Latest / Luxury. Culture. Capital. / Leave the Brand World Unfinished

Transcript

Leave the Brand World Unfinished · Luxury. Culture. Capital.

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing I noticed was the clothes, the fitted riding pants, the tall boots,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: the tailored jackets, the helmets, riders standing next to these enormous,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: beautiful animals as if being beside a horse that weighs half a ton were
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: the most ordinary thing in the world.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: There was green all over my Instagram feed.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: Posted the actual competition, kept my attention.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Although I had no idea what I was looking at, other than grace.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Shifting angles of riders leaping and landing so gracefully.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: And staggered amongst those posts were atmospheric reels and carousels that drew me in more.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I can't necessarily call the gathering of people a crowd.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Although there were plenty of people there.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: Smiling people, neither rushed nor frantic.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there was movement among them, but not action, not chaos.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: It just looked breezy.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like the kind of place where you could spend all day outside and not sweat.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: The more I scrolled, the more that I could almost taste limoncello
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: and feel soft linen on my legs.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know a thing about equestrian sports.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea how show jumping worked.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how you won.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: The obstacles were probably not called poles,
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: but I knew the horse wreaths and rider trophies were impressive
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: and the outfits crisp at the end of it all.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Ralph Lauren, Hermes, gotta be.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But even in my ignorance, I could still imagine myself there.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: This was April 2025, before I moved to Mexico City.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I had come across Longines show jumping world on Instagram.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of scrolling past, I started to look around.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: The writers, the fashions, the graceful beasts, the sunshine.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: This all drew me in to eventually look into Mexico's relationship and history with horses.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I kept going down that rabbit hole, and by my birthday that year,
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: I had taken my first writing lesson.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I cried at the end of it because freedom
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: and because Beyonce's been giving us horse lady aesthetics and she came out
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: with the Gift album, but I digress.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: Also maybe because doom scrolling isn't so bad when the obsession turns
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: into a curiosity, into a dream, into a goal and into a memory.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that's philosophy for another episode, maybe.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Truth is, in retrospect, is that during all of this,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember seeing a single Longines watch, not one.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I followed the competition schedule.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that the Longines Global Champions Tour moved from city to city around the world.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: I joined their Instagram broadcast channel where I saw schedules and updates.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: I knew there was a Mexico City competition every spring.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been participating in this brand world for more than a year
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: before I ever really encountered the product.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that distinction became much clearer to me recently at CIAR,
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: the Salón Internacional de Alta Rejolería,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: the leading watch show in Mexico City and in Latin America.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was created by Carlos Alonso, founder of the watch magazine Tiempo de Relos,
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: and this year CIAR celebrated its 20th edition.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: I went to the show's Longines Suite specifically because I wanted to get underneath
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: the equestrian connection.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of watch brands attached to sport.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: They keep time for races and the Olympics.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Watchers have gone into airplanes, underwater, to the moon.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: But this one hit different.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: The horses weren't simply sponsorship decoration around the edges of the brand.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: The world seemed much more deeply inhabited.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: At CIAR, I met Teresa and Fernanda from the Longines Mexico team,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: and Teresa began telling me stories.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: How her career in fashion became a launching point for her work in timepieces.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: About the profiles of their clients.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Why the boutiques are situated in one neighborhood versus another.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then we got to my favorite part.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: She insisted that I have a glass of Moet while she shared
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: with me her favorite stories behind the brand and the products they launched.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Her excitement was literally contagious.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Her eyes would even flicker at times.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: One story she told me was about Longines and the Orient Express.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Railway workers traveling between what is now Istanbul
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: and Paris carry two pocket watches so they could keep track of time.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Istanbul, that meant measuring time by the sunset.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: In Paris, that meant today's standardized timekeeping.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1925, Longines pioneered the world's first dual-time wristwatch,
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: helping to establish the foundations of modern dual-time and GMT watchmaking.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, I wasn't standing at a watch fair anymore.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, now I was on the train, surrounded by lacquered wood and silk jacquard.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: The sounds of Turkish and French and clinking glasses and a train grinding along
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: the tracks perfuming the air around me.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: The glit of a porter's two pocket watches shooting gold light around the boxcar
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: and occasionally into my eyes.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because moving through the world in a new way had created a new problem that needed solving.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Back to reality in the salon, Teresa took me into yet another scene.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: A wristwatch that had become a medical device that helped doctors measure patients' heart rates.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: There she and I were with an early 20th century world filling out around us.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: A doctor, a wrist, a stethoscope, A room, a patient.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Again, a watch had become a portal to somewhere else.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of Longines now, I think of movement.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: No pun intended for watch lovers that may be listening.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: A brand full of lore, full of people going somewhere, across countries, by train,
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: onto a competition field with a horse, through different professions,
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: different environments, different ways of measuring time,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because ordinary time was no longer enough.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now back to the competition itself.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It seriously is worldwide.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: The 2026 tour spanned 17 cities, 15 countries, and four continents.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it runs every year from early spring to late fall.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Teresa and Fernanda explained how the Mexico City event specifically functions for the brand.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The new annual collection debuts shortly beforehand,
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: so the competition becomes an opportunity to bring together retail partners, press,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: and clients in addition to spectators.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: There are meetings, product presentations, wholesale and retail purchase available, of course.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And around all of that are the horses.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Business feeds the spectacle.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: The spectacle feeds the social experience.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sport creates emotion.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Fashion gives it texture.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Retail sits beside hospitality.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: The event becomes a traveling little Longines universe where the brand
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: and its products are not the central reason for gathering,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: but the facilitator of all the things that dot the world of their current
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: and future, like me, clients' worlds already.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: The product exists inside an environment that already has its own rituals and pleasures.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Further, it made me reconsider something we say constantly in brand work.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about brands drawing people in.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that's quite what happened to me.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Longines didn't fully draw me in.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I actually drew myself in.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: The brand simply gave me enough material to begin sketching the picture.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: A horse, a green field, riding boots,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Mexico City in April when the jacarandas start to bloom
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: and they're technicolor purple again.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then I started adding things in.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, what would I wear?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Who would I go with?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I can put a group together and go with my girlfriends next year.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, what would the day feel like?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, will people be drinking?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: When I understand what's happening in the ring by then, maybe I should study the sport.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let me join this broadcast group.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and take a lesson.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: You see, I began imagining myself at an event I had never attended.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: That, to me, is a more interesting form of brand storytelling
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: than simply communicating a message well.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: The most compelling brand worlds leave some space unfinished.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: They establish enough structure that you understand where you are,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: but they don't color in every inch of the page.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: They give you the architecture and allow your own imagination to furnish the rooms.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, you stop watching someone else's story.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: You begin placing yourself inside of it.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And once you do that, your relationship with the brand has already changed,
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: even if no one has shown you the product yet.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I still haven't been to the Global Champions Tour here in Mexico City.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: Not yet.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I know exactly what it looks like in my head.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently, I already know what I'm wearing, who's there with me,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: and what the group chat looks like leading up to that day.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm curious, what brand, place,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: or world have you drawn yourself into before you've ever actually experienced it?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: What vacation have you taken?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Outfit have you worn?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Car driven?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Leave a comment.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want to know what your picture looks like.