has to be, this is the color, shape, size, whatever it has to be.” No. It was, we’re going to create this product, do the best we can. That’s how we’re going to make it, without study the competitive landscape too much.

It has to be said that it probably also works really well for established brands that have a big fanbase. Many collectors probably buy almost anything that you make if you don’t go terribly wrong. Slightly more challenging for a newcomer into the brand, into that world. Barriers to entry into the luxury watch world are huge. Basically, it’s very rare for new brands to come up and be able to really make a big difference in a space of under 20 years.

{audio:0:16:00} If the business ultimately was driven from the product itself, how do you curate your message if you don’t really study your consumer?

{audio:0:16:15} How do you mean curate the message?

{audio:0:16:20} In terms of if you look at the consumer brands, they will study their consumer and they will give them names. This is Kathy, she’s a 45-year-old mother, she has two kids, she buys this product because she wants to feel like X, Y, Z. If the luxury space on the whole is driven more by the product and the product identity, how do you build a message to market the product to the consumers that you don’t necessarily study in detail?

{audio:0:16:54} That goes down to the storytelling aspect. There is the product but then you need to have a story around it. You need to fill it with life and emotion. Depending on what the story is, that will strike a chord with different types of people. Basically, you see we created some worlds. Of course, it’s obvious for pilots to have the world of aviation, but we are upgrading the story with collaborations with Antoine de Saint-Exupery Foundation, which is an incredibly famous French author who was also a pilot. We took over a lot of his stories. We made limited editions in honor to his exploits. We really created a story and an emotion around it. That’s helpful at the point of sale because it sells stuff, can tell potential customers about more than just the product, about the whole world that comes with it.

For diving watches, we created a partnership with the Cousteau Foundation. There was a whole story about saving the oceans, about discovering the underwater world. For the engineer series there was a collaboration with Mercedes AMG, so it was all about the technology, racing, high-end materials. The stories can be very different according to each product line. You just have to make sure they’re clearly segmented. That each product has their own world, their own story around it. That’s how you emotionalize each product line and give it on top of the credibility and quality that’s a given, you give it more of an emotional feeling, touch, very important in luxury.

{audio:0:18:52} That also aligns completely with this technical engineering focused product identity that you said IWC has.

{audio:0:19:00} That’s a basis, that has to be there. If you just have a story but you don’t have the foundation beyond it, that won’t work in luxury. You can add the emotional bit as the icing on the cake on top, but the product itself has to be perfect, quality has to be perfect. All of that has to be a given, that has to be in place. Then on top, you add the marketing, the stories, the emotional bit. If you just have the emotional bit and the product breaks down every two weeks, then you’re not going to be successful. People have to be reassured that they’re buying a great product, but it also has a story to tell. One, the story won’t work without the product being approachable.

{audio:0:19:53} How exactly did approach telling the story, take the aviation world for example that you mentioned?

{audio:0:20:05} Basically, the brand decided to focus on one product line each year. That was relaunch, a new product, the two series. You don’t relaunch a classic every year, you just add onto it. You make some variations because what’s really important is that a pilot’s watch remains a pilot’s watch and doesn’t look old after a year because the new model has come out. It’s a bit like a Porsche 911, even if it develops over the years, it’s always a Porsche 911. Even if your Porsche is five years old, you don’t feel as if you’re driving an old car. You just have a vintage piece, which might even be more valuable than the one that just came out. That’s really important to keep that continuity.

That being said, around that product line, we created a package. When pilots’ watches were relaunched, it started out with the fair good at the SIHH watch fair in Geneva, which was completely themed to the topic, themed to the story. All the way down to the giveaways for clients and consumers, all printed materials, a big event themed to the topic, to invite the buyers and the press. Of course, the press kits, online, printed materials, books, movies. Everything was aligned to the theme. One big theme per year and everything coordinated. That was really key.

{audio:0:21:48} What type of creative did you use to tell that story?

{audio:0:21:53} It depended on the year and the launch, but we would have been very open. There were movies, there was art, there was even theatre. There were stories specifically written with famous authors that cooperated with us. We basically used all sorts of artforms, to pass the message as long as it was coherent. You have to be open to any way of transmitting the message. I tell marketeers today, don’t just focus online. Also think about your clients that might not live purely in the online world, especially at that price point, so don’t neglect printed materials. Do continue publishing interesting books. Of course, you need all of the digital tools, but don’t neglect the clients that might actually still focus on the more classical means of communication. Especially at the price point.

