olex’s beginnings are not, as you might imagine, characterised by “disruption”. Rolex is no Apple or Tesla, who upset the market from the minute they enter the stage. The brand with the crown logo began by assimilating over several decades what makes a watch excellent: precision.

But that was not enough to set it apart from other giants of the time, such as Omega, Longines or Zenith. To do that, it had to transcend its own discipline by transforming the watch from functional object to fetish. And that meant not talking about the watch itself, but the men and women wearing it.

That was Rolex’s first radical move. The second was to stabilise its collections and message and make no further fundamental modifications, proceeding by tiny adaptations without jeopardising its brand image. No “new departures” at the arrival of new managers, no “revolutions” at the launch of new collections, no replacement, football-style, of entire teams at a time.

As observers, we are always surprised at how little watchmakers are in control of their time, so busy are they in “moving and shaking” their messages, communications, employees. Might the true master of time be Rolex, in the literal sense of the term? Below, we comment on extracts from the book by Pierre-Yves Donzé, together with the author.

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Europa Star: On p. 162 of your work, you write of the 1960s: “While Omega, Longines, Zenith, Breitling, Audemars Piguet and all the other big Swiss watchmaking names are talking about technical performance and elegance, Rolex adopts an innovative discourse about social distinction and individual success”.

Pierre-Yves Donzé: Yes indeed, it was André Heiniger who was behind this transformation of Rolex in the 1960s. But the new and revolutionary marketing that he initiated gained only gradual acceptance. There’s a period of around ten years when the message about accuracy and the message about the people who wear the watches go side by side. Inertia is sometimes a reflection of the uncertainty companies experience when they introduce changes. As a historian, you have to avoid any deterministic view!

For Rolex, suddenly abandoning the precision discourse was probably viewed as too risky. There were also cultural differences: the Swiss engineers wanted to launch a new advertising campaign about technical innovation, but it was vetoed by the American publicity agents at JWT.

In the early 1950s, Rolex was still using chronometry competitions or the number of its COSC certificates in its communications. At that time, the brand was not yet firmly established and lagging behind Omega. Together with the American publicity agents, André Heiniger pushed for change and as the new man at the helm took Rolex into a new dimension. He made Hans Wilsdorf a founder-hero. Wilsdorf was all about continuity, pursuing the same line he had drawn four decades previously. The brand was founded on horological excellence and that strategy could not be brought into question entirely. Heiniger added marketing genius to a product already established as excellent.

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Another turning point in the 1960s was the introduction of stability, with collections you could describe as universal and which continue to dominate the brand offering to this day. As you write, on p. 174: “Iconic products were developed to incorporate the brand, and the company focused on those models, abandoning the great variety of products that had characterised it up to World War II (…) The Rolex management was determined not to adapt to the specific features of the different markets, but to develop a truly global brand.”

One very important point in Rolex’s strategy is precisely its determination to build a global brand. The fact of having iconic collections based on particular technical features is by no means specific to the brand; take the Seamaster by Omega in the 1940s, for example. But the turning point comes when, in the 1960s, Rolex decides to focus solely on certain iconic collections at the global level, whereas other brands, like Omega and Longines, continue to launch multiple models, especially on local markets. The Daytona is launched in 1963, André Heiniger comes along the next year and launches no more new collections. The brand concentrates on a global message for a global product of great stability and above all, great legibility. From then on, its aesthetic codes are carved in stone.

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From that moment on, it’s not the watch that’s talked about, but the man or woman wearing the watch... That’s what we’re seeing when you cite The Great Names campaign, proposed by JWT in 1962 (p. 197): “The campaign shows prominent people in various domains, whose influence changes people’s usual lifestyles.” Prototype “influencers”...

It’s an American-style marketing innovation that you see in other products, such as the Pepsi Generation campaign, for example. The message gradually becomes much more universal. Starting in the 1950s, Rolex issues campaigns showing who is wearing the brand, there’s talk of men and women, but the aim is still to highlight the product, the indestructible, accurate watch. After that, from the first campaigns about the men who rule the world to Roger Federer, the focus of the message switches from the watch to the man or woman wearing it. Neither does the message suggest that it’s the watch that helps Roger Federer to win; he’s an inspiration in himself. Once you’ve created the best products and they’re firmly established, you don’t need to reinvent them or place them at the centre of the message.

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What lessons can we learn from this success? Is it reproducible?

Building a brand is a long-term process. With other brands, when a new CEO arrives, he or she will very often launch a new collection. At Rolex, it’s just the opposite. They’ll change certain features, but not very visibly so. This mixture of revolutionary marketing and a conservative product has persisted from André Heiniger’s day to the present. Certainly, the product or message is always being adapted, but the basic codes remain. And little is communicated about these adaptations so as not to risk discrediting what went before. Launching a new collection can, in a way, invalidate the work done so far. I’m surprised to see that few other brands have really understood where Rolex’s strength lies. You don’t build a luxury brand by constantly changing.

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Can Rolex be compared to other brands?

The other brands to which Rolex can be compared are not other watchmakers, but affordable luxury brands like Louis Vuitton in fashion, or Porsche, Mercedes and BMW in the car industry. You can’t build an iconic product in the short term, starting from nothing. The Mercedes or BMW vehicle series don’t change over the long term apart from a few adaptations, whereas the Japanese car builders, for example, launch much more short-lived series. It’s either continuous adaptation to follow popular trends, or continuous “non-adaptation” to impose your codes. It’s when a brand is looking for prestige and falls between the two that it becomes problematic. But there are differences: for example, in the fashion world Louis Vuitton has to make Haute Couture products to be able to sell standardised products, whereas Rolex doesn’t need to do haute horlogerie.

