I do not wear a watch. I stopped, many years ago. I may have a couple of Timex/Titan watches at home, unused, deep inside some shelf. I do not intend to buy a watch for myself in the foreseeable future. I do wear a FitBit Alta HR – it is 3+ years old and I can barely see a thing on the screen, leave alone time. But the app shows me the details I need to know occasionally, so I don’t particularly care to replace it for now.
That is my disclosure with regard to watches, or things I may wear on my wrist.
But, having said that, I was recently very, very impressed with the way a watch brand has positioned itself, after reading more on why and how they arrived it.
The positioning is,
You never actually own a Patek Philippe.
You merely look after it for the next generation.
That’s a mouthful, I know, but it seems to convey so many things all at once.
- It’s a watch, a time-showing device. For it to last generations brings a timeless quality to it. There is beauty in framing a product meant to show time as ‘timeless’!
- The positioning smoothly hammers the point about the product’s longevity. The implication is that it lasts generations.
- It adds an emotional angle to it. A bond between generations, as a pass-it-down product.
Patek Philippe launched this ‘Generations’ campaign in 1996 and is still using the positioning. The campaign was conceived by Leagas Delaney, a London-based advertising agency.
I came to understand that the campaign uses ‘altercasting’, a theory of persuasion created by sociologists Eugene Weinstein and Paul Deutschberger in 1963. The goal of altercasting is to project the identity of a role you want another person to assume to encourage them to behave in a desired manner.
A very simple example – A parent, to a child: “You are so very good in English! Why don’t you complete your essay before going out to play?”
Altercasting, hence, is a treasure-trove as far as advertising goes.
In 2015, asked a few influential people in the field of marketing and advertising, “What is the best advertising campaign of all time?” (according to them).
Tim Calkins, professor of marketing, Kellogg School of Management, , “How do you sell a $25,000 watch when people can buy an accurate one for $10? Patek Philippe’s “Generations” ads, featuring fathers and sons and the line “You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation.” A Patek watch isn’t a device for telling time. It’s an heirloom that transfers values across generations.”
The watch is super expensive. To stand out among other super expensive watches, the brand decided to evoke a human feeling in its niche target audience, instead of taking the route of self-indulgence, as luxury brands often do. Instead of focusing on pampering the self by indulging in a highly expensive watch purchase, and use it to gain social fame, the brand chose to focus on a completely different aspect.
The beautiful black & white photos that go with that line adds to the aura. The brand started with father-and-son, without focusing on women, but eventually (starting 2009) also started featuring mother-and-daughter.
But no father-and-daughter or mother-and-son because they do not make unisex watches – only ‘men’ and ‘women’ variants.
The watches are so expensive that – only the models and some basic features. Obviously, they do not sell online. GQ magazine asked the company’s CEO, Thierry Stern in December 2019: “Can you see Patek Philippe ever selling online?”. His response:
I believe that it’s still a pleasure to try your watch and talk to the retailer. It’s part of the beauty of life. Of course, we could sell through the internet, all of us – we don’t need to stand up, we can order food and drink and work and do everything from the internet. But I don’t see the fun in that. When you buy a product like a Patek Philippe, you need to try it and you need to speak to the salesperson with the knowledge and that’s a pleasure. It’s what I call life. When I see people sitting all day and ordering everything through the internet, that’s not life. Why do we have museums? You can see a picture on your iPad. But it’s a pleasure. So as long as we have good retailers who are able to explain Patek to you, then we shall work with them.
(the entire interview is worth a read!)
There is something poetic about the way this watch brand has differentiated itself, amidst a sea of products produced and disposed of in industrial quantities. Their target audience is very small, the pricing super high. But the positioning helps them set the tone of who the target customer is, and also makes those who may not be today’s target customer, remember and yearn to be one some other day in the future… not for themselves, but for themselves and the next generation!
Take a look at on how effective the campaign has been! It’s a Harvard Business School case study too!
I will never ever be a Patek Philippe target customer, in my lifetime 🙂 I don’t see myself as buying a product I don’t even use even now, and at that great a cost. But even I am left with a warm admiration for the way the brand has positioned itself.