Watches represent so much. For someone it is jewelry, for someone it is a practical thing (active watches like Garmin), someone is obsessed with the mechanism, someone is again in constant search for status and often the watch seems like a shortcut to that and someone is simply a collector.
My first experience with watches was in contact with the Swatch brand. For my generation, Swatch was the concept of a watch, a Swiss, high-quality and what was then perhaps most importantly a beautiful watch with an incredible combination of colors and aesthetics that had not been seen, at least not in these areas.
Additionally, Swatch taught us how different a watch is when a little effort is put into the bracelet.
I also had my first contact with a serious watch with the OMEGA brand, when man first set foot on the moon and when, lo and behold, the man whom did it was wearing the famous Moon watch.
Today, those two brands belong to the same group, the Swatch group, which in addition to these brands has many others that you would never guess are actually part of the same family.
Something happened that few people expected in the world of watches, the Apple watch appeared on the side, which literally destroyed all low-end watches like Fossil, Diesel, and others and dealt a serious blow to the Swatch brand. In fact, Apple Watch did something that was only typical of Swatch, that people who are millionaires wear a watch that costs a few hundred euros.
According to the data, currently, more than 50% of the smartwatch market share is held by the Apple Watch, but what is much more dangerous for the classic watch market is that the same Željko who was familiar with the Swatch is now facing the Apple Watch and at the beginning of the user experience there are now many less room for classic watches.
I think that these data certainly did not go unnoticed by other companies that manufacture watches and that some move had to happen that would get the watch industry on its feet and, in my opinion, perhaps the most important thing, to address the youngest, i.e. the people who come and who would be fans of watches in one way or another.
As a result, this year saw the most significant launch of a watch brand in the last few years, embodied in Swatch and Omega's cooperation. A watch that is a combination of Omega design and Swatch vibe, a watch that today costs 250 euros in retail.
Why this was done, there are several reasons:
I think this was the answer to the question, of how to approach young people who now consider the watch more as an advantage and a matter of trend
To create serious hype in the classic watch industry that has not been there for a long time. This was done primarily because the price is popular and you get something from both worlds of watches (luxury and less luxurious)
Customization is something brought by smartwatches. The whole series of Swatch Omega watches consisted of 11 different watches, where actually everyone could find a piece for themselves
Storytelling, virtually every hour represents a journey to a certain planet. Everyone understood that story for themselves, but the most important thing is that there is something behind it, which has been missing a lot in the last couple of years. A watch can never be just a watch because smart and active watches always win in that area.
Synergy, the matter of cooperation between two or more brands, usually brings benefits for individual brands. In other words, the sales of Swatch watches as well as Omega have increased. There are data that the sale of Swatch watches increased by 41% in certain countries.
In education, people learn much easier when something is cool and interesting. It is precise because of this series that many people entered the world of watches or perhaps in some way revitalized their love for watches.
The campaign and cooperation were a success. In almost all parts of the world, we saw queues that were previously seen only when it came to the launch of new APPLE products.
The watches were resold at 3, 4, or 5 times higher prices. What is much more important, a lot of young people were ready to wait in line for an hour for several hours, and in some cases, tens of hours.
Source: New York Times
There are also those who did not like this because they felt that this would have a bad effect on a brand like an Omega. People simply couldn't push through the fact that the watch has plexiglass, is easy to scratch and that Omega is written on it, they thought that cooperation would bring down a brand like Omega to the lower branches.
All in all, in my opinion, this is one of the best campaigns of this year and the strongest collaboration. In my opinion, what I believe the Swatch group was fighting for has been achieved in terms of marketing and strategy.
If we look at the short-term results, this was a real hit, but only time and the coming years will show how right the Swatch group was.
Have you purchased your own example of an Omega Swatch watch?