ARIEL VIEW: Why professional watch media is in trouble and why you should care

After about 17 years in a role running a media company (aBlogtoWatch) that focuses on the wristwatch industry, I’ve learned a few things about this business.

One is that the watch and larger luxury industry tend to have a fundamental problem with the nature of editorial media. As a result, many stakeholders in the wristwatch business not only lack skills for dealing with media, they are also inherently antagonistic to the idea that someone other than those subordinate to them are allowed to speak on their behalf or about their goods.

That’s a shame because luxury watch demand would barely be a thing without supportive media.

This is an entirely marketing-reliant industry and, without media, demand would plummet. Nearly all watch-hobby enthusiasm and sales come indirectly from demand generated by third-party media voices.

Now, in 2024, I believe we have come to an inflection point that demands the luxury watch industry re-evaluate its relationship with third-party voices. A huge amount of money and performance are at stake.

Let me share an interesting thing I’ve learned while both running a media company and also working adjacent to and with a number of other media companies: Many popular luxury advertisers don’t have the media’s best interests in mind, and they resent what they have to pay for.

The most acutely damaging manifestation of this is the fact that well-meaning media companies will run themselves into the ground if they commit the understandable offense of listening to what their advertisers say they want.

What does this mean? It means that if media companies simply do the things watch brand advertisers ask of them (sometimes with huge pressure), those decisions will harm or even ultimately destroy that media company. I’ve referred to this as the watch brands “shooting themselves in the foot.”

What are some examples?

Probably the most current example of this behavior is watch brands pushing watch media into acting as salespeople. This means that rather than a watch brand allowing media to tell stories in the context of their expertise, in their voices, to the audiences they have built, some brands want them to not only toe the company line (no third-party opinions are valued) but to actively engage in sales behavior.

How? Either by acting as a retail store for the watch or wanting the media company to create versions of their watches to sell to their audience.

The core idea is the same all the time: “If you are going to be talking about our watches, then we strictly want you to be selling our watches, even to the point of changing your business model.”

The very sad part of this behavior is that when media companies follow the high-pressure suggestions of the brands, it ends up both ruining their relationship with their audience and ending their status as an independent opinion provider (other terms for this include “thought leader, influencer, and community voice”).

Consider this idea: When watch reporters simply act in a friendly and receptive way to the watch brands they respect, the advice they get from the watch brands is, “End your existing relationship with your audience and end your business model preferences.”

More times than not, when media outlets take this advice (thinking in good faith that listening to brands is a good idea), it leads to the death of the media company and its reputation.

How have I personally navigated this situation? I’ve had to adopt the status of “uncooperative foreigner” and consistently damage the egos of brand managers and leaders by saying, “Sorry guys, that’s wrong and we don’t do it.”

If it were not for my personal discipline in saying “no” to many outlandish offers and suggestions, aBlogtoWatch would have gone the way of the dodo long ago. And yet, my company sits at the top of independent watch media, with the highest rankings of traffic and respect in the watch media community.

To reach this point, I’ve had to reject the predatory advances of many sweet-sounding offers by people in well-tailored suits. Those in positions of power and control (mostly in Switzerland) have not always looked upon my resistance kindly, and there are stubborn personalities who simply classify me as “uncooperative” and a problem because I expose their prejudices and dysfunctions — something I only do out of a deep respect for the overall health of a fragile industry that keeps me and many peers employed.

My heart goes out to my colleagues who don’t have my mixture of media understanding, legal proficiency, the will to fight, and the persistent confidence in believing that what’s right for the business ecosystem is what is right for my company.

I choose the hard path very often, and I don’t shy away from confrontation. I remain emboldened by the importance of principle, and I give heartily of myself when entrusted and respected by others.

I’ve never once fallen into the trap of losing it all because I wanted the approval of a personality running a major group or big company. In a relationship-led industry, I am in the strict minority because I let ideas win over individuals.

This preamble is to help explain why many fellow watch media companies have taken a different route and why there seems to be a consistent trend of companies quickly rising and rapidly falling.

All of these companies endeavour in good faith to work closely with what they feel are supportive partners.

That support, however, is often illusory.

Stakeholders in the luxury industry are often referred to as “pirates” and “criminals” even by those deep within the European luxury circuit. While things often look rosy on the outside, the inner sanctums of the watch industry are rife with vicious exploitation, short-sighted greed, egomania, and ivory tower detachment from marketplace realities.

When these personalities are confronted with working with independent watch media, they simply can’t help but to immediately think about how to use them to their advantage, as opposed to discussing what real cooperation looks like. To many watch brand leaders, media and marketing are there to manipulate and leverage for their own advantage.

