A few months before his departure, the CEO of a cutting-edge Swiss watch company said in an interview that his latest watch was “not much use”. Difficult to believe, but true. The boss of a leading watchmaker denigrated the very essence of his product, in public and on the record. Could you imagine the CEO of Bugatti, Porsche, Riva, Zegna or Loro Piana saying that there wasn’t much point to their products, to their power, their comfort, their accessories? That their status as ultra-luxurious, high-performance items cancelled out their functionality? They would be asked to clear their desks immediately. As it happens, the CEO in question didn’t stay around for long, but it’s unclear whether it was this witless statement that sealed his fate.
Unfortunately, however, it’s not an isolated case. It’s not particularly rare to hear people say that the advanced functions of the watches they are promoting are pretty much useless. The consequence of these suicidal remarks is to turn these watches into shallow toys for capricious buyers looking for expensive trinkets. And that’s unfair to the products, insulting to the clients, and it goes against the fundamental raison d’être of the watch.
The argument goes something like this. A watch tells the time. Because there are hundreds of other products and accessories that can do the same, this function is worthless. Because it costs nothing, watches are therefore useless. QED. “People use their phones to tell the time, in any case,” is a common remark. “Millennials don’t buy watches, they have their iPhones,” is another thing we often hear. But “millennials” as a category of purchasers is spectacularly broad and ill-defined (aged between 18 and 35 – not so easy to generalise there...). It takes no account of the cultural differences between countries, nor the fact that the iPhone is not the only smartphone worth mentioning (25% of mobile phones sold, compared with three times that for Android). People come out with the most ridiculous things.
The relevance of the watch lies first in its basic functionality. They have helped generations of locksmiths, gunsmiths, blacksmiths, clockmakers, engineers and inventors for 500 years or more. And because of that history, they have developed other useful features. They attach to the wrist. They are easy to read. They are robust. They don’t turn off. They keep their value.
But above all, they appeal to more than just our base animal instincts. We are not creatures of need. Our needs consist of basic physical safety, a roof over our heads, 2500 calories per day and enough animal skins to stop us getting cold. We are creatures of desire and representation.
We feed on symbols. We flourish in a world of intellectual and sensory stimulation. We exist through our moments of pleasure. We grow through our moments of companionship, dialogue and leisure. People sometimes talk about “combining utility and pleasure”. Well, obviously. It would be absurd to separate the two. Self-realisation is about bringing those two aspects together and helping them to feed off each other.
Well, a watch is just that. It’s useful, and it’s pleasing. It may not perform as many functions as other devices, perhaps. It won’t make your coffee, and it won’t take your pulse. But it also won’t spy on you without your knowledge. It won’t surreptitiously transmit information about your comings and goings to a company on the other side of the world, that you know nothing about, to do with whatever they please. And it’s nice to wear. It comes with hundreds of different faces, in different sizes, materials, styles, and countless options for expressing your taste, your culture and your personality.
Just try expressing yourself with a smartwatch, which looks the same as everyone else’s (round or square, usually black, bulky and awkward on the wrist), or a smartphone, all of which come in just one format (a slim rectangle around 10 to 15 cm long, with rounded corners, and a few other bits and pieces). The watch is a pillar of civilisation. It’s not the only one, or even the main one, but it anchors us in a system for measuring time that goes back to the Babylonians. It is also an acknowledgement that we live in a society where accessories play a vital role; where social bonds are sophisticated; where we can appreciate what is good and what is beautiful. And that all seems pretty useful to me.