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Nevertheless, which watch brand is closest, image-wise, to Rolex? You can’t help thinking of Omega, its historic rival.

By the early 1990s, Swatch Group had also done a good job of assimilating a brand renaissance and repositioning around a limited number of iconic models with a global message, including Omega under Jean-Claude Biver. But staying on course is another, more difficult exercise. Ultimately, I think the brand most similar to Rolex in its determination to sell standardised, quality products in large volumes, worldwide and with a limited number of collections, is Seiko! Yet that brand doesn’t have the emotional added value that sets Rolex apart. The discourse about social distinction is missing.

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When did Rolex really cast itself off from the rest of the watch industry?

Rolex widened the gap with its main rival, Omega, during the quartz years. At the time, the Biel-based brand took the strategic decision of going with quartz – high-end quartz. Chronometry was thrown to the winds, which is reflected in Rolex’s absolute supremacy in COSC statistics: from then on it accounted for more than 90% of certifications. It wasn’t until the 1990s that Omega, under Jean-Claude Biver, went back to promoting COSC certification to restore prestige value to its mechanical watches.

As for Rolex, it adopted a wait-and-see attitude to quartz: they produced quartz watches and were ready to do so on an industrial scale “if need be”. If the market wanted it, they had the capacity to give it. But in the end, they realised they were better focusing on mechanical chronometry for a question of market positioning.

But again, simplistic interpretations are best avoided when looking at that period: Rolex had also prepared for a “quartz scenario”. What enabled Rolex to achieve market dominance during the quartz crisis was that it was no longer just a watch: it was all about excellence and so wasn’t affected by the arrival of Seiko watches. Omega, which based its discourse on technology, took the full blast.

At the same time, the 1980s, a period of economic deregulation, provided a very favourable context for Rolex’s development.

It was the period of neo-liberalism, triumphant capitalism, financial deregulation, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Bernard Tapie – in other words, a cultural context and a collective mindset that was very favourable to Rolex’s positioning – even if communist leaders were also wearing its models. Because ultimately, discourse about excellence and status transcends even political systems! But some things did evolve: given the social crises, from the mid-1960s there was a move away from “the watch of presidents” to campaigns focused on sports personalities. The American advertising agency JWT made no mistake: the man of power of the 1950s was no longer attractive. People now identified more with sports personalities and entrepreneurs, reflecting social change.

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Another interesting aspect you pick up on in the book is Rolex’s use of Tudor, its most affordable brand. On p. 259, you write that it “continues to be used as a sub-brand by Rolex, especially for tapping into new markets, like China”.

IIn China, rather than going the whole hog with a Rolex launch, the brand preferred starting with Tudor. It was partly a question of price positioning, leaving scope for progression locally as people learned more about watchmaking and purchasing power. They didn’t want to cut prices, which might have damaged Rolex’s image. Tudor was the more appropriate choice initially.

As it’s sometimes said, Tudor is Rolex’s infantry, and today Rolex is very much present in China through retailer Chow Tai Fook. Similarly, Tudor has been mobilised quite a lot these past few years to compete with Longines and TAG Heuer. More recently, it thumbed its nose at Omega by adopting METAS certification, of which Omega had been the sole user up to then. At the same time, we’re seeing significant price increases at Rolex.

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With these price rises, is it still an affordable luxury brand?

Yes, because demand is still extremely high globally. There’s a whole body of potential customers still developing in emerging countries. There has been a huge rise in the number of new millionaires worldwide in recent years. And Rolex does not manage rarity like the exclusive luxury brands. The brand has taken advantage of this bubble to raise prices, but without adopting an exclusive luxury strategy, if only in terms of volumes. It responds to demand, but can’t satisfy it completely. Proof of that is the announcement of a new, giant production site in Bulle in Fribourg canton.

But are demand and price totally elastic for a brand like Rolex, just like in the exclusive luxury sector?

There’s no simple answer to that. I’d say it’s above all a highly pragmatic brand. A bit like BMW in the automotive sector, which increases volumes or prices but seeks to keep its good image. Rolex is a brand that will benefit from the explosion of global demographics. After all, its production amounts “only” to 100 million watches a century.

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Your work highlights the key role of André Heiniger, who is less familiar to the public at large in relation to the “Rolex legend” we spoke of. What is the most striking thing about the brand’s founder, Hans Wilsdorf?

What was unique at this level of quality was the separation of production and sales from the outset at Rolex under Hans Wilsdorf. In his day, industry leaders were generally interested in production first and foremost. They often came from an engineering background and managed sales at the same time. At Rolex, there was a clear separation between Geneva for sales, and Biel for production. Moreover, the manufacture Aegler, which produced the Rolex models, also worked for other brands: there was Rolex for Britain, but also Gruen for the United States and Alpina for Germany.

It was only from the 1930s, with the economic crisis in Germany and the United States, that Aegler and Rolex became much closer, but without any hint of one trying to absorb the other. In a way, it was the result of circumstances, not necessarily a deliberate strategy. The two structures co-existed for nearly a century. It wasn’t until the 2000s that a process of consolidation and vertical integration took place, when Rolex also took over some other major suppliers.

Lastly, what made you write this book?

I wrote this book for me to start with, to understand how Rolex managed to attain such a dominant position in the watch industry – and to stay in it for such a long time. Above all, I wanted to avoid any deterministic view. I’m a historian who specialises in economic and social issues, the products themselves interest me, but I didn’t want to do what has already been done. A first run of 3,000 copies was published and it has been reprinted. There are also plans to publish editions in German, English and Japanese.

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LA FABRIQUE DE L’EXCELLENCE: HISTOIRE DE ROLEX, NEUCHÂTEL: ALPHIL, 2024