The CEO of Zenith is Benoit de Clerck, appointed in January 2024 from Panerai; before him, five others via Julien Tornare and even now-high chieftain of Rolex, Jean-Frédéric Dufour. The pair of eyes throughout every shift? The man who’s steered Zenith’s vertiginous arc since 2011? It’s chief product officer Romain Marietta, who sits down with Alex Doak on the occasion of the Le Locle maestro’s 160th year
Romain Marietta epitomises the modern heritage-conscious executive: a blend of deep company loyalty, horological scholarship, and forward‑looking creativity. At age 23, fresh from studying business and communications in Switzerland, he joined Zenith in 2006 as a marketing intern — and that’s where he proudly remains 19 years on. Five CEOs down, and a steep ascendance to well-deserved status as the ‘man of the brand’. Not CEO, but a consistent CPO with a firm hand on the tiller.
“I regret my early insistence on PR,” Marietta insists, speaking over coffee at Zenith’s PR agency in Mayfair, “because it wasn’t product-focused in the true, embedded ‘product development’ sense. “The Fifties and Sixties at Zenith were huge and I wanted to go back to that and to reinterpret it.
“Everyone around the Neuchatel canton, even if they didn’t work at Zenith in Le Locle, knew someone who did! I wanted to revisit and recapture.”
By 2011, Marietta had risen to head of product development, taking full responsibility for concept-to-market watch creation – a role that saw him shepherd iconic collections such as Defy, Chronomaster, and Pilot through revivals, reinterpretations, and technical upgrades.
In 2020, his remit expanded to heritage, formalising in his title as Director of Product Development & Heritage — a recognition of Zenith’s strategic shift toward storytelling, archive-led launches, and cultural resonance. Not to mention a touch of the old ‘Nataf’ swagger in the form of the Extreme E electric-SUV race series collab’. (“Thierry put a huge spotlight on the brand in the Noughties,” Marietta concedes, adding with a wry smile, “but maybe a bit too much…”)
Marietta’s passion is welded to Zenith, right down to the 1969 El Primero A386 that takes permanent pride of place on his wrist (new blue version pictured; CHF 9,900): gifted to himself on his 40th birthday, so he could literally wear his heart on his sleeve. His archival mindset has paid commercial dividends. Zenith’s ‘Icons’ programme launched in 2019, enabling the restoration, certification and sale of vintage El Primero pieces — an initiative that received some 3,000 yearly vintage watch service requests and sold its first 22 units swiftly.
Meanwhile, Marietta has spearheaded future-forward, contemporary counterpoints to the recent cashcow that is the ceramic tachymetre-bezel Chronomaster Sport, AKA ‘Daytona Killer’ (new 160th blue ceramic edition pictured, CHF 22,900): iterations such as the searingly contemporary Skeleton and Skyline interpretations of the geometric Defy line (combined Defy Skyline Skeleton, too; new white ceramic version in league with Tide+Tide pictured). Plus the return of ‘Pilot’ in an unusually striated dial texture with ‘long-haul sleeper hit’ written all over (while the brand still famously holds the exclusive watchmaker’s right to print ‘Pilot’ on its dials).
Strategically, Marietta balances Zenith’s vertical integration — a legacy dating back to 1865 and Georges Favre‑Jacot’s in‑house ethos — with contemporary horological synergies across LVMH brands. He’s leveraged technical developments at Hublot, too, for colourful sapphire cases and shared movement insights across the group – eliciting plenty of recent chat about Zenith becoming something of an official ‘engine house’ for LVMH Watches and Jewellery division at the top end that matters so much right now.
“At Richemont,” he says, with judicious evasion, “you have a group that is very ‘internal’ in its brands’ dynamic. At Swatch Group, it’s very ‘Swiss’, for obvious reasons. But here at LVMH what I love is the French ‘touch’ to everything. We have an independent spirit to each brand but with a philosophical synergy.”
Take this year’s phenomenal 160th‑anniversary G.F.J., whose miasmic jigsaw of dial finishes celebrate in one fell swoop the cobalt-blue colourway that Marietta has – by his own admission – spent a disproportionate amount of time honing to ‘just right’ levels of both Zenith-ness, as well as a long-needed distinction from its LVMH stablemates TAG Heuer, Hublot and Bulgari.
“It’s a ‘pop’ that catches the eye, but also a link to the brand and its ‘reach for your star’ mantra,” Marietta explains. “Realising that exact hue of blue in ceramic for our new 160th Defy collection was almost impossible… but worth it, clearly.
“The in-house share of LVMH savoir-faire obviously means the conversation can go the other way; we can take advantage of Hublot’s ceramic expertise. (But of course there are other suppliers in the EU…)”
Encased in 39 mm platinum, its own dial marries lapis lazuli, mother‑of‑pearl, and guilloché – markedly vintage elegance, limited to 160 pieces, and priced – despite being in platinum, limited to just 160 (natch) and boasting the revived 1950s classic, Calibre 135-O (‘O’ for ‘observatoire’ test) with all its -2/+2 chronometer precision, thanks to some help from Urban Jurgensen’s recent mastermind Kari Voutilainen – at a surprisingly sane CHF48,900.
The move cleverly balances Zenith’s and ultimately Marietta’s ‘archives-first’ ethos, showing that historic calibres still command attention and value when modernised with precision and restraint (the new 135-O has a Breguet overcoil to its oversize balance, and is upped to 72 hours’ power, over the 40 that drove the original to five first prizes at the Neuchâtel Observatory chronometry tests between 1950 and 1954 – an achievement unmatched in horological history).
It’s the same wisdom that ex-LVMH legend Jean-Claude Biver wrought a few years back, around the El Primero automatic chronograph’s 50th anniversary, while managing a balancing act as CEO of TAG Heuer and temp’ head of Zenith, celebrating the Calibre 11 of the former’s collab’ with Breitling, Buren and Dubois-Depraz – ‘the other’ world’s first self-winding chronograph of 1969. He put best foot forward in wrenching the doors of Zenith HQ’s attic to reveal the famously furtive work of Charley Vermot in sequestering the El Primero’s tools and drawings in spite of orders from then-owners, Zenith Radio Corporation at the height of the Quartz Crisis in the Seventies (above).
“I’m not there yet,” Marietta concedes with typical humility, “19 years is nothing compared to 160! But I’ve had the experience of working beneath six CEOs, all with different visions, and yet two words come out consistently: ‘authentic’ and ‘humble’.
“We are human beings with an amazing heritage and know-how. We’re transparent, and there’s no marketing B.S. My job’s not done… and that’s why I’m still here!”
Romain Marietta is far more than a product leader; he’s Zenith’s archivist‑in‑chief, all the while steering his historic Le Locle offices toward a bolder, more stylistically rich, but crucially ‘understood’ future.
“We are now implementing the brand with far more consistency.”