The WorldWatchReport 2005 study prepared by IC-Agency examines the interest expressed in twelve luxury watch brands and also includes indicators pertaining to the reputations of the main ambassadors of the leading brands active in the Haute Horlogerie sector. Among other things, the study offers brands the possibility of identifying and selecting ambassadors before their popularity explodes.
“For each targeted market, we know the evolutions in interest relating to several dozen ambassadors but also, and above all, we are able to detect newcomers,” says Guillaume Rabaey,
e-market research analyst at IC-Agency.





Deciphering the interest in TAG Heuer’s ambassadors
With regard to the very media-oriented partnership that TAG Heuer has with the actor Brad Pitt, the latter enjoyed a record level of interest across all search engines with more than 400,000 searches in the USA during the month of March, 2005 (his contract with TAG Heuer excludes the territory of the USA), compared to only half as many for the golfer Tiger Woods and the tennis player Maria Sharapova. The Chinese basketball player, Yao Ming, is in fourth place with nonetheless more than 80,000 demands in one month.
The same trio also take the top spots in England, a country where the three celebrities represent more than 90% of the overall web searches tied to the brand’s ambassadors.
In Japan, however, it is surprisingly Maria Sharapova who comes in first place with nearly three times as many searches as the new companion, Angelina Jolie, and also ahead of Tiger Woods and Uma Thurman.
It should also be noted that most of TAG Heuer’s ambassadors ‘play the game’ by visibly broadcasting their link with the brand on their own official site, such as the golfer Tiger Woods or the tennis player Maria Sharapova.





Visitors to the tagheuer.com website during BaselWorld
Moreover, based on the Alexa panel (Editor’s note: strongly North American), TAG Heuer enjoyed the highest level of visitor traffic during the period of the BaselWorld trade fair, with an increase in hits that was 100 per cent greater than its normal traffic. This places it just behind Rolex, which nonetheless displayed a 70 per cent increase in hits during the same period. This result, in light of the efforts expended by the brand, did not happen simply by chance. TAG Heuer enhanced its BaselWorld event by an ‘offline’ reputation acquired over the long term. Its web presence, specially studied for the occasion, was strengthened by the announcement of its new models.
By combining its events and its long-term reputation, TAG Heuer has carved out the lion’s share in the very rapid race towards the optimization of the relationship of watch brands with their customers and prospective customers on the Internet.
We interviewed Thierry Huron, Director of International Mar-keting at TAG Heuer, to better understand the brand’s efforts on the Internet.









TAG Heuer: "The Internet
is already fully integrated into
our marketing strategy."

Thierry Huron, Director of Marketing at TAG Heuer, responds to questions asked by David Sadigh and Flavio Quaranta managing partners of IC-Agency for Europa Star.

IC: TAG Heuer seems to be showing initiative and dynamism in its use of the Internet. What are you doing, more specifically, to reach your target audienceı

T.H.: Firstly, we are trying to reach Internet users in the most targeted and adapted manner possible according to where they are from. We thus have personalized home/welcome pages that offer tailored content for Internet users living in fifteen different countries. Our goal is to engage our visitors in a privileged communication.
The second step is the ‘Member’ section of our website, www.tagheur.com. This section allows us to develop our understanding of our target audience by collecting a variety of information. Thanks to this section, we already have a database of more than 150,000 profiles of consumers around the world.

IC: What are you doing with this databaseı

T.H.: These addresses are used mainly to promote events that we organize on a regular basis. But their use does not stop with these promotional efforts. Thanks to the judicious use of the criteria linked to the geo-localization of the Internet users, we are able to conceive and realize ‘email-marketing’ campaigns directed towards only a selected group of people, for example, Japanese consumers. We thus try to increase the effectiveness of our campaigns and greatly intensify these efforts during our presentations and other events.
We are now currently increasing our efforts in this direction. Starting this year, we will be able to make our different branches autonomous in how they manage the content of tagheur.com. This autonomy of the different markets will allow us to improve our reactivity and to have content that is better adapted to the different conditions of specific markets. Moreover, we are able to precisely understand the behaviour of Internet users on our website, and to know which sections are the most visited, as well as the number of visitors who use our site to find our network of retailers.

IC: You also seem to be developing various synergies with, notably, the world of the automobileı

T.H.: The world of the automobile is an integral part of our roots. Today, the brand is continuing its F1 partnership with the McLaren-Mercedes stable, and is the Official Timer, to 10,000th of a second of the Indy 500 and IRL Championships. It is thus totally natural that the website includes sections that are very technical and very detailed, and dedicated to these champ-ionships. In this regard, we share our values with sports car fans. We are also developing a strategy of creating links with our various sports and Hollywood ambassadors, such as Brad Pitt, for example, or Tiger Woods and his Golf watch. This policy of actively linking with our ambassadors allows us to have openings to other communities frequented by fans of these ambassadors and to better understand their affinities and expectations.

IC: The next step – sales onlineı

T.H.: No! In no case. Quite the opposite. We want to continue to improve the traffic generated by our site towards our network of retailers nearest to them. Moreover, a renovation of our website aimed precisely at generating traffic to our retailers is now in the works.


Europa Star Magazine June - July 2005 issue