Luxury Watch Brands Like TAG Heuer & Cartier Get Tech Savvy

If you don’t have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you’re probably not considered among the most “plugged in” of today. Practically everyone has a BlackBerry these days; texting has replaced phone calls, which were replaced by emails which just about buried the idea of actually composing a hand written letter. For companies looking to promote their products and services it became mandatory years ago to have a website; that was considered an “electronic business card”. Websites are inexpensive ways that can reach mass numbers of people, and now, if companies don’t have the latest tools of social media working in their favor they may be losing out. Hence a new study to find out who’s plugged in where and how they rank.

It’s called the “Digital IQ” ranking system and was designed by the L2 Luxury Lab of the New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business. The study cover 109 luxury brands, but we are focusing on results for luxury watch brands only. Each brand’s website was analyzed for search engine optimization, aesthetics, interactivity and use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Based upon how each brand scored, they were placed in different categories, the top being “Genius”, “Gifted”, “Average”, “Challenged,” and “Feeble.”

TAG Heuer was the only luxury watch brand to receive rank of “Genius” and came in eighth overall. (Apple was number one, followed by BMW, Audi, Sony, Porsche, Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren; the latter two companies do in fact make men’s and women’s luxury watches.

One may have thought that Rolex would come in as king but not so. Rolex, along with Swarovski and Cartier, all placed in the “Gifted” category.

Those luxury watch brands that have “average” websites were: Chopard, Hublot, Movado, Van Cleef and Arpels, Omega, Bvlgari and Piaget.

These next brands placed in the “challenged” ranks: IWC, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, and Harry Winston.

There was only one watch brand among the jewelry brands that came in last and classified as “feeble”. This “honor” goes to Franck Muller.

There was also a note made about the fact that most high end luxury watch and jewelry brands use words like “exclusive, sophisticated, luxurious, etc” when describing themselves and although images of their products on the websites are stunning, the search engine optimization and user interface / interactivity are anything but.

Of the brands studied, TAG Heuer was the only one that quickly and efficiently provided links to authorized retailers. Breitling was not included in this study, but if you go its website, you’ll notice that you can only enter once you’ve clicked on a listing of authorized retailers.

Others like Rolex, Movado and Hublot have such links but it requires between three and six clicks to get the information.

In the watch category, TAG was the only brand to include links to authorized retailers on the Web. In addition, with the exception of TAG, Rolex, Hublot and Movado, the sites of other watch brands analyzed in the study require three to six clicks to navigate from the product display page to retail location information.

The study gives the watch category props, though, in terms of social media. Findings reveal that watch brands have more presence on social media platforms than most luxury brands.

As for social media, the study reports that luxury watch brands utilize social media platforms more than compared to other luxury brands (clothing, automobiles, etc.)

David Yurman is the only brand that links to its Twitter account directly from its website and that Cartier and Tiffany are the only watch / jewelry brands that have a significant number of fans on Facebook.

Copyright (c) 2009 Chandra L Coleman

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