Fire and Motion - How Swiss Watch Brands are Too Damn Slow

I like militaristic metaphors. Perhaps it's a cultural trait. But I always end up drawing strategic and tactical parallels between business and warfare. For example, I like to call traditional mass-media marketing tactics "carpet bombing". A more modern version would be "shock and awe". It's a little bit of what some very major luxury brands do when backed by the proper financials. When I hear people complaining about being "bombarded" with advertising, it think about the reprise of the social media fallout shelters where conversation and "human" is supposed to replace incessant push marketing. Phew! There's a relief.

In that context, I recently re-read this 2002 article from Joel Spolsky, a guy I admire a lot because he's super smart,  super focused, super ballsy, and takes no prisoners - not unusual for an ex Israeli paratrooper:

When I was an Israeli paratrooper a general stopped by to give us a little speech about strategy. In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can't fire at you. The motion allows you to conquer territory and get closer to your enemy, where your shots are much more likely to hit their target. If you're not moving, the enemy gets to decide what happens, which is not a good thing. If you're not firing, the enemy will fire at you, pinning you down. I remembered this for a long time. I noticed how almost every kind of military strategy, from air force dogfights to large scale naval maneuvers, is based on the idea of Fire and Motion. It took me another fifteen years to realize that the principle of Fire and Motion is how you get things done in life.

Re-reading this also reminded me of a much more recent article by Bill James - another brainy social media dude. Bill's premise is simple: why are we spending so much time and effort trying to figure out a sales and revenue ROI model for social media, when in fact the real ROI at this transitional stage can only be gauged in terms of online market penetration? In other words, if brand X fails to engage customers where they predominantly interact, namely online, then brand Y will do so, and eat its lunch in the process. So the "R" in ROI is simply the privilege of not becoming obsolete. So simple a child can get it - why so few "experts" or CEOs do is beyond me.

If you follow that logic, we are once again looking at military metaphor - It's an advancing beachhead. Capture and control. A digital D-day all over again if you will. And Fire & Forget most definitely applies. Strangely enough, very few watch brands seem to get that - the exception being Hublot - I can tell you from personal experience Hublot lives and breathes Fire and Motion. Maybe not so much in the social media realm, but nonetheless effective, as Basel 2011 results have once again shown.

The other lacking tactical asset in the industry? Decision speed. There again, Hublot rules. Because decisions involving personnel, opportunities, and (typically) huge sums of money are made on the spot and in the field. By a single commander. This ability to react in real time, bypassing the usual bureaucratic nonsense, and to focus massive firepower on neuralgic issues is the very heart of Hublot's power and success. This is why they're unstoppable - To this day, I look around, and I still don't see any another brand operating this way. Including the smaller ones. What a shame.

Because this kind of speed and flexibility, when backed by solid (not necessarily huge either) finances, is in fact the only tactical asset a small brand can have in this industry. Ideas are good, execution is key, but speed (including response time) is everything. It's the world we live in, you snooze, you lose. Of course, Switzerland isn't known for speed - quite the contrary - and herein lies the rub. Swiss operating mode is not adapted to modern reality.  Least of all in the horology sector. Watch brands don't necessarily do poorly because of poor product, poor strategy, or poor finances - they do poorly because they're too damn slow. If there are exceptions, I've only met one so far. If you know of another, I'd love to hear about them!