The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I've been lurking these forums for a while, soaking up the vibe before joining the Breitling club. This topic looks interesting, so I figured it'd be a good point to drop in.

I think TAG Heuer has targetted the obvious mass-market with their "celeb endorsements" from DiCaprio and Tiger Woods. This doesn't buy them a lot of credibility with watch snobs.

However, once one ignores their crappy quartz lineup, they do produce standard, solid product. The Carrera line looks respectable, has a solid feel and are built on the same 7750 movements as a lot of more expensive watches. They even have a pretty novel in-house movement in the Monaco V4 - not a lot of higher-profile brands have that.

On a local level (in .au), TAG Heuer ADs will discount to a level that puts them on a par with street price in the US. The local market has an artificially high mark-up on watches, typically enough that on something like a Datora one could fly out, buy elsewhere and fly back and still make a saving.

On a particularly local level, the Carrera seems to have become almost a uniform item with the IT crowd. There's enough variation in the line that people don't end up with exactly the same piece as their friends.

The watch that started this thread is a good-looking piece, and I've seen one in person. Ignoring a watch that one likes, that looks good and has good build quality on the basis of brand alone? That's just as bad as those who get mocked for buying a quartz TAG for brand alone!

Firstly, welcome aboard.

In terms of this thread, then I partially agree with quote above. If you love literally every single thing about a watch except the brand, then I agree it's possibly a shame to discount it purely on that fact.

However, having said that, I personally probably still would discount a TAG on account of it's perceived image as a brand. I know quite a few people who won't buy a BMW because of the image they believe it portrays, even though they like everythng else about them. (I happen to like the BMW image, so I buy them! ). It's the same brand image thing that stops people from buying Skoda cars, even though they are practically the same underneath as an Audi or a VW.

Rightly or wrongly, brand image is a hugely important thing, which is why companies spend so much money on building and retaining it.

In the case of this partisular watch, I don't really like the look of it anyway, so the decision is all the easier for me!

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Hmm... Breitling, Ebel and Omega produce quartz watches too.

I don't know what makes them any different. TAGs quartz line is far from "crappy". I owned a Aquaracer quartz and it was incredibly well finished watch, equals my Rolex any day of the week.

I guess it's the quartz vs. automatic ratio that bugs WIS... and the fact that TAGs cheesy celebrity-endorsed advertising alienated the brand from its Heuer roots.

Personally, I find many TAG designs very desirable.

I wasn't meaning that their entire quartz lineup is crappy, just some models look particularly chintzy - a lot of the "Formula 1" line doesn't have much zing and yet ADs usually have a case full of them. And the Microtimer looks like a Casio.



Funny how celebrity endorsements don't seem to put people off Rolex so much. I find it a little sad that the only endorsements they can come up with for the Milgauss - "the scientist's watch" - are in the fields of golf and skiing!

That's funny you should mention BMW in this context. When I bought my Bimmer 10 years ago, my biggest concern was being saddled with the brand image...basically, people would look at me as "the kind of person who buys BMWs" and that was a negative for me, especially in my industry, higher education, where everyone is supposed to be humble and half-starving. The car itself, I absolutely loved, and irrespective of image it was totally worth the extra money it cost over, say, a Honda. So in the end, I figured not buying a car because of image was just as bad as buying a car for the image, so I got it.

Ever since then, I have been fascinated by the perception of branding and how that is used in consumer items. For example, my BMW only cost about 20% more than a Honda Accord of similar specs. But most people assume that it cost at least twice that. One person actually told me she thought my little entry-level 323i must have cost at least $80,000. Why, because it's a BMW and it's red (I have noticed, in my informal surveys, that the color of red has a huge impact on people's assessment of my car's value...I didn't know red paint was so expensive!) I have had people get out of their Eddie Bauer Limited Edition Ford Expedition and tell me how they could never afford to by my car (which costs half as much as theirs). But since my car is a "BMW" and theirs is a "Ford" it therefore must cost less. Americans in particular will pay almost any amount of money on items that are branded as being economical. In this way, though, they are still branding themselves like everyone else. "I'm the kind of person who buys Hondas." "I'm the kind of person who buys Fords." "I'm the kind of person who buys BMWs." "I'm not the kind of person who buys BMWs."

But whether we like it or not, brands have an image, and that comes with baggage. I guess now "I'm the kind of person who buys expensive watches." But I'm not yet "the kind of person who buys TAGs." Time will tell, though.

Although we on this forum generally reject the notion of buying watches for one's image (or at least our image as projected towards others), are we still branding ourselves? "I'm the kind of person who buys expensive watches except for the kinds of expensive watches bought by image-conscious people who buy expensive watches." Is that the image we view ourselves with when we put on, say, a Breitling?



Thanks, everyone, for a great discussion!

///M

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There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness." --Dave Barry

Thought provoking post. Nice one Mofongo.

Actually that does put me off towards Rolex. I hate when your watching a sporting event and the winner gets a Rolex and people watching with you that dont know anything about watches go OMG a Rolex thats so classy and rich for my blood. Its like people think its either Fossil or Rolex and that nothing costs more.

Bottom line for me. I love the look of the Grand Carrera (not hte black one) the SS w/ bracelet, I actually think its a very good looking watch but I wont wear Tag. I just like wearing something that a lot of people dont see. Thats why I like Tissot, Oris, and Breitling. There are no Oris AD's around my area, the closest Breitling AD is an hour away and there are only two Tissot Ad's in town I think and I could count how many Tissots I have seen on people with one hand.

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SA-Baton White Dial/ProII
Tissot Le Locle

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I've never seen one yet... but quite a few on people with two hands.

Its Friday! Nice!

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SA-Baton White Dial/ProII
Tissot Le Locle

I don't know why Branding is very interesting topic, because I am one of them who likes originality, hopefully breitling is not to be sold or merged with any other company just yet.

It just makes me smile when one is wearing a zenith watch which is worth 10,000 and one is wearing a tag worth 1,000 and the tag owner says "this is made by zenith and all the moevements you know."

And that puts the zenith owner off. What do you feel as a zenith owner?


Forgive me not. I do own a swatch irony and an ancient omega which was not under the swatch group at the time.

It's to time to change. Go Breitling. I have a quartz movement chrono colt 11 SQ Thermocompensated chronometer blue dial.

"Breitling said "not all chronograph are chronometers."