EXCLUSIVE: Movado Brings the Spirit of Movement to Life With Latest Icons Campaign
Swiss watchmaker Movado is bringing on five new global brand ambassadors for its new Icons campaign: actress and entrepreneur Jessica Alba; actress Julianne Moore; Grammy Award-winning rapper, actor and entrepreneur Ludacris; all-star running back Christian McCaffrey; and all-pro point guard and 2024 Team USA Summer Olympics team member Tyrese Haliburton.
The new campaign will be seen throughout the remainder of the year across television, digital and print media and across all of Movado’s social media platforms.
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The Movado brand has amassed an impressive roster of ambassadors, from Pete Sampras, Tom Brady and Derek Jeter, to Lily Collins, Amanda Seyfried and Kerry Washington, to name a few.
“We wanted to do it differently than we had done it in the past, but in a way that was true to what the Movado brand is, something that our consumers would feel really comfortable with because they’ve seen it from us in the past with true, iconic personalities, but we knew that we would have to change how we did it for today’s time,” said Efraim Grinberg, chairman and chief executive officer of Movado.
The campaign’s imagery and video was lensed by powerhouse photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, styled by Mel Ottenberg and choreographed by movement director Stephen Galloway and conceived in partnership with Creative Director Robert Lussier from The Style Council.
“As we move as human beings in our watches, they remind us of what we need to do with our time,” Ludacris said.
Movement is a key factor of the brand’s history and identity. Movado, whose name means “always in motion,” emphasized these very universal elements of the brand DNA within the concept of the latest campaign video, where the group of ambassadors are captured moving to and interacting with Ludacris’ 2003 number-one Billboard and Grammy-nominated song “Stand Up,” highlighting the song’s chorus “when I move you move” — a call to action for horology lovers to express their full potential by doing what truly moves them.
“We really wanted to lay a foundation to build upon that will not only invigorate our current customers, but also bring new customers into this brand,” said Margot Grinberg, worldwide Movado president, and senior vice president of e-commerce at Movado Group.
“We have a large market share in the United States in the price range that we play in, so we really wanted to also make sure that when we were selecting these icons, that we got a diverse group of people in all respects, from talent to the communities that they speak to. We wanted to do something that really connected to the core of the brand, but that was also exciting and invigorating, and reinstated the brand back into the cultural conversation” added Margot Grinberg.
The watches presented within the new campaign highlight Movado’s design, bestsellers and varied price points, with watches that range from $695 to $1,595.
“Our watch is iconic. These people are iconic, and you’re really going to see these lines in our campaign as icons wearing icons,” Margot Grinberg said.
“I love the wearability of a Movado watch — it is something I can wear everyday, and mixes seamlessly with everything I own,” Moore said.
Movado aims for the campaign to stand out to Gen Z and Millennial shoppers, who are quickly penetrating the watch market with growing interest in both mechanical and automatic timepieces.
“I love how Movado has elevated and refined their sportier designs, giving them a little edge,” McCaffrey said.
“We like to look at these things as partnerships, but this is really more about longevity and building brand equity with the next generation as well as the existing generation. They go across generational diversity, there’s backgrounds that are different, there’s disciplines that are different, but they’re all at the top of their game of whatever they do,” said Efraim Grinberg.
“Storytelling is so critical for how consumers connect with brands and make their purchasing decisions, but also because of social media and the amount of content we consume, you have to do it in a much more innovative way that is more exciting to break through to consumers and to get them to want to be part of your brand world,” said Margot Grinberg.
Efraim Grinberg, who has headed the Movado Group since 1990, helped take the company public in 1993, and has built the 135-year-old watchmaker, purchased by his father, Gedalio, in 1983, into one of the world’s leading watch conglomerates, with ten brands under its belt.
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