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Did you watch the Olympic Games over the past two weeks? There’s a good chance you did: it’s been widely reported that ratings for the Paris Games were up across the board, with upwards of 30 million people tuning in to NBC’s coverage each night across all platforms, including the Peacock streaming app, which seemed to finally find its groove this year after a clunky experience in Tokyo three years ago. Even if you didn’t catch the big events night to night, just an occasional glance at coverage would have made it crystal clear who the timing sponsor for the Olympics was. While no one doubts that the Olympics are all about the athletes, it’s an enormous event for Omega (and a slew of other Olympic corporate partners). Omega branding is everywhere, and why wouldn’t it be? Their contributions to the Olympic experience are genuinely important and factor into every timed competition.
But rather than Omega’s timing prowess, another story dominated the brand’s Paris Olympic story. Last week, Daniel Craig, formerly the actor who played James Bond, currently the actor who plays Benoit Blanc, was spotted taking in the games wearing a watch that was both familiar and…not. As has been covered widely across the watch internet, Craig was photographed wearing an Omega Seamaster Professional that doesn’t currently exist in the brand’s catalog. It would appear to have a black dial and no date, a configuration that many enthusiasts would certainly be interested in. Intense scrutiny of the photos followed. Images were blown up, speculation as to the bezel material commenced, and many debated whether or not the dial appeared to have a texture or pattern of some kind.
This, of course, is not the first time Craig (an Omega ambassador) has been photographed wearing an unreleased watch. Last year, his wrist debuted the as yet unannounced Omega Speedmaster Professional with a lacquered white dial, a watch that has since garnered a tremendous amount of interest, with wait lists extending months or even years. At the time Craig wore the white dialed Speedy, watch lovers could be forgiven for thinking it might have been worn by mistake, or perhaps it was made as a custom one-off piece for a valued partner. But now, seeing how Craig has once again been deployed by Omega to stealthily debut a new piece, it’s clear that Omega has landed on a new marketing tactic, likely to be repeated ad nauseam.
I say this as someone who loves pop culture, and has defended the very idea of the celebrity ambassador on this website, but something about the methods here feel a little, I don’t know, shallow? It would have been one thing if Omega dressed their star in a new watch and let things unfold organically, but they’ve since abandoned any facade that this is anything other than an exercise in marketing. The brand released a press release in the days after Craig was seen wearing the watch publicly to tease that observers may indeed have gotten a glimpse of a watch to be released later this year.
Knowing that this is a ploy by one of the biggest watch brands in the world takes a little bit of the fun out of it. Imagine if Omega hadn’t followed up with what surely was a month-in-the-making and somewhat disingenuous “You caught us!” announcement. Then watch lovers, and only the nerdiest of us, would have genuinely had something to think about and ponder while we wait for a watch that may or may not ever come. The fact that the stage management of it all is laid bare in the days following the public debut of the mystery watch makes it clear that we – watch collectors and the media alike – are just marks, being targeted by an advertising campaign that never really started and will never really end.
Another factor here is the unique environment of the Olympic Games, and the standard their corporate partners and sponsors must adhere to. Unlike, for example, F1 racing, or virtually any major American team sport, the Olympics has a longstanding rule that corporate branding has to be discreetly integrated into the “field of play.” There are no advertisements on uniforms, for example. When you watch the Olympics, the focus is on the athletes and the competition. And while you see Omega on every scoreboard that shows a time, it feels like it’s part of the infrastructure and less of a sales pitch.
There was some controversy, though, at this year’s Games with respect to LVMH taking a more central role in the festivities. The conglomerate spent a reported $175 million to underwrite the organizing committee for the Games, and in return reminders of their presence were perceptible nearly everywhere. The medal trays were made by Louis Vuitton, the medals themselves by LVMH brand Chaumet, and the opening ceremony, consistently the most watched event of any Olympic Games, featured an extended sequence documenting the making of iconic Louis Vuitton trunks, which had their own boat in the opening parade down the Seine.
This kind of exposure apparently angered some longtime Olympic sponsors, who have maintained a distance uncommon in international sport out of tradition and respect for the Games. Omega, while mentioned only in passing in the New York Times article linked above, is part of the complex system inherent in sponsoring such a massive event, and it’s worthwhile to remember that along with every other sponsor they are expected to follow certain guidelines.
This is just to say, nothing can ever be left to chance when it comes to the Olympics. It would strain credulity to consider that one of the most famous actors in the world could just happen to be photographed wearing an unreleased watch at what is surely the largest scale event that Omega participates in. A close look at Craig’s identification badge, clearly meant to be seen in the photos taken that day, shows that his headshot appears to be Craig as James Bond. In hindsight, it’s easy to see that what seemed on the surface to be an organic moment with a beloved film star was actually far more of a commercial than anything else. The fact that some who were among the first to take note of the new watch reported it breathlessly as news only shows how easy it is to be swept up in all of this.
You might be asking yourself: does any of this actually matter? That’s for all of us to decide individually, but I imagine for many it simply does not. At the end of the day, the watches are always going to be what we’re really interested in. But the ways in which brands try to sell you a watch are, in some way, a reflection of the brand, and continuously examining how a brand like Omega is doing that is part of being an informed consumer.
