Watches are sold year round, however, there’s a huge break for a portion of the industry during the holidays in November and December.

In July and August, much of the watchmaking industry, also typically slows down. Combined, that’s a third of the year, deprioritized. The problem with this mentality, is that with regard to watch media, it cannot just shut down. Retail watch sales, the lifeblood of the industry, obviously need to keep going year-round as well. Should watch retail and media slow down for a third of the year, because it’s break time? No. The momentum needs to be kept on full blast, as much of the time as possible. Sure, if your company does not have the money to do so, believe me we know that feeling, then at least there’s a strategic reason for slowing down. But to have the money, and to waste it on unnecessary expenses, when it could be used to amplify your marketing twelve months a year, is one potential reason why your watch brand is regressing, not progressing.

We all need to sleep, and unwind (pun intended), and I’m not advocating for a 24/7 mentality, but turning off for months at a time, and expecting strong sales growth, is akin to eating too many calories and not exercising consistently, and expecting to become physically fit.

The watch brands that are growing, or at least maintaining flat sales, may not need any adjustments, because what they’re doing is working. However, the vast majority of watch brands, need to become leaner. I absolutely realize I will not make allies in saying this, but in my experience, a lot of the inefficiencies come from using outsourced PR (Public Relations) agencies, who operate on the outdated notion that earning media coverage, is the ideal way to promote your watch brand, versus simply working directly media publications, in a mutually supportive way. ABlogToWatch recently wrote an in-depth editorial on this topic, that we wholeheartedly agree with.

In my experience, the best PR agencies, also help support media publications, whose backs the bulk of the promotional work is being placed on. Still, many agencies, only promote themselves to the watch brand(s) they represent, and not the media doing the heavy lifting. It’s a contentious, unethical, and dubious practice.

As just one example of the value of media, think about which media outlets were advocating for tariff reduction when the Swiss watch industry was close to being decimated by punitive tariffs. Who reported on it? Who had the backs of the Swiss watch industry? Professional Watches certainly did here and here.

Frankly, outsourced PR agencies that only care about themselves, more often than not, act like an unnecessary middle man, creating a huge opportunity cost, that could be instantly rectified by simply reallocating that critical capital to supporting watch media.

Some of the savviest watch companies, use a marketing person, or even a founder to communicate with media, in place of wasting precious capital on a publicist, that they simply don’t need. You’re paying five, ten, twenty thousand a month, to have someone send out emails. Why can’t your marketing person do that? With the largest watch companies, it’s less of an issue, especially if they have in-house communications experts, who truly need to respond to a huge volume of daily inquiries. Events also require PR, but that can be handled via in-house staff, or outsourced a la carte.

When I see that the TAG Heuer CEO, Antoine Pin, a longtime LVMH executive, exiting after a very short tenure of a year and a half (according to Yahoo Finance), I wonder what the impetus was. It certainly wasn’t the first time TAG Heuer has changed CEOs. What I also wonder, is how all these years, do the same companies’ PR agencies, not take any of the blame. Of course, sometimes, PR agencies are changed for this very reason. However, certain PR agencies seem virtually untouchable. Are they truly irreplaceable? Or, let’s be honest, are they a middle man, that collect profits, yet bear no responsibility, for an underperforming brand?

Looking from the outside in, I see obvious ways to improve TAG Heuer, a historic brand I personally respect, and that we cover often despite having absolutely zero contact with any of its PR team. I do wish we at least had direct contact with the brand, preferably the marketing team, because, at the end of the day, marketing encompasses the entire process of selling watches (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion), not just promotion.

Coming from the executive marketing team at a Fortune 100 company (prior to founding Professional Watches), that was heavy on old school advertising — $100K daily for the back page ad in The Washington Post, printed catalogs mailing out constantly, radio ads, television ads — and light on PR, I’ve long thought that most watch companies spend too much on PR. Why not remove the middle man and simply support the media that supports them? Being brave enough to go against the norm, and switching strategy ever so slightly, could potentially help change the trajectory of an underperforming brand. Waiting for Watches and Wonders (an extravagantly expensive show that’s beneficial but not a requirement to launch a watch in 2026), or thinking you need to pay to attend the crowded regional Windup fair (because this is the only way you know how to boost sales), reactively waiting for sales (while the leaders proactively take action), waiting for the right time to invest in advertising (it’s always the right time), waiting for your PR agency to secure media placements (no need to wait), is costing your watch brand each and every day, because: time is money.