Evaluation of the social media relationship quality of Rolex, Omega and Patek Philippe

1. Social media relationship quality of
three Swiss brands

2. Introduction
The goal of this report is to better understand digital marketing activities and to be able to
analyse social media campaigns and investments. This report is built upon the social media
activities of three swiss luxury watch brands: Omega, Rolex, Patek Phillippe. The report
will first provide an overview of the methodology, secondly show the analyses of each brand
and conclude with an comparison of all three brands.
Methodology
1) Choice of social media platforms
To investigate the social media relationship of Rolex, Omega and Patek Philippe, we have
decided to focus on the five following social media platforms; facebook, twitter, youtube, blogs
and forums. These social media platforms are chosen due to the fact that they in correlation
incorporate both social networking service where friends meet through facebook, a social
network based on microblogging through twitter, a video-sharing website through youtube.
Moreover, the blogs and forums represent platforms where the company and stakeholders
can hold conversations and discuss. These contribute with valuable information since the
people who interact on these platforms are often highly enthusiastic about the brand and
therefore, people are drawn together through their interest in the brand. We believe that
these social network platforms cover the target market for the three brands by involving
relationships between company and fans as well as between fans.
2) Evalauation/ Grading System
All Brands are evaluated according to six different categories:
1) Social Presence – Is the brand present in all platforms that are relevant for their
business?
2) Dialog and customer engagement – How many users the brand has contacted through
social media?
3) Sentiment/advocacy management- Does the brand have a visible strategy for
stimulating positive comments?
4) Support- Does the company offer help through social media?

3. 5) Innovation- Does the company ask for collaboration?
6) Communication Leadership- ? Does the brand offer free and valuable content and
entertainment (e.g. game)? Does the brand actively participates to conversations?
7) Linking Values- Has the brand become a social connector?
Each brand was graded in each category according to their overall social media performance
between 1-10, where 10 is the best and 1 the worst. All three brands, were first analysed and
graded seperatly for each platform and secondly the average grade was calculated so that a
comparison based on this grade is possible.
Analysis
Omega
Social presence: 9 points
Omega is heavily present on Facebook, Twitter, forums, blogs and on YouTube. The brand
uses these sites to promote its watches, by showing and posting video clips about its celebrity
endorsements, sponsored events and images about the new products. Moreover, the brand
has a strong iPad app and mobile presence.
Dialog and customer engagement: 5 points
Omega is using two types of communication strategies, Push and Pull the strategy. For
Facebook, the Push strategy is being implemented and for YouTube a mix of both strategies is
being implemented. The brand uses the Push strategy for twitter.
Sentiment/advocacy management: 5 points
The customers have either positive or negative comments about the brand. However, the
majority of comments are positive. On Facebook the brand manages negative comments and
feedbacks from the community or fans, by providing beautiful images and video clips. For
YouTube, the public controls the user content. Approximately 90% are enthusiastic about the
brand.

4. Support: 1 point
Omega does not directly provide customer support through its social media sites (Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn) except on their home website www.omegawatches.com, where
customers are able to demand customer service.
Innovation: 1 point
Omega does not ask for collaboration. The collaboration happens between the people who are
Omega watch owners or and who give advice about to others about the watches.
Communication leadership: 4 points
The brand does manage proprietary communities in social media, such as Facebook, which is
an official site, controlled and managed by Omega. The brand offers free and valuable content,
such as video clips, short stories about watches. However, the brand does not actively
participate in conversations. Conversations take place on the sites, which are not directly
owned and controlled by Omega, such as YouTube. Hence, Omega should change their
strategy to also implement two-way communications between the brand and its community
for Facebook, Twitter and perhaps disable user comments on Youtube to make it appeal more
serious, since it is a luxury brand.
Linking value: 6 points
There are few users that use brand-related social media spaces. For example, the brand
Omega has 113,266 likes on Facebook, however; only approximately 2,050 people talk about
the brand on Facebook. This dilemma could be improved with the introduction of a two-way
communication between Omega and the community on the Facebook site to create more
discussions that directly relates to the brand. The Omega brand has approximately 2,440
followers on Twitter and 137 Tweets.

