Issue 161: The Case For, And Against, Fun
Is the watch industry too focussed on having a good time? Your correspondent takes up both sides of the argument
Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that is getting greedy. This week I’ve not been content with one outspoken opinion; I’ve decided to have two opposing arguments and commit to them both with almost equal gusto. I do eventually reach some sort of conclusion, but it felt necessary to examine this one from all sides, as it were. I’ve also got a good selection of other business for you, in the form of five or six snippets on recent goings-on that should not be missed. Enjoy!
Last week I asked you whether you were interested in a print anthology of my best (and I assume by default, weirdest) work. By a factor of two to one, the answer was yes, but most of you didn’t say anything at all. I get it - but would you do me a huge favour and please just tap here one way or the other? My curiosity has been piqued, and if I’m going to take this thought any further, I’d like to have a larger sample size before I press on with something hardly anyone is going to buy. To repeat the detail for anyone who missed it last week, the idea would be to take a number of essays from previous newsletters and publish them, along with some brand new content, in book form.
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Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:
Putting the ‘fun’ in ‘fundamentally flawed’
I gave a quote recently to a fellow journalist, my pal Robin Swithinbank, for an article that’ll appear in Business of Fashion at some point. Turns out that’s the kind of thing you can do when you’ve created your own pulpit and stuck at it for a bit. So in my capacity as “available and opinionated individual”, I shared a few thoughts on the subject of colour in watchmaking, and why this year in particular brands have been so polychromatically promiscuous.
The exact bons mots I rustled up, I think while I was on a train, I will save for the BoF reader to discover. But the general point was this: multicoloured collections and eye-catching ceramics are all very well, but how’s it all going to seem in five years’ time? I worried that in rushing to create such seasonally-appropriate designs, watchmakers might actually be devaluing their products and reducing them to the level of, well, a fashion accessory. On the other hand, it might be a commercial masterstroke, if you can convince people they need to buy a different colour watch every summer.
This thought returned to me a few days later, in a slightly broader form. I don’t always manage it, but I think it’s a useful and rigorous exercise to try and challenge the prevailing consensus as often as you can. We are all very good at convincing ourselves that what’s in front of us is what we wanted all along, and there is a value, I believe, in sense-checking that from time to time.
For example, it’s overwhelmingly common to the point of ubiquity these days to encounter the view that brands’ recent shift to smaller case diameters is long overdue, nay an essential reversion to ‘more wearable’ sizing. I chanced upon this exact sentiment in a recent interview between Monochrome and Jerome Lambert, vis a vis what Jaeger-LeCoultre might be focussing on nowadays, and while I have to give Frank the benefit of the doubt, I cast my mind back a few years and it’s my recollection that no-one was really hankering after an industry-wide shift to 35-38mm watchmaking - other than the subset of watch fans that have always stuck rigidly to this idea. In fact, it’s my memory that a few years ago, we were all pretty happy with the idea that brands had come down from 44-43mm cases to 39-40mm, and saw little reason for that direction of travel to continue. I know this, because I wrote about it plenty of times.
My point is not to debate whether or not cases should be smaller. My point is that we have short memories sometimes, can be prone to groupthink and are much more easily swayed than we realise by the very same brand marketing we spend our lives (in some cases, professionally) attempting to scrutinise.
With that in mind, I started to wonder whether a trend that most of us - journalists, collectors and fans - have been enthusiastic about for the last couple of years, and that’s related to the aforementioned explosion of colour, might be a bit problematic. Then I thought some more, and figured that at the very least, I could also muster a half-decent counterargument. So, in a slightly eccentric act of journalism, I give you both sides of what I think might be a surprisingly important question for the watch industry. Maybe even an existential one. And it is this:
Are we having too much fun?
Yes, we are.
Let’s very quickly define ‘fun’ in watchmaking terms, and then I’ll explain why setting out a position against it does not make a grumpy bastard1. I’m talking about - deep breath - wildly colourful dials. Cartoon characters. Seconde/Seconde/. Jaunty names. Hidden luminous details, especially bears. Christmas videos. Minifigures. Manga comics. The MoonSwatch. Minions. Easter eggs. Fruit. Barbie. Lego. Reversible bucket hats. Videogame tie-ins. And so on and so on. Anything that sees a watch marketed as something that “just makes you laugh”.
