Meet Kristian Haagen, self-described “middle-aged watch collector” and author of eight watch books, a man with 156,000 followers keen to know his latest watch-related thoughts. “I came late to being an influencer and, really, being one wasn’t anything I thought I should be proud of. My privilege is that I get to talk only about watches, which is a very niche product”. In fact, it is all a bit odd, he says: “You buy a watch and talk about it, and other people buy the same watch. That’s strange.”

Haagen may find the whole thing amusing and bemusing but the rising relevance of social media and, more specifically, its particular enthusiasts for different subjects – the so-called influencers of Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok (each platform seemingly replacing the former) – is challenging the way marketing is done across many lifestyle-oriented industries. While that might sound like it has little or nothing to do with watches, the evidence suggests otherwise.

“In fact, Instagram has changed everything about the way watches are marketed,” Haagen contends. “If the cool gang on social media says a watch has to be 34mm, or whatever, that’s the way the market moves. And I’m influenced by that as well. Suddenly I feel uncool in a larger watch.”

Impressive Reach

Daniel Wellington is an oft-cited test case in the role of influencers in the watch world: the company’s founder Filip Tysander built his entire brand off the back of Instagram when it launched in 2010 – reaching out to multiple influencers, before they were even called such, and offering them free products and trackable promo codes to share, then repurposing their content in his brand’s advertising campaigns. Within three years, he was selling US$228m of watches.

Sure, with its relatively cheap production costs, Daniel Wellington could afford to give watches away. But it was some kind of lesson learned. Small wonder that much bigger brands the likes of TAG Heuer, Hublot, Audemars Piguet and IWC now, years later, collaborate with influencers on TikTok, with IWC being the first luxury watch brand to host a live stream event on the channel last year.

Certainly, the reach of influencers – notably those with the leverage of genuine subject knowledge and a personal rapport with engaged followers – can impress. When Robert-Jan Broer, founder of Fratello Watches, created the hashtag ‘speedytuesday’ on Facebook back in 2012, in celebration of Omega’s Speedmaster, it would go on to spawn an entire movement of fans, as well as events held around the globe and two limited-edition watches, one of which was produced in 2,012 units and sold out in four hours. The hashtag has since been used on Instagram more than 400,000 times. Its impact is still felt today, arguably.

Conservative Resistance

“It really took off like crazy,” says Broer. “But, importantly, it was all very genuine, just a community of like-minded Speedmaster enthusiasts and an idea that ran away with itself. Of course, Fratello was approached by other reputable brands after to do the same thing but [the proposals] felt made up and didn’t make sense to me, whereas I’ve collected Speedmasters for 20 years.”

And yet, for many at the higher end of the watch business – especially maybe those self-consciously positioning themselves as makers of ‘luxury products’ – there would appear to remain a deeply embedded reluctance to dip more than a toe into the influencer world. That may simply be down them being, as Haagen puts it, part of “the most conservative business in the world, selling a product that nobody needs.”

But Juerg Hostettler, influencer and founder of Brandfluence, a brand agency that has worked with the likes of Fortis, as well as Sony and Mercedes, is nonetheless surprised by just how little watch content there is put out by influencers, at least relative to other subjects. Some brands, he reckons, are still comfortable targeting an older demographic and see no reason to get into bed with influencers. Others he wonders “perhaps just don’t understand [the influencer world] yet. That encourages them to think they don’t need it.”

Fast Food Not Fine Dining

That reluctance may stem from a mismatch between what many watch brands deem to be central to their public image – their savoir-faire, their history, their complex micro-mechanics, all of which might require longer and deeper forms of media to cover well, and which the earlier watch blogs and forums did so well, sometimes to a scholarly extent; and what the dominant social media thrives on – lower-quality content, but snappier, instant-impact, quickly replaced, shareable and above all accessible coverage with an exponentially larger reach. Fast food as opposed to fine-dining, maybe.

“It’s why what [watch influencers] thrive on is a love of shape, not of complications,” argues Haagen. “One reason Cartier is doing so well now is that its products are all about shapes. It’s that simple.” Of course, as Haagen himself notes, that is only one reason so those of you who might be foaming at the mouth, given the overwhelming preference for round watches noted by, well everyone, should consider a muscle relaxant at this point.

Moving on, the nature of social media is maybe also why, given the algorithms at work, it skews towards the same kind of watch content. Even the same kind of watches, suggesting a trend – for steel sports watches, for example – or a spike in the desirability of a certain model has come up organically when actually it has been generated through data mining.

Desensitised and Devalued

“There’s a huge issue here. While influencers have been good for building communities around what are, after all, a very specialist interest I think [the influencer ecosystem] has driven demand for certain models,” argues Justin Hast, Youtuber, regular IWC collaborator and publisher of ‘The Watch Annual’. “This distorts our view of a watch – you see one everywhere on social media, a (Patek Philippe) Nautilus, for example, but how often do you actually see anyone wearing one (in real life)? I think we become desensitised to models we see too much, which devalues them in some way I think”.

