Marketing

perfect timing

A leading sponsor of polo as early as the Eighties, Piaget is backing the sport with teams and tournaments and launching new versions of its classic Piaget Polo watch, says Herbert Spencer

Yves Georges Piaget, chairman of one of the world’s most famous luxury watch firms, is mad about horses – has been ever since he was a boy on the family’s farm in the Alps, where there was one dray horse and lots of cows. ‘I always found the horse much more interesting than the cows,’ he muses. He went on to become a keen equestrian, showjumping ‘for fun’, and, at 67, still hacks at home in Switzerland and owns horses that compete on the international showjumping circuit with one of the national team’s leading riders in the saddle.

It was Yves’ love of horses, along with an unrivalled eye for upscale marketing that, 30 years ago, inspired him to name a wristwatch the Piaget Polo and to become one of the sport’s most enthusiastic corporate sponsors. If the Eighties were when Piaget was most visible in polo sponsorship, today the brand is back in a big way, from the American East Coast – New York, the Hamptons on Long Island, Connecticut and down to high-goal in Florida – to Argentina, where it has a team competing in the ‘Triple Crown’, the world’s highest-rated polo tournament, played at up to the maximum of 40 goals.

The story of Piaget started in 1874 when George-Edouard Piaget, a 19-year old farmer in the village of La-Côte-aux-Fees, high in Switzerland’s Jura mountains, turned his hand to making movements for fob watches, and subsequently wristwatches. Successive generations of the family became famous for making ultra-thin movements. Over the years Piaget-made movements have been supplied to brands such as Audemars Piguet, Breguet, Cartier, Ebel, Longines, Omega, Rolex, and Vacheron Constantin.

It was not until World War II, in 1943, that Gerald and Valentin Piaget, grandsons of the founder, registered the name Piaget as a brand in its own right. Over the succeeding seven decades Piaget has produced virtually all of its models in precious metals: gold, silver and platinum. Piaget watches are traditionally regarded as pieces of jewellery, many incorporating precious stones, as well as timepieces. However more ‘sporty’ versions, like the Piaget Polo fortyfive, are now being created in its original workshops in La-Côte-aux-Fees and its new headquarters in Geneva. Philippe Léopold-Metzger, CEO of Piaget, says 80 percent of the company’s revenue is still from watches, with 20 percent from pure jewellery.

In 1988 luxury brands group Vendôme took a majority share of Piaget, before becoming sole owner in 1993. Vendôme is now part of the South African-owned Richemont group, so Piaget is in a stable of luxury brands that includes Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, IWC, Van Cleef & Arpels and Montblanc.

Marcos Heguy with his English string, June 2009

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‘Throughout these mergers,’ says Yves Piaget, scion of the family firm who has remained chairman, ‘Piaget has been allowed to retain its own traditional character and philosophy of production and marketing.’

So just what first prompted Piaget to adopt polo as a marketing tool?

‘I saw my first polo match in 1975 or thereabouts, in Argentina,’ explains Yves Piaget. ‘Polo demands the same level of skill that Piaget employs in creating fine watches and it’s a team effort as is our watchmaking. And, most importantly, it encompasses a luxury lifestyle second to none; the social side of the sport attracts the kind of people who buy Piaget watches.’ It was in 1979 that Yves hit upon the name Piaget Polo for one of the company’s flagship watches – and decided the association should not be in name only.

From 1981 to 1986 Piaget sponsored the $100,000 World Cup at Palm Beach Polo & Country Club (PBPCC), then the biggest and wealthiest polo centre in the world. To launch the Piaget Polo watch there and present the Piaget World Cup the first year, Yves recruited Swiss actress Ursula Andress, who had become an international sex symbol following her appearance as Honey Ryder in the first James Bond film Dr No. ‘Ursula and I became friends, just as I have with all the other celebrities we’ve worked with in promoting Piaget watches,’ Yves says. The Piaget World Cup attracted teams handicapped at 30-plus goals, the highest level at which polo in America was played.

Piaget used the final weekend of the World Cup every year to help realise the company’s policy of supporting good causes. ‘Each year, on the night before the World Cup final, we sponsored a big charity gala that attracted all of Palm Beach’s social elite,’ Yves says.

The company extended its fund-raising activities with ‘Chukkas for Charity’, a series of celebrity exhibition matches in the New York area. Ever the showman, Yves once had a Piaget celebrity team in full polo kit parade down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Charity events were held at Westbury on Long Island, Greenwich Polo Club and at Saratoga during the racing season. ‘Our celebrity players included film and television stars like Stefanie Powers [Hart To Hart], Pamela Sue Martin [Fallon Carrington in Dynasty], Alex Cord [Airwolf], Bill Devane and Doug Sheehan [Knots Landing],’ Yves recalls.

‘Piaget was a pioneer in the sponsoring of polo,’ says Beatrice Vuille-Willemetz, the firm’s communications director. ‘The involvement of the brand in this noble sport was linked to the launch of the Piaget Polo watch in 1979 and the sport contributed a great deal in building the image of this successful line.’ To celebrate the 30th anniversary of this iconic collection, Piaget has launched five new versions, including the Piaget Polo FortyFive, a new sporty-looking model crafted from robust titanium. Vuille-Willemetz continues, ‘This launch, as well as the increasing importance of the whole Piaget Polo line, has motivated Piaget to become once again an important actor in sponsoring the sport.’

In Argentina Piaget partnered with Pilará, a luxury residential development with polo,

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Ever the showman, Yves once had a Piaget team in full polo kit parade down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan

tennis and golf clubs, to field a 37-goal PilaráPiaget team, spearheaded by legendary 10-goalers Marcos Heguy and Agustin Merlos, along with Sebastiàn Merlos and Santiago Chavanne, in Argentina’s ‘Triple Crown’ series of open championships. The team came within two goals of winning the Hurlingham Open and made it to the semi-finals of the Argentine Open. A second, 26-goal PilaráPiaget side competed in the Camara de Diputados tournament in 2008.

Earlier this year Piaget returned to polo sponsorship in North America, becoming title sponsor of the USPA Gold Cup at International Polo Club Palm Beach (IPCPB) – Yves confirms that Piaget will be backing the tournament in 2010, too. The 26-goal Gold Cup is second only to the US Open among America’s three top tournaments. ‘John Goodman’s club (IPCPB), with its magnificent stadium, is a worthy successor to the old Palm Beach Polo,’ Yves says.

Piaget was also one of the sponsors of the Veuve Clicquot Manhattan Polo Classic on Governor’s Island in New York, where Prince Harry and other members of his winning Sentebale team were each presented with the new Piaget Polo FortyFive wristwatch.

This summer the company returned to Long Island where it sponsored the Piaget Polo Hamptons Cup at Bridgehampton Polo Club and in September the Piaget Greenwich Cup at Greenwich Polo Club in Connecticut.

Piaget, a prestigious brand that can trace its ancestry back to watchmakers in nineteenth-century Switzerland, is once again right at the heart of polo.

1 Actors Doug Sheehan (in red) and William Devane (in blue) with Yves Georges Piaget 2 Jon Hamm with the CEO of Piaget, Philippe Léopold-Metzger 3 Ursula Andress 4 (from left) Marcos Heguy, Sebastiàn Marlos, Beatrice Vuille-Willemetz, Piaget’s Director of Communications, Santiago Chavanne and Agustín Merlos 5 A Piaget craftsman 6 The Piaget Polo FortyFive

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