One of the things you may have noticed about Worn & Wound over the years is that we don’t pay too much attention to celebrity watch spotting or culture (I use that term very loosely). We usually just don’t find much interest in what movie and pop stars are paid to wear on red carpets and premieres. I point this out because it’s actually a pretty large segment of the watch discourse that we elect to simply not take part in – you might be surprised (or maybe not) about the sheer volume of press releases we receive notifying us of a famous person wearing a watch that they are almost certainly being paid to wear.
That said, there are exceptions. Earlier this year I wrote about how Timothée Chalamet’s support of Urban Jürgensen and other indies could reshape how those specific types of brands are viewed by the masses (the jury’s still out on that one). And, I admit, as a bit of a pop culture fiend who was raised on a steady diet of Entertainment Weekly, I have a bit of a personal fascination with the behind-the-scenes mechanics of how these relationships between celebs and watch brands develop.
Over the years, some of these brand ambassador relationships have truly baffled me. People I never would have thought would associate themselves with a watch brand at all, and also watch brands that have attracted interesting people that seem at a glance to be outside their scope are something I always make note of. It’s also kind of interesting to observe how these relationships have changed over time – it was not always purely about glitz and glamor.
With that in mind, here are five of the weirdest and most interesting brand ambassador relationships in the not yet very extensive history of luxury watch marketing.
Kate Bush for Seiko
This is the one that made me want to make a list in the first place. I’m a huge Kate Bush fan. For those unfamiliar, Bush is an English singer/songwriter who developed a following in the late 1970s and 1980s. She’s always been a bit of an enigma, and is not generally known to be keen to give a lot of interviews or be particularly revealing about her personal life – she took a long hiatus from music beginning in the mid-90s before re-emerging in the mid-2000s, and developed a reputation as a bit of a recluse. Thanks in large part to “Stranger Things” and the power of TikTok, her work has been rediscovered by a new generation in recent years.
Anyway, in addition to recording one of the best albums of the 1980s, Bush also made a series of advertisements for Seiko in the late 1970s. The commercial on YouTube is truly strange, which is to say, it’s exactly what you’d expect from Kate Bush at this stage of her career. It features a segment of her track “Them Heavy People” from her debut album The Kick Inside. She dances, rides a motorcycle, and provides a brief voiceover toward the end: “We have many varieties of mood within us. It’s up to you to choose.”
I mean, I concur! I don’t really know what the connection is between Bush and Seiko, but, looking back 40+ years, I find it pretty charming. Today, we don’t normally associate Seiko with celebrity ambassadors at all (they have them, for sure, but it doesn’t seem to be a focus of their marketing strategy as it is for other brands) so there’s a real novelty in their use of a young English pop star to sell watches in their home country.
Peter Benchley for Rolex
Rolex has always had a unique approach to how they use celebrities and other notable people in their marketing. While they certainly have a roster of big movie stars (Leonardo DiCaprio) and athletes (Roger Federer, seemingly every professional golfer except Rory McIlroy) at their disposal, they’ve also always counted writers, artists, scientists, and other cultural (not pop-cultural) figures among their partners. That’s a strategy that other brands have adopted in recent decades, but Rolex was a pioneer here.
One of my favorite examples of this, and one that straddles the line between pure celebrity and the arts, is their association with Peter Benchley. Benchley is the author of Jaws, and Rolex tapped him following the success of the novel and Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster, decade-defining film adaptation. Benchley became a major advocate for marine conservation following the success of Jaws, and his Rolex print advertisements feature the Submariner. Benchley was also known to wear an Explorer II (reference 1655).
Benchley’s work with Rolex came at a time when it was still possible for literary figures to have real cultural pull, which feels like a truly bygone era. It also connects Rolex to Jaws (one of our favorite watch spotting movies) in a tangible way.
Pierce Brosnan for Speake-Marin
At the top I mentioned Chalamet and Urban Jürgensen as an important partnership as it relates specifically to the current indie watchmaking moment, but I think there’s an earlier one that can be seen as something of a precursor.
Pierce Brosnan, who is still most closely associated with Omega during his tenure as James Bond, was a Speake-Marin ambassador between 2015 and 2018. As the story goes, Brosnan met Peter Speake during the making of Survivor, a film I haven’t seen but in which the English movie star plays a watchmaker/assassin (honestly, great idea). Speake was hired as a consultant, and apparently the two hit it off and the partnership came about fairly organically.
Brosnan raised the profile of Speake-Marin considerably. The independent brand was certainly well known among serious collectors and enthusiasts, but a celebrity as well known as Brosnan (and so associated with such an iconic character) would have put many more eyes on Speake-Marin watches than would have otherwise been possible.
James Gandolfini for Kobold
Like Brosnan, James Gandolfini is another celebrity who is very closely associated with one watch brand, but had an actual business relationship with another. Sopranos fans likely immediately think of Gandolfini and his yellow gold Rolex Day-Date, which appears on his wrist in nearly every episode of the show. But it was a small independent brand, Kobold, that Gandolfini developed an official partnership with.
Gandolfini reached out to Michael Kobold in 2003 regarding a personal watch purchase, and the pair struck up a conversation and, by Kobold’s account, a very real friendship. It led to Gandolfini appearing in a print advertisement for the brand (riffing on his Tony Soprano persona, and he also consulted on the design of a Kobold diver. During the filming of the final season of The Sopranos, Gandolfini purchased 450 Kobold watches, including dozens in solid gold, as gifts for the cast and crew.
Andromache for Ulysse Nardin
Yes, Andromache is, in fact, a shark. But she is, officially by Ulysse Nardin, considered an ambassador.
Back in 2020, Ulysse Nardin named Andromache an ambassador in what is one the hand a very silly stunt, but on the other a sincere attempt at drawing attention to an important cause. The original campaign was linked to OCEARCH, a non-profit that focuses on tracking the health of marine life. As part of their research, Andromache was captured (briefly, for about 15 minutes) and given a digital tag for tracking that allows OCEARCH to study her health and gain insight into the viability of her ocean habitat. Ulysse Nardin amplified OCEARCH’s work as part of their marketing strategy and their own commitment to the preservation of marine life.
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