Mondaine finds British marketing device in John Lewis

The best marketing is that which doesn’t force the message down your throat. Better still, it should say something other than ‘buy our product’. Consumers are good at identifying marketing techniques so it is the job of the agencies to come up with something that offers more than the product itself.

That’s why Swiss watchmaker Mondaine has got it right with its current PR exercise, by producing a watch to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the founding of John Lewis.

It’s clever marketing on several levels. First, John Lewis is seen as the ‘good guy’ in modern British retail. It ostensibly doesn’t exploit its suppliers, its staff are all ‘partners’ and as such are given a dividend from the company profits. Partnering with John Lewis is like partnering with human decency (as far as British consumers are concerned, anyway).

Second, having tapped into British notions of fairness, it also taps into British notions of family, history and tradition. The fact that John Lewis is 150 years old, purely of itself conjures images of the baton being passed down the generations. Everyone’s great-great grandmother probably once bought a tea towel from John Lewis. A fitting sense of temporality, considering we are talking about a timepiece manufacturer.

Its probably unlikely to result in a boon for Mondaine’s sales figures, but it is refreshing to see something a bit more creative being done in watch promotion than having a timepiece adorn Leonardo DiCaprio’s airbrushed wrist.