My problem with all of the above - which is not an exhaustive list, but I think you get the idea - is not with the individual projects, brands or people. I like some of the watches I’m taking to task here, and I think there are creative and interesting things afoot in the service of making ‘fun’ watches.
My problem is how it positions the watch industry and the fundamental contradiction between these marketing initiatives - because that’s what they are - and the foundations on which the industry is built, even in its luxury era. I’m not advocating for an impossible return to a time when a watch was a practical necessity2 - and nor am I arguing that watches should be boring, bland or conservative. But the language of fun, and the seasonality and short-term approach of it all, can trivialise and diminish a serious product.
I’m probably a long way from convincing you yet, so let’s try a little experiment. How many of you have seen or heard the word ‘timeless’ used to promote a watch brand, or a watch? That’s right, all of you. It’s one of the most overused words in watch marketing and I can’t stand it, but it does speak to a fundamental property of luxury watchmaking that can’t be overlooked: its longevity. Watches are built to last, and the most desirable come from brands that have carefully steered their way through centuries of heritage. Mechanical watchmaking is prized for its unchanging reliance on quite simple technical underpinnings. We seek durability and resilience from our watches; whether you’re talking about a Submariner or a perpetual calendar, we are buying an idea of permanence. Physically, in the sense of the actual watch itself, and culturally, in that these brands were desirable 50, 100 or 200 years ago and they’re still desirable today.
Now tell me: what is timeless about the worlds of fashion, light entertainment, pop culture and celebrity? Where is the permanence in a watch whose appeal is tied to that of an influencer, or a children’s cartoon character, or an in-joke? A lot of ‘fun’ watchmaking seems to be aimed at winning over the younger consumer, but if this is how you discover luxury watchmaking, are you going to give it the respect it is accustomed to receiving?
Trend cycles that get shorter and shorter - thanks to a dependence on social-hype-fuelled sell-out drops - mean that successive waves of new product can only be differentiated by things like brightly coloured dials, because they’re quick(er) and easier than anything else3.
I know this all sounds terribly curmudgeonly and Grinch-like. I’m not saying watches can’t be brightly coloured, but I am suggesting that when brand after brand after brand - from Omega and Rolex to Baltic and Oris, from Rado to Richard Mille and all the way back again4 - seems to be working from a moodboard that my five-year old, a full-time rainbows-and-unicorns addict, would approve of, the collective impression has to be that we have run out of ideas. We’re mired in a downturn that shows no sign of improving, set against a long-term trend of shrinking volumes, and this is what we think is going to make the difference?
It’s not just about the colours; it’s a mentality that I fear the industry’s leaders are slipping into. When instant virality becomes the metric of success, and flippant frivolity is seen as the easiest way to achieve it, you are undermining years of investment in persuading customers that quality, history and a serious dedication to craft are your true strengths.
One of the most obvious counter-arguments is that people like fun, there’s precious little of it available in our politics, economic outlook, or indeed environmental future, so why not provide it for them? I’ll expand on this below but my basic retort is that it is becoming forced. The watch industry in my experience has never known when to stop wringing the last precious drops out of a trend, continuing until the well of inspiration is so dry even a camel would give up and mooch off, but at least when the narrative was endless heritage, c.2012-2020, the industry was overindulging on one of its ‘fundamental pillars’, to use language a marketeer would appreciate. Now that the collective wisdom is that the path to success is one of wackiness, it will degenerate into self-parody a whole lot quicker.
I’ll end with this: very few successful watches have been designed in the spirit of ‘fun’. I don’t mean the limited editions that sell out right now, I mean the basic designs upon which they are splashed. Some were born of necessity, like the tool watches of the 1930s-60s; others of adherence to credible, historically-rooted design philosophies, like the watches of Glashutte’s 1990s rebirth. Some were the work of individual genius, like the Tank or the Royal Oak, and some were so elemental in their design that they almost defy the concept of a philosophy and just represent the purest notion of a watch - like a Calatrava or a Rolex Oyster. A lot of contemporary indie brands let their imaginations run wild, but their success is not the same as mainstream success, and although we love them, they are not going to alter the course of the industry as a whole.
