I found myself devoting a Friday in February almost exclusively to Omega, thanks to the flying visit to Australia of the watch brand’s chief executive Raynald Aeschlimann and its ambassador Cindy Crawford. An interview with him in the morning bookended by a lavish dinner hosted by both in the evening provided a window into the power of fashion and celebrity when it comes to moving watches. If attendees at the dinner queued like awed sports fans to be photographed with the towering model and businesswoman, it was Crawford’s commercial appeal Aeschlimann confirmed during our morning chat.
“Our sales are 50:50 ladies’ and mens’ watches,” he says, adding that the strength in its women’s sales “is due to Cindy and the Constellation, which is probably one of the 10 bestselling brands by itself. It’s incredible; we’ve celebrated this relationship for more than 20 years.”
George Clooney is another Omega ambassador whose wearing of an Omega De Ville Trésor Master Co-Axial for his nuptials to Amal Alamuddin helped elevate an otherwise plain-Jane timepiece to uber-desirable status, while Nicole Kidman has been a favoured face for the brand’s Ladymatic range. Omega is hardly alone in aligning personality with product, but if image is such a positive thing, isn’t it also the case that the reverse is equally true?
For a while I was rather pleased that Malcolm Turnbull favoured the very Apple Watch and Milanese strap combo I was partial to, but now I’m not sure it’s such a good look. It could be worse; the moment I see Donald Trump wearing one it’ll be all over. Meantime, I’ve had to give the Apple a rest after encountering a posse of pensioners – in long socks, elevated walking shoes and holstered water bottles – sporting them on their wrists. It was a rude reminder that watch-brand spiel about exclusivity and specialness might be more than spin.
When ambassadors switch allegiance
How then to protect one’s brand from being worn by the unfashionable or unattractive – or for that matter, by the unfaithful? Roger Federer famously switched from Maurice Lacroix to Rolex, while Lewis Hamilton, once synonymous with Tag Heuer, now wears IWC.
With this in mind I ask Aeschlimann how he feels when one of his brand ambassadors changes allegiance, mentioning by way of example formula one driver Michael Schumacher, a long-time stalwart at Omega who left for Audemars Piguet in 2010.
Schumacher, it seems, was passionate about watches but wanted more input into their creation than Omega was able to accommodate.
“I had a very good relationship with him,” says Aeschlimann. “He knew a lot about watches and I think he would have, one of these days, bought or created a watch brand. Michael was very good for Omega, and when he started the second part of his career [with Mercedes] he wanted to spend a lot of time on the creation of new watches.
“But we are an industrial and leading brand selling more than 650,000 watches [per year], and we could not create the watches he wanted to create. We knew he [subsequently] wanted to go to Audemars Piguet and we accepted this very well.”
Aeschlimann points out that Omega’s relationships with the famous and fashionable are mostly enduring. “Key people stay with us because we share their values and they share our values. So we have discussions about adding new people to the family, but never discuss ending relationships. We are loyal people.” So it seems. For her part, Crawford was moved to observe that her two-decade relationship with Omega was longer than her marriage – no doubt partly due to the fact it continues to spell mercantile heaven.
