Buzz Aldrin caused a stir among watch fans during the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro when he tweeted that he had begun designing a new Mars watch with Omega. This was big news from a brand that is closely linked with space exploration and whose Speedmaster collection to this day trades on its unique status as the “first and only watch worn on the moon”.
I've begun my design of a #Mars watch for @omegawatches. #GYATM #NoDreamIsTooHigh pic.twitter.com/15PkCo2YWA
— Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) August 15, 2016
Just over a week later came the latest in Tag Heuer’s almost daily partnership announcements. As the brand struggles to find new opportunities on Earth, it has more recently ventured into space, signing a partnership agreement with Swiss Space Systems and now teaming up with China’s space agency, which plans to orbit, land on Mars and deploy a rover all in the same mission in 2020. There was no tweet from Jean-Claude Biver to mark the occasion. He is more of an Instagram man and his photos pointedly recalled that TAG Heuer was the first watch in space, holding the watch worn by John Glenn in front of his eye, and even saw him suggesting a logo for the China Space Agency’s mission to explore the “Dark Side of the Moon”.
Orbiting Mars, landing on the planet and deploying a rover all in the same mission has never been done before. And China’s National Space Administration plans to do this in just four year’s time, in 2020. TAG Heuer is there from the start as the agency announced a “global sollication event” for the programme’s logo design.
NASA hopes to send a manned mission to Mars sometime in the 2030s, so Buzz Aldrin has plenty of time to design a watch for Omega that might be worn by the first intrepid astronauts who will head for the Red Planet. It won’t be the first “Mars Watch”, however, since Omega already decided to tie its Speedmaster X-33 model with the planet back in 1998, when it was associated with the “Mission to Mars” movie.
In the meantime, as Jean-Claude Biver steadfastly follows his mantra of being “first, unique and different” he is more than ever the Usain Bolt of watch marketing – the man that everybody is desperately chasing but whom nobody seems capable of catching for the foreseeable future.