The current prevailing mood gives me no confidence that mainstream brands have considered for one second that they might need to change their product for forthcoming generations.
What do I mean by that?
The downturn we’re experiencing is usually framed as a crisis of demand, i.e. if only the global economy was healthier, or if Chinese customers dealt with whatever other issues might be on their minds, or if both trade wars and real wars were suddenly, miraculously resolved, then everybody would be buying watches like crazy and there would be no problem.
But what if it’s not just that? What if externalising the problem is a convenient act of self-deception within the industry that lets brands and groups off the hook for failing to attend to a generational lack of creativity? What if we are not facing a short-term blip brought about by factors beyond watchmakers’ control, but a long-term problem that needs long-term solutions? What if the problem is at least partly supply-side, i.e. what brands have to offer customers just isn’t exciting enough? In this light, the knee-jerk, low-cost option of pursuing fun, frivolous, fashion-adjacent capsule collections and limited editions stops looking like adaptability and starts looking like a vapid, superficial attitude that’s wholly inadequate for the task at hand. I can’t be sure, but isn’t the possibility that I’m right scary enough to be worth addressing?
No, don’t be stupid. We need all the fun we can get!
All of the above could be right. But there are a number of caveats, considerations and counter-points that I thought it only fair to include. So here’s the pro-fun position.
Firstly, as I already touched on, people do like fun things. The world is pretty bleak a lot of the time and if you’ve got the disposable income to spend on luxury watches, what’s wrong with buying ones that make you smile? If leaning into that is proving successful for watch brands, is it really so harmful?
This leads up to a very obvious counter-argument: regular watches do still exist! No-one is forcing anyone to buy a Chaykin Minions watch or a Citizen Fantastic Four limited edition if that’s not their bag - you can still buy a Speedmaster or a Reverso or what have you, and in safe colours like black or blue to boot. The presence of wild and wonderful watches in the world doesn’t mean the whole industry has gone Willy Wonka, it just means that we live in a world with more diversity and freedom than before. That’s got to be a net positive, right? Besides, what’s perceived as cool and trend-setting by the press or the Instagram loyalists doesn’t always translate to what the wider market spends its money on; if you’re immersed in the world of watches it’s easy to overstate the significance of a new Hublot or a Studio Underd0g when in reality a great many watch buyers won’t even have heard of them. The above argument - the anti-fun tirade - is predicated on the idea that what’s leading the conversation on social media is what’s leading the retail market. There’s a strong link, of course, but it’s not the same thing.
However, another string to the pro-fun campaign’s bow is that there must be an element of real-world commercial success to all this frippery, otherwise brands wouldn’t keep doing it. It’s not to completely absolve the brands from the charge of failing to innovate, but if you see an opportunity to make money - in this climate or in any climate - and you think it’s something your brand identity can accommodate, you’ve got to go for it. The MoonSwatch was a pretty strong case study in favour, wasn’t it? If you are able to convince customers to buy fun watches, and buy them more often because they’re ‘of the moment’, and you can do that without using up their goodwill, why not do it?
And in any case, how do we know brands aren’t beavering away in the background making the next generation of impressive, agenda-setting, technically proficient modern watches? Isn’t that essentially what the Land-Dweller was? That kind of product development takes time, so while you’re investing in new movements and designing all-new case shapes, you need other products to bring to market and they by nature have to be a little less heavy-lifting, a little more superficial. Now I am a cynic at heart and my gut tells me not every brand is working as diligently as Rolex behind the scenes, but absence of evidence etc etc. Maybe I have to give them a bit more credit (at least until enough time has passed for me to say I Told You So).
What about the potential damage to brands? As a geeky, cynical full-time industry insider, I see the contradiction between some of the more garish marketing and the long-term brand image of some of these historic maisons but it’s not by any means given that everyone cares so deeply or is even remotely offended by it. When Audemars Piguet started working with Marvel, it deterred some fans but the brand remains strong. It’s a calculated risk, and we may have to wait a bit longer to see the outcome, but in general isn’t it patronising to watch collectors to assume that they can’t simultaneously appreciate the quality of a Royal Oak Double Balancier Openworked and be eye-rollingly bored by the Travis Scott collab? Or to put it another way, the history and stamina of these brands is precisely what gives them the freedom to take on some of these partnerships and to stretch themselves in directions that might seem jarring, because the core identity is sufficiently well established as not to be destabilised? Equally, celebrity-led marketing is nothing new, and while the individual celebs may come and go, what matters for brands is really the cumulative, composite effect that builds over time.
