75% of Timex’s marketing investments is digitally focused: Deepak Chhabra

Timex Group is known for designing, manufacturing, and marketing around the world, timepieces which are innovative and stylish. It is a company which is privately held and is headquartered in Middlebury, Connecticut with more than 3,000 employees worldwide and multiple operating units. It is one of the largest watchmakers in the world, producing watches under numerous well-known brands, which include Timex, Salvatore Ferragamo, Guess, Nautica, Ted Baker, Furla, Versus, GC, Versace, Missoni. For the last 165 years, Timex has been combining leading technology with traditional craftsmanship, in alignment with the shift from pocket to wrist watches in the 20^th century.

In the past years, Timex had come up with campaigns such as ‘We Don’t Stop’, ‘Given for Generations’ celebrating and expressing its brand ethos.

Deepak Chhabra, Managing Director, Timex Group India Ltd, is leading Timex Group’s business transformation and strategic growth strategy in India. In conversation with Adgully, Deepak Chhabra speaks about the growth of the company in 2022, how it is strategizing to balance the legacy brand factor with being contemporary for today’s consumers, focus on digital, and more.

How was Timex’s performance in the year 2022?

Post Covid, the consumption of fashion and luxury has seen an uptick. We have shown growth of about 64% over last year. It is growing strong, but certainly we cannot spell out the growth which we are expecting. But the trend actually continues. Our business is doing pretty well.

What kind of traction did you see during the festive season? What kid of campaign did you release during that time?

The festive season has been pretty good. Although we saw a minor shift from online to offline, so the contribution of the offline business was a bit bigger than the online business. Possibly because people could go out after a long time and they wanted to actually touch, feel and buy. That movement we have seen. Offline business was struggling a bit because of Covid restrictions. So, post-Covid offline came out very strongly.

On the campaign part, we had our festive campaign largely around our sub-brand called Freya, which is a women occasion wear brand. We have also had a campaign highlighting the recognition that we got in the US, where we were rated as the best watch brand in the world. These are the two campaigns that we had during the festive time.

Did Timex collaborate with any brand ambassador?

We continuously have engagements with a lot of influencers. But we have not done any brand endorsement at this point in time. But we collaborated with more than 200 Category A microinfluencers in this campaign. We are contemplating having in 2023, but we have not settled on a name yet.

What was the core of the brand messaging of Timex in 2022?

There has always been a concern around being a legacy brand and a contemporary brand. So, the larger focus of the messaging was that while we are the authentic watchmaker for the last 165+ years, but we are contemporary as well. We are as relevant to Gen Z as we are to a millennial. So, the larger messaging was around this. The broad objective of this messaging was to convey to Gen Z that relevance of the brand for them as well. Most of the brands which are legacy brands do have this challenge that while they maintain the legacy, the contemporariness becomes a bit of a challenge, and we wanted to address that.

How did Timex leverage the digital medium to rngage its consumers?

We are digital-first in our marketing approach. About three-fourth or 75% of our marketing investments is digitally focused – whether itis social media, influencer activation, ATL campaign which is digitally led. So, our major focus is to keep in mind the consumption of digital media, which is pretty high in our target audience. The balance 25% we invest largely on point of sale, constituting our BTL activities.

Where is the global lifestyle industry headed?

There has been a huge shift towards premium and luxury consumption in lifestyle today, whereas about two years back, luxury used to contribute minimal revenue to our overall revenue globally as well. Now we have seen in the last 4-5 quarters that the consumption of luxury watches has seen a huge uptick, and the same is being reflected in our India operations, wherein our brands such as Versace and Salvatore Ferragamo have been growing more than 100% YOY.

Thus, premiumisation of the category is happening, wherein people are consuming more premium products and secondly, fashion brands, which previously were struggling in the watches category, are doing much better than before. Generally when people invest larger amount on consuming watches, they look for authentic watchmakers rather than a fashion brand who also makes watches. But since the trends are changing, watches are becoming more like an accessory to match their attire. The fashion brands, watches and accessories are doing much better than before. So, the growth that we have seen in the watches with the fashion brands is way ahead of the growth which has happened in pureplay watch brands globally as well. That’s the larger shift that we have seen.