Nadal Partnership Pays Off For Richard Mille

 Thursday, July 8, 2010
By Ariel Adams

It was an odd yet novel move for a luxury brand. Give a star tennis player a half million dollar wrist watch that you ask him to wear while he plays the game, piggyback on his media and success, and hope for the best. Richard Mille chose the right person to work with when they opted to have tennis champ Rafael Nadal be a brand ambassador, but was it done properly? To thrust the idea of a watch costing so much money into popular media was risky given the fact that most people balk at the prices and excess of luxury timepieces given today’s economy. Sure Richard Mille’s name would get out there, but will the image they garner in the process be best? Or perhaps is getting your name out there good enough?

Technically speaking, it was good for the watch. I first discussed the RM027 Nadal watch here. You’ll learn that the watch has a tourbillon complication that is known to be quite delicate. It was a feat for the engineers to make something that not only would be light enough for Nadal to wear comfortably while playing, but also to survive the endeavor. In fact, the watch is the lighted tourbillon ever made. The watch lived, and so did Nadal’s reputation – and coincidentally Richard Mille’s as well. In fact, he just won Wimbledon, and the image above is probably the most valuable PR piece that Richard Mille could ever have hoped for. A happy young tennis star with his trophy cup and trophy watch.

Richard Mille and Nadal aren’t done yet. The partnership is longer term, and Nadal will continue to wear the watch during professional tennis matches. Richard Mille has retained its luxury status, and is now known to many more people as a very high performance luxury sports watch as well as just an expensive item. This is the exact image Richard Mille has been working so hard for. When a luxury brand these days asks how to market properly, then they need only study a move like this out of the Richard Mille play book.
source