5. Patek Philippe
Social Presence: 8 points
PP has a official facebook page, various debates about PP are carried out on twitter but PP has
no official page, and various video’s are posted on youtube. In terms of blogs and forums,
Patek Philippe has no official pages but is greatly present on these platforms due to the
brand’s many fans and enthusiasts.
Relevant blogs:
Finest Watches, Patek Philippe http://finestwatches.com/blog/categories/23-Patek-Philippe
Jake’s Patek Philippe World http://patekwatch.blogspot.com/
Patek Philippe http://patek.watchprosite.com/?show=nblog.all&fi=11
Relevant forums:
Watch talk forums, Patek Philippe forum http://www.watchtalkforums.info/forums/patek-
philippe-forum/
Brand forums – for collectors by collectors, Patek
http://www.watchnetwork.com/forums/patek
Patek Philippe Forum http://forums.timezone.com/index.php?t=threadt&frm_id=26
Dialogue/ customer engagement management: 2 points
On Facebook: Only one user was contacted in one month (November 2011) via facebook; a
reply to a question regarding authorised dealers in Malaysia. PP seems to lack a strategy to
stimulate participation and engagement. The only engagement they have is to “like” posts on
their facebook company site. Stakeholders are relatively active on the online social platforms
18 people made posts on the facebook wall in a month.
On Twitter: Several dealers announce new arrivals and collections, product features, pictures,
and prices of PP. PP themselves are not engaged.
On YouTube: 2.920 videos on Youtube represent PP. Users are active and PP does not engage
in the debate.

6. On blogs/forums: The brand does not interact with the participants
Sentiment/advocacy management: 2 points
PP encourage positive WOM by “liking” the positive posts on facebook – that is PP’s only way
of encouraging positive WOM.
1 out of 31 people posting on facebook can be evaluated as slightly negative; 97%
positive/enthusiastic and 3% negative. The negative debate is about a watch that broke to
quickly and the consumer had to buy a new and very expensive mainspring for it. PP does not
deal with/manage this type of negative conversation – they simply ignore it.
On blogs and Forums, no negative conservations have been identified.
Support: 2 points
On facebook, one question was answered by the company. The question is concerning PP
dealers in Malaysia. This accounts for 3%. The company doesn’t participate on any other
social media platforms.
Innovation: 1 point
The company does not ask for collaboration on any platforms. No stakeholders give
recommendations for co-creating with PP.
Communication Leadership: 2 points
The brand doesn’t take the leadership role in the social networks – the networks/platforms
are run by the fans and enthusiasts of the brand.
The brand participates in the conversations only on facebook (and only scarcely). The
credibility and authority of the brand is valued poorly because PP only “like” facebook posts
that are positive and ignores negative posts.
Linking value: 2 points
Many conversations and comments are added on social media platforms about PP. The brand
itself cannot take the honor for the connecting power of the brand – it is rather the fans and

7. enthusiasts that are the essential players. Therefore, we wouldn’t say that the brand has
become a social connector because it hardly participates in the discussions.
The social media platforms are used to communicate about PP. On facebook, 410 out of
18,507 followers communicate about the brand; 2%.
Rolex
Social presence: 5 points
It is understandable that a brand as prestigious as Rolex might be reluctant to enter social
media platforms. It would nevertheless be important for the brand to keep pace with its time
and acknowledge the potential advantages offered by social media, even for a luxuary brand.
Rolex is barely present on any social channel, if not invisible. The brand is unofficialy
represented on social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Youtube and Forums,
however only one blog out of those channels are officialy managed by Rolex itself. We believe
that these channels are important for their target group and potential fans of Rolex and
therefore we believe that Rolex should reinforce its activity at least on a couple of the social
media channels mentioned.
Dialog: 6 points
Rolex has no official or unofficial Twitter profile. Nevertheless it is mentioned in a number of
tweets. There are three different kinds of Tweets. Firstly commercial tweets like product
offerings. Secondly request for information and thirdly personal stories. Furthermore Rolex
do not have any official Facebook page, forum or Youtube page. However there are a
numberof unofficial pages on those platforms. For example the largest Facebook page, have
more than 275.000 fans and 2730 posts. Overall we have analyzed the typologies of
comments as consisting of: 1; Uploading picture of preffered Rolex or its own Rolex and
discussion around this, 2; Private and official Rolex sellers providing information of
what/where to buy, 3; Luxuary related lifestyle discussion and show off.
Furthermore the largest forum is called http://www.rolexforums.comand has 193.893
threads, almost 3 million posts and 65.677 members. The typology of discussion is; 1, Q&A