{audio:0:23:17} Why do you think partnerships and ambassadors in the luxury world are so important to driving brand identity?

{audio:0:23:29} Basically, it depends on the brand. Yes, at IWC, we also worked with brand ambassadors, but for example, we never used them in advertising. Brand ambassadors can work really well for a short time and they work well in Asia particularly, where people like to make the connection between a person and a product, less so in Europe. Then brand ambassadors are also a slightly risky game because you never know what the brand ambassador might get up to. Quite frankly, first of all, they’re also going to get older and then perhaps are not that much in fashion with your client group or whatever, or there might be some scandals surrounding an ambassador and your brand might find itself in a very difficult situation. Especially if you’re using the face as the face of the brand. At IWC, we tended to use the ambassadors on a more second-degree level. At event to support the brand. Within special stage production such as theatre shows and so on. We never relied purely on the celebrity factor. It didn’t really match the brand so well. I think it matches more feminine brands better, especially Asian consumers love looking at movie stars and tend to copy their style and taste and so on. Men tend to do that less.

{audio:0:25:22} Explain the approach to partnering. For example, you mentioned how IWC partnered with Mercedes Benz in the engineering world that you developed. How crucial is it to drive those partnerships to maintain or build the brand identity?

{audio:0:25:43} The partnerships only work as well as they get lived by both sides. If you just stick the label of one brand onto the other brand and think that’s going to work, it might not. I’m not going to mention which brands I think but some brand partnerships in the watch world don’t necessarily always make too much sense. If you have a car brand and a watch brand, first of all, your clientele has to be relatively similar or share the same type of values. If you have a very high-end car brand and a medium luxury watch brand, that won’t necessarily work. You really need to look that your clients are aligned. Then if it’s just a transfer of logos, people look through that right away. They also want to see that the partner uses elements of the other brand. For example, Mercedes Benz, on the dashboard clocks on the very high-end models such as Maybach and AMG, it’s an IWC clock face. It’s not a manually wound watch, of course, because it’s a car, but it is still a watch that looks like the IWC watch. It has to go both ways. That’s important.

{audio:0:27:14} What are the terms or commercial relationships typically in these partnerships?

{audio:0:27:18} Ideally, if both brands profit from it, then it normally flows. Basically, it depends on the partnership. A true partnership where both are set to profit between two companies, for example, there should be no need for one to pay the other. If, of course, you have a partnership with a type of charitable society, such as the Galapagos Island Foundation or the Charles Darwin Foundation that we worked with, then, of course, the brand will donate quite substantial amounts of money to these organizations. That in turn provide content because of the projects they will be able to finance with money they get from the brand. To provide more content to the brand and credibility. People that would buy a special edition that benefits the Galapagos Island Charles Darwin Foundation, they would be able to see concrete projects where the money paid by IWC to the foundation was put to charitable uses. It adds to the credibility.

{audio:0:28:36} With a straight corporate to corporate partnership, do you share the marketing expense or do you just agree on where you’re going to use each brand or how does that negotiation typically flow?

{audio:0:28:48} Yes, that, of course, gets planned very precisely. Are you going to use it in printed advertising? Are you going to use it for public relation purposes only or event driven and whatever? If it’s a true partnership, it should really transcend all the disciplines of marketing to make proper sense. If it only makes sense for an event or only makes sense for print or public relations, then it’s probably not good enough. It should really make sense in all types of communication tools. Otherwise, in my opinion, it wouldn’t really be worthwhile.

{audio:0:29:30} What was the biggest challenge you faced in building and maintaining the IWC brand?

{audio:0:29:36} Basically, the challenge we faced was how to keep the different stories all together and not become confusing. IWC at that time was turned into a carbon neutral company. For example, we did face some questioning over our relationship with Mercedes AMG. People at the time, it was pre-electric cars. People would say, “How can you support high-powered cars, racing cars and at the same time be carbon neutral? How does that work?” We could prove that actually AMG was on the forefront of developing technology to reduce carbon consumption, but we had to make sure that made sense. We also had to make sure that the different stories didn’t contradict each other or that the brand essence becomes lost. Always focus again on the authenticity, on the rooms, on the basics and make sure that all of the stories you have around stay around and don’t take over the core of your brand. Focus on the authentic values of your brand, your brand DNA and don’t let one or the other of your stories take over the brand. It’s a matter of balancing it.

{audio:0:31:03} What is the most difficult part about that storytelling? Let’s say you’ve got a new world; you’re opening up a new product line for this year. What do you find the most challenging?