The idea of fairly doing business where both parties benefit is, frankly, alien in this sector. If each party wins, it is often an accident. I would go so far as to suggest that many people in the watch industry are not interested in doing business with another partner unless they feel the other party will lose something in the process. Let’s refer to this status quo as the “opposite of good-faith dealing.”

There are many more examples of it, the discussion of which would be outside the scope of this article.

That said, these common situations (likely familiar to anyone reading this article) are indicative of larger systemic problems that will persist unless people take the uncomfortable step of confronting them and discussing them.

Why is this topic so important to the larger watch industry? Because it addresses the most crucial of topics: the media and communication engine operating in the background that creates consumer awareness and demand for luxury timepieces.

Without strong media, demand for luxury watches will precipitously decline. This is hard for brands to see over the horizon when times are good and they can benefit from what I call “demand momentum,” but a more long-term analysis of watch brand performance over time shows that brand performance collapses when media attention is at a minimum.

One of the more comical things I’ve seen over the last several years is what passes for “media guests” at watch events.

Over the years we have seen an increasing number of what you might call amateurs to the table. Some of these amateurs get lucky and develop their success through social media and other easy-to-set-up platforms, but none of them are seasoned journalism professionals or media personalities.

They take the form of everything from influencer to hobbyist podcaster with a day job.

No offense at all to some of these talented folks (I was once one of them), but it isn’t actually who the watch brands typically want at their events. Why, then, are they then being invited? Sadly, it’s because the number of professional journalists and media willing or available to attend is a rapidly shrinking pool.

A lack of fairly doing business with media partners has, not surprisingly, led to either the demise of niche watch media or the alienation of traditional media. In other words, to fill seats at events, public relations staff members at brands have to dig deep.

This is a major sign of the lack of health in watch media, and it suggests that fewer and fewer voices are there to tell watch industry stories. That’s where the real harm is, and this problem is only going to accelerate based on what I observe.

One of the things making this situation so acutely urgent is that, in the near future, watch media will have little ability to distribute their messages cheaply and organically.

The last decade or so has been characterized by the amateur watch media personality or social media channel going viral and then being able to reach a large audience through luck and playing the algorithm game with online media distribution platforms such as social media and video-sharing applications.

The problem is that such opportunities to reach outsize media performance as an individual or small team are becoming increasingly rare, as these online platforms get oversaturated and defend their own business models by requiring payment for distribution performance (pay-to-play for views and engagement).

You can’t simply start a trendy account on Instagram and rely on organic growth to reach an audience. Making slick videos for YouTube won’t get you very far anymore due to saturation on the platform.

Building up a website like aBlogtoWatch.com with over 12,000 search-engine-indexed articles that have been published over a long time is not something money can buy.

If you want to do well as a new watch media company, you will need to be well-funded and pay for distribution. Without income or advertiser support, this won’t happen.

In other words, starting a watch media company today is increasingly precarious and unlikely to yield strong performance without large, long-term investments.

Here’s the rub: Many watch companies hardly care.

Their primary response to this is “Great, we will do it ourselves.” There is a legitimate belief that if people like me can do it, anyone in Switzerland with a college degree can, too.

While there is no evidence to support this claim, pride and distrust play a huge role in decision-making within the watch industry.

People in Europe would often rather pay double (or more) to do it themselves than support an American (or otherwise foreign) company that does it more efficiently and cheaply.

What ends up happening is that native solutions to media communication at brands fail in a variety of ways.

Watch brands trip over themselves in the constant need to create engaging content, cannot seem to decide on what messages to communicate, are not willing to work for the audience so much as they want to exploit it.

Most importantly, they quickly realize that the cost to advertise their messages via available social media platforms is extremely expensive. All of this effort and failure is simply due to watch brand managers obsessively fearing that someone else is making decisions, and unceasingly wanting profits of any kind to “remain in the family.”

None of this bodes well for a thriving ecosystem where the interests of many players and personalities need to be taken into consideration.

The bottom line is that watch brands have never (ever) been able to establish strong modern connections with consumers in the absence of supportive watch media.

Rolex and Richard Mille’s success began with enthusiasts singing their praises via traditional media channels. Companies that market themselves spend huge amounts of their income back into marketing, and these costs are even going up.

There is this idea now that it is sexy to be a brand that does everything, from making watches to operating the stores that sell them. What often comes with this mentality is a siloing of efforts (not relying on media or advertising partners), which means that brands want to entirely “own” the relationship with a consumer, which begins with messaging online.

