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Be Authentic

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

IP Interview
Published on May 12, 2020

Why is this interview interesting?

  • How authenticity should be the core of a luxury marketing strategy
Executive Bio

Jens Fabian Herdieckerhoff

Former Marketing Director at Richemont, IWC Schaffhausen

Fabian has over 20 years experience marketing luxury watches. He started his career as a product manager in Germany for Cartier before moving to Richemont when the company purchased luxury watchmaker IWC in 2001. At Richemont, Fabian was the Marketing Director for IWC where he was responsible for the international marketing strategy over 7 years. He then spent 2 years running Burberry Watches at the Fossil Group and is now a luxury market consultant.

Interview Transcript

What are the biggest lessons that you learned from your time building brands, at both Cartier and IWC?

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 fad 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.

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