{audio:0:31:20} Basically, it’s how can you be interesting and original at the same time because everyone is looking for stories, new stories. Again, if you talk about pilots’ watches, there are many brands that produce pilots’ watches or divers’ watches. The stories quite naturally will tend to be relatively similar perhaps. If you want to protect the ocean, you need to make sure you have the story that’s unique. That’s really what it’s about. How do you stand out from the noise? Your story has to be more interesting, more coherent and better than the story of your competitors. That’s really the key to it.

{audio:0:32:11} When you’re telling this story across different channels especially today, what techniques do you use to bring it to life, let’s say online versus in the print channel like you mentioned?

{audio:0:32:23} At the time and I think it still goes today, we believed in the power of imagery. Beautiful pictures. We would always invest a lot of money into top photographers, into top imagery to make sure that it’s absolutely perfect. Customers today are bombarded by pictures every day. They look at a thousand pictures on Instagram a day. How do you stand out? The quality of your imagery has to be perfect. That’s really the key to it.

{audio:0:33:00} What about the language used in the messaging?

{audio:0:33:05} The language has to be both sophisticated and easily understood at the same time. That’s definitely a challenge. It also depends on the language and it has to be culturally adequate. At IWC at the time, we had some very provocative type of advertising, slightly macho oriented and so on. We found out very soon that that was an absolutely no-go, both in the Asian markets because that type of humor did not strike a chord in Asia because they simply wouldn’t understand it. It didn’t work in the U.S. because you have a lot of protests from feminist groups that are like, “How dare you be so macho.” Nobody cared in the German-speaking world. They thought it was funny. The cultural sensitivities are very different. You have to be careful that you create a coherent message that works globally. Also, don’t be afraid to adapt it locally if need be. Probably a message that works in all cultures is very hard to find and it would be too simple and too bland. Keep the basis globally but adapt locally. An old world but the local approach is still right.

{audio:0:34:30} When you’re building a brand identity, like you said, you go back to the heritage, you keep the foundations. When you’re using specific words or building that identity, how do you look to use language to create the feeling or emotion at the customer? Are there certain words that you look to use or the ways that you’d approach speaking about the brand in order to drive the certain feeling and emotion for the customer?

{audio:0:35:00} Not for a brand like IWC too much. You’d have some humor, some catchy phrases. We kept that because the humor was always a driver of the brand. That was only the first few words. Then it really gets down to some relatively technical language. That has to be understandable, but still technical enough to appeal to the techy clients that we had. It takes some really good text professionals to create a text that is catchy, technical, and sexy at the same time. Not easy to do, but apart from the imagery, it’s true, it’s very important.

{audio:0:35:54} What was the split in channel of your marketing budget roughly when you were at IWC?

{audio:0:36:02} At IWC, in the early days, our budgets were not really big enough to make a huge impact in terms of print advertising because that was the key at the time. We basically decided we’d not do too much print advertising at all. Rather invest the money into the event and public relations field. We’d hire the best possible PR agencies globally rather invest more money there, build up excellent relationships with the journalists worldwide that liked the brand anyway, but we’d create beautiful events, invite people to relevant locations such as the Red Sea diving, which includes two divers to really see the product in action. Invest in that. The press we got out of it was amazing back then. Which at the end of the day was worth a lot more than if we had purely just invested in print advertising. We also invested in events at the trade fair, invite celebrities and get enormous coverage that was untypical for the watch world at the time because of our work with events and celebrities. We’re thinking big in that respect and it paid off.

{audio:0:37:27} Why do you think many marketers undervalue the offline channels?

{audio:0:37:34} I think it’s a generational question. If the marketing managers of today have grown up only with the digital channels, they tend to focus on that purely. That at least in the segment of luxury, watches ignore that they’re not being bought by 20-year-olds normally. They’re actually being bought by probably on average 35 – 55-year-old customers. Just because of the price point. Even though most of them are also very digital, not all of them are. We’re not talking about the 65 plus range of collectors, which is the most active because these are the people who have made their money. Collecting high-end watches is their passion. Even though most of them are, of course, digitally very much up to date, they will still love their watch magazines, printed watch magazines. Not just go online and, yes. I think it’s a generational question. You have to get the balance right.

{audio:0:38:51} More broadly, looking at your experience in building luxury brands. How do you think about what defines luxury and the mystery or elevation around building a luxury brand?

