Mr. Choi offered an example: Last fall, IWC promoted a short film starring Mr. Marsden as the company’s founder, Florentine Ariosto Jones, the latest in the brand’s series of “Born of a Dream” films. (The previous installment featured the California-born quarterback Tom Brady, a.k.a. “A Boy From San Mateo.”)
In a parallel effort, the brand also posted a six-minute conversation between Franziska Gsell, IWC’s chief marketing officer, and Cate Blanchett, a longtime brand ambassador, discussing the company’s 2020 sustainability report.
Ms. Blanchett’s bit part as sustainability interlocutor was far from the glamorous appearances she has made for IWC since joining the brand in 2006, when it was headed by Mr. Kern, Mr. Grainger-Herr’s immediate predecessor.
A natural showman, Mr. Kern presided over a growth spurt at the company, partly because of the awareness its famous partners helped generate.
“IWC was seen as a very technical, very masculine engineering brand, but not something people wanted to buy because it was cool,” said Alexander Linz, who runs the YouTube channel for WatchAdvisor.com. “Georges used celebrities to quickly transport people to Schaffhausen” in Switzerland.
Since joining Breitling as its chief executive in 2017, Mr. Kern has taken a more nuanced, yet equally aggressive, approach to celebrity marketing. The brand groups its ambassadors into three-person “squads” covering cinema, aviation, triathlons, exploration, surfing and philanthropy. Last year, it built an in-house studio so Mr. Kern could interview some of them for a webcast to introduce new watches.

Source: New York Times

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