But there is also a tonal disparity: high-end watch brands are, on the whole, sober and often somewhat pompous. Instagram, and especially the new frontier of TikTok, often takes a more irreverent, humorous, playful, ironic and sometimes anarchic point of view. Check out the Horological Dictionary, for example; one recent, and relatively tame, post on Jaeger-LeCoultre introduces it as “a rare and exciting glimpse into the world’s most respected and least pronounceable watchmaker.”

Collectors will sneer at this, noting that Jaeger-LeCoultre is just as difficult to know how to pronounce as A. Lange & Söhne, Ulysse Nardin, or Vacheron Constantin. Or how about Bvlgari, which insists on this specific spelling? Even Tissot and Hublot, with two-syllable names, can be challenging for the English-speaking world, and we have not even addressed how watch brand names are presented in Chinese. On that note about Hublot though…

“The influencer world is the Wild West,
and the train going there has already departed”

Losing Control

Some social media accounts allow you to see a twenty-something flipping watches in a train station carpark or horological savant Nico Vanderhost’s latest entertaining takedown of celebrity watch collections. And this kind of thing reaches millions. But that loss of control of the narrative is something a deeply conservative industry has, to date, rarely been at ease with.

“The problem is that [many of the top brands] are stuck in this idea of a very polished, perfect world,” says Maxime Couturier, co-founder of brand marketing agency Apresdemain. It has worked with the likes of the Fondation Haute Horlogerie and Girard-Perregaux, and last year launched ‘Heist Out’, an underground, dissident watch magazine. “(Influencers) can be an amazing tool to grow interest in watches, and to connect collectors, but (the industry) needs to get beyond its image as always being an expensive-looking guy in a Patek. It needs to break those long-established codes, as the fashion industry has managed to do”.

“What [many major watch industry brands] think [is happening] doesn’t correspond to what’s actually happening online,” adds his business partner Lorenzo Maillard. “They have this idea that if you put a watch next to a tracksuit then viewers won’t get that their product is 100 percent luxury anymore. It’s crazy to me how brands have constrained themselves. It’s not as though consumers are asking for this exclusivity, this luxury lifestyle image.”

Breaking Free

Some, perhaps, are taking the hint. Cartier’s own Instagram account, which it launched in 2022, for example, has a decidedly less polished feel relative to its normally high-gloss marketing. It affords Cartier a different kind of cool – more Tiong Bahru, less Orchard Road.

Certainly, while social media has had a powerful impact on the way second-hand watches are bought and sold, on the fostering of the vintage market, and of meet-ups by watch-loving community groups, arguably it is influencers who will have the greater impact in changing how watches are perceived, and, some say, for the better.

Influencers argue, as they might, that breaking free of these constraints can only be a good thing for the watch industry, ripping watch appreciation out of the confines of haughty sales staff, beige boutiques and manufactured exclusivity, and making it much more diverse, more everyday, more fun and much more appealing to demographics the industry has been tardy to embrace: younger, fashion-conscious people, and women, such as those focused on by Instagram influencer Brynn Waller under the name of Dimepiece. This is precisely the demographic more likely to follow influencers of course.

“I do think that maybe the whole influencer
thing has gone too far – Don Cochrane, Vertex”

Beyond The Old Boys Club

“What’s really shifting, importantly, as a result of influencers is that [an interest in watches] is becoming more open as a hobby – it’s not just an old boys network talking about luxury Swiss watches,” argues Lydia Winters, who only discovered her passion for watches five years ago and now shares her watch photography with her many Instagram followers and ‘This Watch Life’ podcast. She argues that influencers especially have become a gateway to watches for a younger audience that – depending on the study you read – is in serious danger of losing all interest in watches.

“There are some people who still get excited about the more traditional technical aspects [of a watch]. But there are more and more influencers now reaching out to the even younger TikTok generation and saying, for example, that a watch can be Quartz, and that that’s ok,” she adds. “They’re reaching out with an enthusiasm for watch design, or with stories about why they chose the watch they have. With an industry that has been far too serious for too long, they’re making watches joyful and whimsical again”.

While that might sound shockingly naïve, it is still informative and speaks to certain undeniable truths, although perhaps not the ones openly stated there. After all, influencers have proven key to the profile of independent watchmakers and the watch micro brands sector – those without the budgets to buy pages in glossy magazines, or to sign a contract with a Hollywood star, but often with the kind of visually arresting or unusual products for which the likes of Instagram is ideal. “I don’t think the whole micro-brand thing would have happened without them providing the necessary exposure,” says Lewis Heath, founder of AnOrdain and Paulin.

