For Gen X-ers, F1’s blam-and-blah big screen opening in London last month was a difficult watch.
Noise, flashing lights, more noise, TikTok “tell us how it feels” driver interviews, a tattoo parade (not the Scottish kind), yet more noise, a few pretty paint jobs, a big roar for Lewis Hamilton, a big boo for Red Bull Racing principal Christian Horner, even more noise and then the take-out version of Take That.
At least comedian Jack Whitehall was good.
But while some of those born before 1980 might have sat there with our noise-cancelling headphones on and our eyes shut for the most part, it was impossible to ignore that this was an important moment for Formula 1.
This was the day the old sport completed its mission to cross the Rubicon and into a new Gen Z-friendly promised land, leaving the purists with a headache and one middle-aged man with temporary blindness.
It seems likely that through moments like this, as well as the Netflix show Drive to Survive, current owners Liberty Media have saved F1.
Where it was in danger of becoming a relic of its carbon-breathing, norm-core past, it is now reborn, even while its product is the same as it ever was, with fast cars driven by men high on testosterone going round and round in circles.
“The watchmaking establishment, specifically the luxury one, is where F1 was a decade ago. An ageing product with an ageing story and an ageing audience”
The stats are there to back it up. Nielsen Sports, which monitors this kind of stuff, has F1’s TV audience at 1.5 billion last year, with fan numbers up 5 per cent since 2021 to 750 million.
That ranks it as the world’s most followed annual sports series, if Nielsen’s figures are right. Moreover, those fans are increasingly young, increasingly female and increasingly American. F1 is winning.
Now, given we’re in a watch title, clearly this isn’t going to be a column about whether F1’s any good anymore. But it is going to use F1 as a very good example of how establishments need a makeover every now and again to make sure they don’t get sent to the guillotine.
The watchmaking establishment, specifically the luxury one, is where F1 was a decade ago. An ageing product with an ageing story and an ageing audience, desperately trying to make the rest of us believe it doesn’t have one worried eye on dentures and Thursday night film club.
Again, the numbers are there. Switzerland is now exporting half the volume of watches of 15 years ago. The FHS has told us that. And most brands are going backwards. Fast.
Morgan Stanley has told us that. Longines, for example, is estimated by the investment bank to have lost more than 30% of its sales volume in the past year. Ouch.
Why? Well, we’ve been over this in this column several times before, and rather than repeat myself, instead it might be useful to look at TAG Heuer, currently enjoying its moment in the Swiss watch brand hot seat.
The Swiss watchmaker, one wheel in the giant LVMH machine, is 165 years old this year. But we’re not going to be hearing much about that. Because, frankly, who cares?
Implying grandee status might add reassurance, but explicit bragging about it just makes you sound old. Instead, it’s on a turbo-drive to rev-up its business through the medium of F1.
Formally announced as the sport’s official timekeeper at the beginning of the year (the worst kept secret in watch industry history), the brand has reached what its chief marketing officer described as “the nirvana moment”, when a brand sponsors the sport, its marquee event (the Monaco GP, in this case) and its top athlete (four-time F1 World Champion Max Verstappen).
Indeed, when the season kicks off in Melbourne in mid-March, TAG Heuer will be everywhere, filling TV screens, social media feeds and no doubt journalists’ inboxes with its branding, its stories and its watches (the plan is to emphasise all five current collections, not just the Formula 1).
Given the energy in the sport and TAG Heuer’s elbow-deep involvement in it, the marketing formula looks fabulous. Eureka! Outbid and outflanked, Rolex must be, um, irritated.
But it will only work, and I mean really, really work, if there’s product to match the profile the brand is now going to develop.
Young, female, American eyes, heck, 1.5 billion pairs of eyes are going to land on TAG Heuer this year, and for the nine beyond as the 10-year, $1 billion multi-brand partnership signed by its parent company LVMH unfolds.
And many of them will find themselves thinking about a new watch.
This is already happening, too, even before a single engine has been fired up. According to TAG Heuer’s chief executive Antoine Pin, store footfall is up double-digits this year, while social media engagements have spiked, too, with independent data backing up the brands’ claims that it is now the watch company most engaged with on Instagram – ahead of Rolex, Omega, Audemars Piguet, the lot.
All driven by F1.
But the alchemy will only find its elixir if there are watches for these newcomers. And while TAG Heuer is never going to become a fashion watch brand – and nor should it – that means more watches and more accessible price points.
At LVMH Watch Week, I was a tad disappointed to see the new Formula 1 chronograph models come in at around $5,000 a pop.
For the vast majority of F1 fans, that’s going to be too great a leap.
Where are those 1990s Formula 1 pieces, revived with streetwear brand Kith last year, that with their smaller case sizes, colourful designs and ‘aspirational’ price points would slot into the zeitgeist like Lewis Hamilton into a set of red overalls?
I’m assured they’re on their way, but this being March and a few weeks before Watches and Wonders Geneva, the telling is yet to come. But what does seem clear is that this bodes well for the brand and its chances of bringing in new customers and upping its takings.
What’s even more encouraging for TAG Heuer is that it appears to be on the up already.
Morgan Stanley had it as one of the few brands in growth last year, with revenues up 9% against an industry average of -2.8%. It’s easier to build on success than to reverse failure.
Now, I’m not much one for forecasting in this weird world, but my contention would be that TAG Heuer will be the big winner in Swiss watchmaking this year.
And maybe for Swiss watchmaking, too. Because Mr Pin has said he wants to increase volumes as well as values, a strategy completely at odds with an industry committing hara-kiri by reducing volumes in favour of high-margin, high-tariff pieces, placing its industrial and retail backbones under intolerable stress. There will be blood.
If TAG Heuer can prove there’s a customer, and a margin, in higher-volume watches, and deliver them, it might just save an establishment that otherwise is beginning to show too many of the hallmarks of a free-on-collection mahogany sideboard on Facebook marketplace.
Saving Swiss watchmaking then? No pressure. Just don’t crack under it, yeah?
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