As for winning over the next generation or two of watch fans, it’s better to get their attention with something fun and give yourself at least a chance to hook them in and educate them, rather than alienate them with products and rhetoric that they need to already know and understand before they can feel comfortable? Brands that do fun things - AP; TAG Heuer; Richard Mille - are doing better than brands that don’t.
On a similar note, the fun watch can be a gateway for existing customers, too. It might be how you discover a new brand, or reappraise one you’d thought was stuffy and boring. It may or may not be true that endlessly cycling through dial colours is going to get old pretty quickly, but right now brands need to stand out. Hoping customers have a sudden change of heart about your age-old designs is not much of a strategy. Having fun isn’t a substitute for a proper strategy either, but as any comedian knows, being entertaining is a serious business, and it’s quite possible to take the issues of the day seriously and still try to have a good time while you’re doing it.
So there you go. I’ve never felt moved to offer both sides of an argument before - and who knows if I’ll do it again - but as a manner of getting to grips with the question, I felt it worked better than one long essay that kept swinging this way and that. If it’s left you wondering where I stand, I think that it’s probably best to be pessimistic than get caught with your head in the sand. The industry needs to interrogate everything it’s doing and not confuse quick wins with a viable long-term plan. But on balance, maybe a watch industry that tries to be entertaining is better than one that doesn’t. What do you think?
And Finally…
Here are a handful of things I thought you absolutely needed to know, or read, or laugh at this week.
Keep an eye on Marteau Auctions, a brand new business set up by Arthur Touchot, formerly of Phillips, and Leonard Pictet, ex of Richemont. The USP seems to be that somehow - I haven’t got into the details - watch brands will receive a percentage of the sale of any watch bearing their name. I assume the priority is not Rolex and Patek but current indies who might see vast appreciation in the market of their pieces but never benefit from that directly.
Favre-Leuba is being sued for trying to use its own historic model name. And it’ll probably lose, too.
Seiko is letting the public vote on the design of its next dive watch. I’ve gone for orange.
Having said only last week that Parmigiani would be the bookmakers’ favourite for an acquisition, it turns out the deal is dead in the water. Boy did I feel stupid there. You must read
’s email on the matter, full of remarkable detail from a leaked Deloitte document.
Last but absolutely not least, I want to say that although I have a lot of respect for Tudor, the watch it has made for David Beckham looks dreadful. I’m so sorry. I get the idea of doing a piece unique for your biggest ambassador, but the brand has got to come first. This looks tacky and off-brand; it doesn’t exemplify what I think is great about Tudor at all.
Thank you for reading. I say it every week but if you made it this far I reckon you enjoyed it so why not show me - and the world - with a like, a share or a comment. It’ll make my day, and that’s not just a hollow pleasantry. It’s literally what keeps me doing this.
As ever, I am at your disposal in the Substack chat if you want to get stuck into the topics of the week - or just say hi!
Chris
I can get there all on my own
Even then, plenty of them were fun!
You can add to this the breakdown of barriers to starting a watch brand - generally hailed as a positive, including by myself at times, but which also means that the bar has been lowered in terms of the product quality and strength of brand required to enter the market and stay there
I’m not singling these brands out as particularly egregious, just front of mind
Though “no” has significantly more votes, I voted “yes” because you mentioned adding to new content to your previously published work. I’m always interested in your latest commentary and insights on this rapidly changing business.
I suppose I’m glad fun watches exist, for all the reasons you outline. But I don’t buy them and I’m always perplexed when friends and collectors I respect do.
Moser was always the worst offender in my mind - serious horological chops (their QP in particular) married with cringe-worthy levels of “fun”.
Having said that (and to continue the theme of arguing both sides), I’m going to give Studio Underd0g a free pass (although I shudder slightly even writing that gratuitously “fun” spelling of their name) - as it is their entire brand, they do it really well, and I really like Richard who’s a fantastic chap.
I also like Dennison - but they aren’t fun, they are neo-70s, right? And the two things are very different…