Independence is Power

So, are the more mainstream brands just moving too slowly? Some 15 years ago, digital watch platforms were shunned; now some are brands in their own right, and watch brands are keen on collaborating. But there remains a troubling sense… Yes, the more rough-and-tumble, quick-change world of social media and its influencers is a train that the watch brands need to board but it also has a destination they are not sure about. It may be reading between the lines, but of five major names in watches approached for comment about their attitude to influencers for this article, five found reasons not to comment.

Perhaps they are right to keep their cards close to their chest. As it is often described, the world of influencers is a ‘Wild West’ right now. And that influencer train? It may have already departed. Yes, influencers have arguably pushed brands to new levels of accountability for the quality of their products. They can act as an independent press, ridiculing your new watch while print media – dependent on advertising spent – reliably toe the line; this is not to say influencers of the sort cited here cannot be bought, but the watch collector with a sizeable following often cannot. “The collector community can be visceral and will come down on a brand very heavily if it thinks it’s doing something wrong,” as Hast notes. That is not something luxury brands are used to – even the old frontier of the collectors’ forum did not have the same reach. Its influence was limited, in other words.

On the other hand, as Broer notes, the influencer ecosystem, and its appeal to watch brands, seems to be bifurcating between influencers who are, as he puts it, “watch people, who have an emotional connection to the products”, and the growing army of “professional influencers” who are ready to push any product, watches included, often without revealing the deal that lies behind their enthusiasm; the ones, as Hast jokes, who seem to spend a lot of their time with their tops off standing by swimming pools.

Inconclusive Results

“There are those watch enthusiasts, but most influencers seem willing to [promote] just about anything. I stopped looking at social media about three years ago because I was getting too annoyed at all the things that weren’t accurate or were just made up,” says Paulin’s Heath, who is not yet convinced that influencers have much real commercial affect, not least because he suspects nowhere near as many people with the disposable income to buy a good watch are on social media as regularly as is often suggested.

“We had a lot of people on Instagram talking about how great our watches were and that didn’t seem to actually sell anything. Then we got a product review [on an online magazine] and sold 20 that weekend,” he notes.

If once influencers proposed a fresh alternative to traditional advertising and sponsorship, with its unabashed but dated kind of self-promotion, influencers already can look similarly tainted. This means both those who take the money and, unfortunately, those that do not. Clearly, regular users of unregulated social media are increasingly savvy to the financial dynamic that underpins many influencers’ relationships with watch companies: that they are paid, one way or another, to post positive comments or reviews.

Hardening Doubts

Kristian Haagen concedes that he has at times been pressured by watch brands, which shall remain nameless, to make changes to his posts or to push some aspect they were more keen to promote. His honest response? “I’m a softy on that,” he laughs. “There have been heated moments but I’d rather we all stayed good friends. Maybe they think I did something wrong? So I’ll change it. We have to remember here that we’re just talking about watches, not saving the world. And I think that the public isn’t stupid, thankfully – people know that influencers are another marketing channel and we shouldn’t forget that.”

Indeed, that is the way Don Cochrane, founder of Vertex, tends to think about it. As a small brand, it has a small marketing budget. He does not court influencers but, on rare occasions, he has given away a watch and, he says, it feels much the same as buying an ad in a publication.

“But I do think that maybe the whole influencer thing has already gone too far,” he says. “It’s reached saturation point, so it’s hard to get above all the chatter,” he says. “If we were to use an influencer it would be hard to know who that person would be, because it’s about finding people with real traction with their audience, and for us that may not be as simple as connoisseur watch collectors. I think my doubts about influencers will only harden.”

Finding The Right Fit

“There’s already a weariness about the relationship between brand and influencers setting in. My kids, 14 and 18, are very much fed up with posts that have obviously been paid for and don’t seem a good fit,” agrees Hostettler. “Social media and many influencers on it remain a great way to research watches or to find out more about one you might already be thinking about buying. But for me it’s not a good place from which to take recommendations, especially those you haven’t asked for. That’s rightly causing suspicion”.

That means that those watch brands now warming to the idea of tapping influencers need to tread carefully. Justin Hast puts up a spirited defence of the right kind of relationship, one with that ‘good fit’. “Of course, the right collaboration between a big brand and an enthusiast who loves the brand, with whom it’s had a long relationship and whom the audience trusts makes perfect commercial sense,” he says, “just as to simply chase an influencer because they have big numbers doesn’t.”

“What I think we’re actually seeing now is a big shake-up, a shift away from platforms that haven’t honoured their audience with truly passionate and authoritative content,” he adds. “The influencers that resonate are those that bring people into the conversation. That can only be a good thing for both sides.”

This article first appeared in WOW’s Legacy Issue #75

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