Which Luxury Watch Company Has the Hottest Brand Spokespeople?

Any brand selling any product will do better if they have a famous face behind it. Granted, if you are famous then one will only ally him or herself with brands that are respected, well-known and can afford to pay well for getting the rights to plaster a famous face next to whatever it is selling, whether it be water (Jennifer Aniston for SmartWater), shoes (all those that have at one point or another endorsed Nike), and in this case, luxury watches.

Luxury watch brands have all the qualities that put them in a position to be able to pay the (typically) millions of dollars that they do to all types of celebrities. These qualities include solid reputations, rich histories (almost every single one comes from Switzerland or another European country), and the use of high-quality and exclusive precious metals and stones, all which result in the production of something that can cost up to hundreds of thousands of dollars: a luxury men’s watch or a luxury women’s watch.

Here is a review of four watch brands that have celebrity spokespeople of all kinds. Some you will know immediately, some you may know the face but not the name and others, you may not know at all. Who is the hottest? Which luxury watch brand has the best group of spokespeople? You decide.

I would say that every ambassador for Movado is well-known, hands down. Movado watches are sleek and elegant and can be sporty as well (hence the last three male ambassadors mentioned here).

Actress Kerry Washington; you may not immediately know her name but will instantly recognize her face. She is most known for her performance in the movie “Ray” which came out in 2004 and was signed to Movado in 2005.

Actress and former child model Amanda Seyfried (her name may be unfamiliar but as soon as you see her face, you’re like “oh yeah!”) is the youngest of Movado’s ambassadors. She has appeared in the movies “Maama Mia!” and “Mean Girls” and stars in the HBO series “Big Love” this season.

Mikhail Baryshnikov, the name needs little introduction; he’s one of the most talented dancers of all time and has been a Movado Ambassador since 2004.

Wynton Marsalis, jazz trumpeter and Grammy award winner, is Movado’s longest-running spokesmen having been with the brand since 1998.

Now, here come the athletes: tennis super star Pete Sampras, baseball player Derek Jeter and football QB Tom Brady are all Movado spokesmen who represent the brand’s more sporty collections like the Movado Series 800 as well as its men’s luxury collection like the ESQ.

Half of Omega ambassadors need no introduction as they are huge stars in their respective fields. Cindy Crawford, Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, Michael Phelps, James Bond and Michael Schumacher all “work” for Omega in addition to their “day jobs”. Lesser known ambassadors (in the U.S. at least) is Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi, Indian actor Abhishek Bachchan and Russian swimmer Alexander Popov. However, the strength that these spokespeople have is that in their countries of origin they are super well know and more and more luxury watch brands are closing boutiques in the U.S. and Europe and heading toward places like Asia, the Middle East and Russia.

TAG Heuer is similar to Omega in that it has internationally known stars promoting its brand, mixed with men and women specifically known in their countries. TAG recently opened its eighth store in the Middle East and is obviously focusing on growth in this part of the world, so should soon be adding a famous Arab face to its roster.

Tiger Woods, Maria Sharapova and Leonardo DiCaprio are mega stars. Other TAG ambassadors include the Finnish race car drivers Heikki Kovalainen and Kimi Räikkönen, and Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan. Longines is yet another Swiss luxury watch brand whose motto is that “elegance is an attitude,” therefore its spokespeople are called Ambassadors of elegance.

Longines has two of the most recognized (not to mention married to each other) tennis celebrities ever: Andre Agassi and Stefi Graf, but then there are a handful of lesser known (way lesser known) ambassadors as well, among them Lithuanian actress Ingeborga Dapkunaite, Aaron Kwok Fu Shing, who is known as the “Michael Jackson of Hong Kong” and Indian beauty Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who in 1994 won the title of “Miss World”, and has been a Longines ambassador for 10 years.

The strategy of having both super well known and lesser known (in the U.S.) spokespeople is a marketing concept that has worked well for the luxury watch business. As for which of these spokespeople is the hottest depends on your own personal taste.