8. about maintanance/repair of Rolex watches, 2; Watch reviews and opinions, 3; Personal
opinion surrounding Rolex watches.
They do have an official blog http://www.blog.rolexawards.com, however it is not about their
watches or anything directly related to the brand itself and consist around different projects
worldwide.
Advocacy 6 points
In all of the platforms there are in general a positive discussion around the topic. However the
unofficial Forum of Rolex is somewhat more content specific and where the “real” Rolex nerds
share their opinions in a stronger and more explorative way. In some platforms like Facebook
and Twitter there are some discussions that could be seen as negative feedback on Rolex as
people sometimes argue that the watch in the picture is a replica. However Rolex does not
reply to the peoples opinion in any sense since the platforms are not official Rolex pages.
Support 1 point
There is no support from Rolex on any of the social media platforms. As already mentioned
there is no official Rolex profile on either Twitter, Facebook, Forums or Youtube. Therefore
there is no information regarding moderator or contact information. Some retailers of Rolex
do however post information on where to find their store etc, but Rolex itself does not manage
that.
Innovation 1 point
The same reasons as mentioned above apply in the support section. Because Rolex is not
using social media actively there are no collaborations. However, they might monitor the
platforms in order to see what people are discussing in order to improve their innovation,
however they do not interact with them.
Communication leadership 1 point
Rolex is not providing any free entertainment or content on any of the platforms and
therefore they are not using the proprietary of a brand community.

9. Linking Value 3 points
Yes moderately. Through their Website you can share the website link on Twitter and
Facebook.
Comparison
As the analysis clearly shows, Omega puts most effort into social media compared to Rolex
and Patek Philippe. All brands are present in social media but Omega is the only brand, which
tries to communicate with their customers via various platforms. Rolex in contrary does not
have a company account on any platform, while Patek Philippe after all has its own Facebook
profile. Facebook is the most popular platform for all three brands, even though fans or
enthusiasts created nearly every existing profile.
Neither Rolex and Patek Philippe nor Omega provide any support on social media platforms
or try collaborating with its customers to improve their products or services.
Deriving from the platform analysis we can say that Rolex and Patek Philippe pursue a poor
social media strategy. This could either be because they think that their customer base is not
present on those platform or they underestimate the benefits of social media. Omega in
contrary uses social media to create brand awareness. They are present everywhere and are
posting content frequently, even though they are not communicating with their customers.
The more active strategy of Omega could either be because their target group is younger or
because they simple have seen that the channels are important for their target group and
potential fans of Omega.
Seeing in the light of their target group, we believe that Omega is pursuing the right strategy.
As Omega is perceived as the youngest and less expensive brand out of those three, it should
keep its strategy. Surely the interaction bewteen brand and customers must be improved, in
terms of innovation and support, to generate a higher value out of social media. That means
that the posts should be more customer related and if customers are active Omega should
participate and maybe reward activness.
Rolex instead should reinforce its activity at least on one social media channel mentioned. By
having Roger Federer, Lidsey Vonn or Martin Kaymer as their brand ambassadors, which

10. represents the “young Rolex”, it would fit to the overall strategy to extent their social media
activities. As Rolex represents exclusivity, their social media actitvies can be created
according to their image. Nevertheless it should get in touch with its customers, because one
part of their target group is definetly present in the social media channels mentioned.
Patek Philippe should keep their stratgey, as they are the most expensive brand. Their
presence on Facebook is enough, to keep the balance between exlusivity and trendiness.
Instead of just linking customers comments, Patek Philippe should rather answer or
participate more, so that they can generate more value out of discussions.
So far we have only discussed Rolex, Omega and Patek Philippe and their social presence. It is
however interesting to compare those brands with lower end brands social presence in order
to see how the target group really distinguishes the brands presence on social media
platforms. Underneath you see a perceptual map where we have put the price relation and
social media relation together to get a better overview of how they have positioned the brand
on social media platforms.