Functionally speaking, what does this mean?

This is a challenging topic to discuss with brevity because there are so many parts to identify that a watch brand must have in place to vertically integrate its sales and marketing efforts to consumers.

Vertically integrating sales and communication is expensive, complicated, time-consuming, and often not what consumers want.

In fact, most consumers prefer to learn about new brands and watches in a third-party media environment, as opposed to directly from the brands.

This is especially true with emotional objects such as art and entertainment, including wristwatches.

More practical is to imagine the absurd outcome of watch brands all wanting to have their own relationships with consumers.

Rather than share visibility with an effective media partner that puts the time and effort into developing a relationship with a wide audience, you would have dozens and dozens of brands each paying to create the same infrastructure and internal know-how of doing so.

Consumers would be utterly assaulted with messaging because brands would all end up approaching the same watch-interested consumers all the time.

I can easily see this behaviour turning off buyers in droves because observing watch media would go from being informative and educational (when presented by traditional media) to being salesy and spammy.

I want to raise an important question that I think the watch industry rarely asks. What does watch media do with its profits?

In other words, what would happen if more money flowed to independent watch media voices, content creators, and traditional publications?

This is an important question because it addresses the investment nature of such an expenditure.

European watch brand financiers still believe they are investing in commodities with predictable outcomes, and not speculative art (which is really what they are doing).

So, if they feel that way, let’s talk about what there is to gain by “investing” in independent watch media.

The short answer is that any money watch media gets tends to go directly to expanding its ability to reach more people and create more content.

In other words, the more resources available to watch media, the more they want to spread news about watches. Naturally, this has the effect of increasing the value given to the larger watch industry because the money going to watch media almost entirely goes to creating more global demand for watches.

Let’s get even more granular with this concept.

When a watch media organisation receives income, most of it goes to paying the cost of doing business. That includes hiring talented people and creating/distributing content.

I’ve never met any serious watch media publication that makes so much money via advertising that its founder or founders spend money on luxuries.

In fact, pretty much all the money received by watch media goes to hiring people and doing business. If most watch media companies instantly received double their typical income, they wouldn’t start buying tourbillons but would rather invest in being able to make more content, of a higher quality, and having it reach more people.

This is statistically what media is likely to do with money that they receive, and the largest beneficiary is the industry that they cover. In this instance, it is the watch brands.

The next decade in the watch industry will be an era of winners and losers. At this time, the industry is (again) larger than the global demand for luxury watches. That means not all the businesses that exist today will be able to compete as a new epoch of consolidation and competition enters the foray.

I can easily “see the writing on the wall” to predict the future when looking at how brands are cementing their real-world location presence with mono-brand stores, often over-producing wristwatch inventory, price-climbing outside of what most consumers would ever consider spending, and struggling to find suitable places to amplify their messages.

Without a system of checks and balances provided by interested and educated media, the watch industry will consume itself into another crisis.

So, returning to my original argument, what is at stake for the watch industry if there is a weak independent watch media ecosystem?

The most acute problem is a huge drop in demand and awareness for watches. As I explained, brands themselves are often awkwardly positioned to create demand and have a much more expensive and challenging effort of doing it themselves, as opposed to spending less money to enjoy advertising and messaging space on well-run third-party independent editorial media platforms.

Right now, and increasingly in the future, amateur and poorly funded platforms will not have the ability to reach large audiences with luck and few resources.

To actually perform as a traditional third-party media company should, independent watch media companies need access to more money from the watch industry, which has traditionally not only been reticent to spend but also highly manipulative in the process of doing so.

What brands want is an uncomplicated route to getting their products covered, and yet they provide the most obtuse means of getting advertising budgets. This is entirely dysfunctional and unsustainable, and it will mean the demise of many otherwise worthy companies.

Empowered by the knowledge that my work consistently helps consumers learn about new watches and brands they want to buy, I will keep up the fight on my end.

Knowing that what I do is both ethical and productive motivates me and my team to continue our efforts and work.

Some others in the watch media space are similarly motivated, but not nearly enough.

I don’t expect everyone wanting to cover watches to consider combat and confrontation to be part of their job descriptions.

The advocate in me prompts discussions like this that I hope will spur positive change that will simply make lives easier for those working in and relying on the watch industry for their wellbeing.

My stern warning to stakeholders in the watch industry is that if you continue to be unsupportive of third-party watch media at this inflection point, what comes next will be far uglier and more expensive.

What’s ultimately better? Having allies that you may not always agree with but fight with on the same side or being able to control every aspect of your army, even if that army is too small to win any major fights?