Hi everyone! Hope finals have been treating you all well.

I’m Melvin, from G2, and for my individual report, I have decided to look into an industry that I have an interest in: the Swiss watchmaking industry. As such, I decided to look at the Instagram accounts of 3 Swiss watchmaking brands, namely Swatch, Tag Heuer, and Audemars Piguet.

The goal is to find out how Instagram can be used better by brands in the industry to gain wider outreach and build up interactions with customers in order to stand out not just by their product offerings.

After observing the 3 Instagram accounts for 2 weeks, some insights were obtained with regards to the types of content that attracted the most interaction (in the form of likes and comments), such as

1. Content with darker colour themes tend to resonate better with viewers – possible linkage between feelings of sophistication and dark colours
2. Content focusing on products rather than other stuff (eg. people) garner more attention – followers want to see products, not other things that they can find elsewhere
3. Stills (photos) attract more interaction than videos – viewers can fully understand what they are seeing and thus may lead to interaction.

From there, I came up with some recommendations for Audemars Piguet, with the target audience of watch aficionados and working adults with the monetary means to afford an Audemars Piguet watch, as both audience groups would most likely be on social media to seek out like-minded individuals and view more of such content.

1. Audemars Piguet can upload new varieties of content – currently only watch components and not the finished goods, which viewers would want to see as it is the largest factor in influencing them to make a purchase
2. Use of brand ambassadors, public-contributed content, and hashtag campaign #APbreaktherules – brand ambassadors could post content of their Audemars Piguet timepieces on their accounts and link them to the offical Instagram profile. Individuals can also upload and submit pictures of them and their timepieces, where Audemars Piguet can choose to upload one such submission on their official page. For both, the hashtag #APbreaktherules can be included in the caption to make it easy for collation of such posts, and it helps to propagate Audemars Piguet’s tagline of “To break the rules, you must first master them”.
3. Linking of content between social media platforms – Audemars Piguet could upload a teaser image or video on Instagram of how the timepieces are handcrafted, and link it to their YouTube channel or website to increase traffic to their social media platforms.

These recommendations would ultimately lead to increased interaction and build on the brand image of Audemars Piguet and subsequently a loyal follower base of the brand.

Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy your summer!

-Melvin