The Swiss watchmaker has made a name for itself based on tradition. But with a dwindling traditional consumer base, how did it capture the digital consumer generation?

Zenith has been around for over 150 years and as we might expect, the brand has done well to leverage its Swiss watchmaking history. The brand is probably known best for its legendary El Primero movement, which was one of the first automatic chronographs, and fittingly the company slogan is “Legends are forever”.

The LVMH brand’s story has been marketed around three core values: Manufacture, Legends and Vintage. An example is their partnership with legendary – and by now even vintage – rock brand The Rolling Stones. In fact, they relecently partnered to launch a new timepiece that combines the best from the brand and from the band.

The El Primero Skeleton Tribute to the Rolling Stones sports an imposing 45 mm black ceramic case - the first use of this material in the Zenith range. It frames an open-worked dial setting the stage for a mechanical show delivered by that legendary El Premiero movement. This version beats at a high tempo of 36,000 vibrations/hour, meaning that the seconds can display the time within a tenth-of-a-second.

The partnership with the Stones has been a hit since it was struck in 2014, but the few years before were anything but certain for the brand and the industry as a whole. Since about 2013 Swiss watch exports showed little - if not negative - growth and it was becoming painfully clear that only the big, established brands would survive relatively unscathed.

During those few years there was another, less obvious problem: the watch consumer base had also grown older by a few more years. Not only was there less money to splash around on luxury goods, but there were also less consumers to do it. It quickly became clear that brands focused on tradition and heritage would have to target the younger, digital generation.

But that would be no easy task. The millennial generation is focused less and less on luxury and more on finding meaning – they had higher expectations from their brands.

Another issue was that the majority of annual watch sales are generated at trade shows like Baselworld, problematic because those trade shows are essentially an “analogue” way to do business - they largely depend on the physical presence of sellers and buyers.

The question was then how to connect to digital consumers without alienating traditional watch consumer bases?

To meet this challenge, the brand reached out to Digital Luxury Group, a digital strategy and execution agency dedicated to luxury brands, in order to help modernize what they were doing digitally and tap into this newer, more digital audience.

According to Inès Lazaro, Head of Client Services for DLG, Zenith was not much different from other brands and historically focused on Baselworld marketing and coverage for its product communications. So the goal was to build a more human relationship with a fresh audience.

As part of the strategy, the brand connected with a younger audience by teaming up with fresh industry trendsetters like Uber and tattoo artist and designer Luke Wessman. Using DLG’s Influencer Identification Process, the team also identified bloggers and publications that were in line with Zenith’s core values and could help promote it to younger generations.

According to DLG, the partnership immediately showed signed of success with marked improvement in the brand’s digital presence. So far so good for Zenith, which was proven that even the traditional and well established brands can pivot to a digitally-savvy strategy to attract a younger generation.

Sooner or later other, brands will follow suit and try to capture the attention of that same audience, perhaps indicating that it’s a buyer’s market for the digital generation.