{audio:0:39:06} I think I said that earlier. The key is the credibility and the authenticity. You have to have something that stands out to make it. Every year, there are thousands of people that think they want to launch a luxury brand. It’s very hard because the barriers to entry are very high and the investments you need to build something from scratch are huge. You need a really solid foundation. Ideally, there’s some sort of heritage. Even if the heritage has been hidden away or the brand has been out of production for many years, it doesn’t really matter, as long as there’s a true heritage, a true story behind it. When LVMH relaunched the Moynat luxury brand, which is the high-end travel goods. That company had not produced anything for I think about 100 years. Before that, they were at the same level as Louis Vuitton and Goyard. LVMH said, okay, there is a heritage there. We have archives. We have all designs. We have history. We can create that. We can be honest about the fact that we’ve been off the market for a year, but we have something really valuable there. This value of this heritage, you cannot just create. If you want to create a brand without any heritage because you have a brilliant idea, then that’s possible, too, but the idea has to be brilliant. It has to really stand out from the rest. You need a lot of investment to get the message out. All successes of brands that have come basically out of a brilliant idea in the luxury sphere in the past few years, then taken a lot of investment to build a brand.

{audio:0:41:10} What is your favorite example of a new brand that’s come to market in the luxury space that has done that?

{audio:0:41:21} For example, you can take Jimmy Choo in a different world, that was founded by Tamara Mellon about 20 years ago. Jimmy Choo himself was a watchmaker based in Belgravia who had a very small shop, was making bespoke shoes for high-end clientele. Mrs. Mellon decided, wow, these shoes are fantastic. Let’s make this into a brand. How did she do it? Well, that success of the brand was really built on testimonials and public relations. Without having the budgets to print large ads or whatever, she just gave away brilliant shoes to celebrities that would wear them on the red carpet. She did that to a huge extent. Then the fashion press obviously caught up, if at the Oscars suddenly five of the top actors wear a brand with an unusual name, people start taking note. Out of this brilliant idea of just giving away the product to the right people, she built a global luxury brand. Which is definitely rare.

{audio:0:42:42} It’s been in that network of people that can be a marketing platform for you in a way, for those new brands?

{audio:0:42:51} Right. The founder of the brand was part of that world anyway. She would have perfect access to all sorts of celebrities. It became the shoe to wear at the time. That’s how it became a hot item without any advertising. Then later on of course, when the company reached a certain size, the cashflow was there to use all of the other marketing channels. At the end of the day, the success of the brand was built on testimonials and giving away the product to the right people.

{audio:0:43:33} When you were working with Jimmy Choo, what were the biggest challenges in building that brand?

{audio:0:43:38} What were the biggest challenges in building that brands, building Jimmy Choo?

{audio:0:43:45} I didn’t work for Jimmy Choo, I was just saying this is an example.

{audio:0:43:50} I thought you mentioned before that you were working with her or…

{audio:0:43:53} No, I know her, she’s a friend. Jimmy Choo is an interesting example of how a global brand was built out of nothing. Literally, apart from that.

{audio:0:44:07} There’s a good book about it, as well, I think she wrote a book that’s tells her story. It’s pretty interesting.

{audio:0:44:13} Yes, but take it with a grain of salt. It’s also revenge to her ex-husband who’s dead anyway now.

{audio:0:44:29} I just want to discuss differentiation in the watch space.  You have IWC, obviously Rolex, Cartier, which are the two largest brands arguably. How did you look at positioning IWC versus those brands?

{audio:0:44:49} That’s a very good question because IWC at the time when we started was so much smaller than both Rolex and Cartier. Just to give you an idea, we’d say if Rolex at the time was building a million watches a year, which is probably about the quantity that it was, we would be building about 50,000. There’s a huge difference in size. Cartier also being a huge company, but completely different positioning. Rolex was always a relatively masculine brand, but never neglected the women. Always a brand making a lot of gold watches, watches with diamonds with a big appeal to ladies, as well. IWC had almost no female models. Instead of saying, okay, we’re going to make female watches, as well. We said, we’re going to drop it entirely. We’re going to focus on men’s watches. Which doesn’t mean that women wouldn’t buy them. On the contrary, because the fashion for women wearing men’s watches just came up 20 years ago and has never gone away since. We still marketed it all towards men. Cartier on the other hand is a jewelry-oriented brands. Cartier was at that time at least not too much focused-on watchmaking, but focused on jewels, on design, on precious materials.

{audio:0:46:34} On diamonds, on other precious materials, which was never important for IWC. For IWC, it was the movement, the technology, and the design. For Cartier, it was the material, the preciousness, the design, the link to the jewelry. A completely different positioning and very feminine. If IWC had 80 percent masculine clients, Cartier would have had 80 percent female clients. Completely different. Rolex is somewhere in between. More or less 50/50. Also, Rolex being focused essentially on one watch model in different iterations. The Oyster. It’s always that divers’ watch. If it’s a Daytona or a submarine or whatever, it’s always the same basic shape. IWC was very different. It had families. The Portuguese watch is completely different to the pilots watch. It’s completely different to the engineer or the aqua timer or the Davinci even. Each of these families had a distinct identity with a slightly different customer base. That was our strength, that we had five strong, almost equally strong product lines, whereas, the design of both Cartier and Rolex tended to focus on two iconic shapes, the tank in Cartier and very different iterations. Française the classic tank, the tank American, whatever, but always that square tank shape. Of course, it was Pasha and others, but the bulk of the business was always the square tank shape. For Rolex, always the Oyster model. That’s the key difference.

{audio:0:48:35} How did the marketing strategy change for each of those companies? How did you see the marketing messaging and approach to communicating with the customer different between Cartier and Rolex versus IWC?

{audio:0:48:55} Cartier basically never used a lot of storytelling. They kept very close to their purity. I was once product manager for Cartier watches, do I remember very well. The messaging for Cartier watches was always the product. The advertising of a Cartier watch was always the logo, the watch and that’s it. Based purely on design, materials, and look. There was never anything about the technology. Or storytelling about it. It’s really Cartier is a super brand, everyone knows it. It’s the most famous jeweler in the world. That was very focused and enough to promote this brand. That’s the reason why it’s so big. Rolex is slightly different. They’ve always had their cultural messages and their sporting messages. They two lines of communication, but those have never changed over the years either. Rolex is about Wimbledon, about iconic sporting events, about golfing events, and about opera and classical music. That’s it. They never branched out into any other messaging. Of course, those messages are always the same and they tend to get a little bit boring. At IWC, we reinvented every product line. We added new partnerships, new stories, so there was more to say about the brand. That helped us enormously.

{audio:0:50:40} How does that approach to marketing align with Cartier and Rolex’s heritage?

{audio:0:50:45} It makes completely sense because the Cartier heritage is absolutely superior design. The tank shape is iconic. It’s what has transcended hundreds of years and it’s here to stay. It just makes sense to focus on that. I think there’s no need to tell stories around that because this central message is so strong. Rolex would probably be just as successful if they did not have these messages. Rolex, of course, needs some sort of communication, as well, but I think personally, would Rolex only focus on their iconic designs, the brand would be just as successful. Don’t forget, Rolex isn’t owned by anyone, it’s a foundation. They support a lot of sporting events and a lot of cultural events because they have these enormous resources that they can use for it because there are no shareholders that take money out of this company. They give back to the society in their way in terms of supporting technological and cultural events, which is great.

{audio:0:52:13} What are the biggest lessons that you learned from your time building brands, at both Cartier and IWC?

{audio:0:52:26} Well, I think if I get one basic message is, you have to be authentic and credible. If you are a marketeer, you tend to come up with fancy ideas and you get advertising agencies come up to you every two minutes presenting new ideas, great ideas. At the end of the day, the customer is very savvy. They will look through anything that’s remotely just a fac or short-term oriented. If people spend a large portion of their savings or have saved up for a product over many years, and they’ve dreamt of owning any sort of luxury watch. They want to make sure it really is something that you buy for 25 years plus or hand it down to your children. Everything else fades away. You have to be authentic, credible. The quality has to be irreproachable. That’s what it boils down to. Short-term, you can update, you can animate your brand, but never ever forget these core pillars of the brand because that’s at the end of the day makes people decide for your brand rather than another brand.

IWC versus Rolex & Cartier: Brand Marketing

Why IWC doesn't segment customers and leads with the product and heritage

The power of using partnerships as a luxury brand to build trust with the consumer

IWC versus Rolex & Cartier: Brand Marketing

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

inpractise.com/articles/iwc-marketing

Why is this interview interesting?

Executive Bio

Jens Fabian Herdieckerhoff

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

Interview Transcript

Related Content

Luxury Watches: IWC versus Rolex & Cartier

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

IWC: Storytelling across Product Lines

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

IWC & Luxury Watches: Segmenting Customers

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

Luxury Brands: Credibility & Authenticity

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

Audio

IWC versus Rolex & Cartier: Brand Marketing(March 25, 2020)

PARTNER

Speak to Executive