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EDITOR’S PICK: Are rappers the real horological tastemakers of the world? EDITOR’S PICK: Are rappers the real horological tastemakers of the world?

EDITOR’S PICK: Are rappers the real horological tastemakers of the world?

Brendan Cunningham

EDITOR’S PICK: “Audemars on my wrist, bustdown. We poppin’ bottles like I scored the winning touchdown….” As Meek Mill demonstrated in I’m a Boss, rappers have long held a deep fascination with luxury watches. But given their massive followings and proclivity for namedropping brands in their lyrics, do hip-hop’s big names influence consumers’ buying habits. To find out, last year Time+Tide asked Brendan Cunningham, a Professor of Economics and the brains behind the Horolonomics website to investigate.

The email from Nick Kenyon arrived in response to one of my article submissions. I’ll paraphrase here: “We were talking about whether mentions of watches in popular music has an impact on demand … do you think there is some data somewhere you could use to look at that question?” My immediate reaction had two parts. First, just happiness at what a fascinating topic this is. And second: unending gratitude for the generosity of the “home office” in sharing this story idea with me.

I’d wager there are very few watch enthusiasts whose Instagram streams did not contain a reference to Drake’s recent post about an emerald-flooded Patek Philippe Nautilus 5726. Last month GQ dubbed the musician John Mayer the “Watch World’s Most Influential Collector”. It is enough to make one wonder if the connection between music and horology has ever been stronger.

rappers watches
An unflooded Patek Philippe 5726/1A.

But let’s kick it ol’ skool for a paragraph. It’s 1986. MTV is five years old and actually playing music videos. I’ve bought a rectangular piece of plastic with two holes and a tiny window. It contains polyester “tape” coated in ferric oxide and cobalt. This material has been magnetised in order to store an unprecedented album: Run-DMC’s Raising Hell. Over time I would be joined by more than three million other people in buying this album, raising it to triple platinum status. That was a first for any rap album. It would achieve many other firsts.

rappers watches
A music casette “tape”.  Image: Wikimedia

So would the artists. Alongside a hit collaboration with rock ’n’ roll legends Aerosmith, Raising Hell contained a track that would forever tie Run-DMC to the world of fashion: ‘My Adidas’. In 1986, Adidas executive Angelo Anastasio was in the audience during a Run-DMC concert at NYC’s Madison Square Garden. At one point Reverend Run asked the crowd to hold their Adidas shoes in the air. After seeing his brand rise up in great numbers, Anastasio signed the band to a $1 million endorsement deal as quickly as possible, a first for the rap industry.

Image: Wikimedia


So professional marketers have historically believed that product placement of fashion in popular music would pay off. But it is worth remembering the alleged remark by US department store merchant John Wanamaker: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Exposure to advertising is a fixture of life — we experience it on TV, radio, social media and print. But we also do not respond to all that advertising. Much of it passes through our lives uneventfully, we wait the five seconds for the skip button on YouTube, hit it and move on.

Rolex Headquarters in Geneva.

There is what scientists call a testable hypothesis: does product placement of a watch brand in the lyrics of a song really impact the industry? There are many challenges when bringing this question to the data. Within the genre of rap there are often mentions of Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Rolex. The first of these two brands are closely held, family owned, operations. The third is a notoriously secretive non-profit. Consequently, these brands are not required to release sales figures under the typical mandatory disclosure laws covering publicly traded companies. Moreover, many of the most popular references for these brands have almost endless waitlists. Even if music mentions did impact purchasing, we would only see this in a growing waitlist. The length of those lists is not something we can observe.

The artwork for the album Without Warning, which features the track Ric Flair Drip.

There is an alternative, though. It is true that everyone who Googles a brand name will not go on to buy that brand. But it is probably also true that everyone who buys a brand Googles it first. So let’s use Google searches as a proxy for purchasing, or “brand benefit”, from mentions in a song. Here’s what I did: first, I identified a few well-known rap songs that contain a brand name in the lyrics. I settled on four:

‘Otis’ by Jay-Z and Kanye West (2011). Brand Mention: Hublot.
‘Ric Flair Drip’ by 21 Savage, Offset and Metro Boomin (2017). Brand Mention: Patek Philippe.
‘Nonstop’ by Drake (2018). Brand Mention: Rolex.
‘New Patek’ by Lil Uzi Vert (2018). Brand Mention: Patek Philippe.

Sean “Jay Z” Carter’s collaboration with Hublot – Sean Carter By Hublot

Some of these songs mention multiple brands. AP (Audemars Piguet) is mentioned early and often in ‘Ric Flair Drip’. High school students in America also search for the term AP and they’re not looking for a Jumbo Royal Oak. Instead, there is an exam abbreviated as AP (Advanced Placement) which they take for college credit. There wasn’t a great way for me to parse those searches in the Google data, so I simply focused on the mention of Patek in the same song. There was a similar challenge when it came to Drake’s ‘Nonstop’. He tells the haters, “This is a Rollie not a stopwatch”, but it turns out sleep-deprived parents of young children also regularly search for the term “Rollie”. They’re not planning to buy their kid a $US 86,000 Rainbow Daytona, they’re actually looking for the animated show Rolie Polie Olie. So I decided to use the term “Rollie Watch” when researching the Drake song.

rappers watches
Professional Wrestler Ric Flair, whose “drip” here is impressive.  Image: esquire.com

I found the Billboard Hot Weekly Charts data hosted on data.world in order to determine the week that each of these songs gained enough attention to first appear on the charts. And then I used Google Trends to download data on search volume for the brand mentioned in a song. I downloaded the search data over approximately six months before and six months after the song hit the charts. I think the results are quite compelling; they are in the figure below.

rappers watches
Source: Google Trends, data.world and author’s calculations.

Without exception, search interest in Hublot, Rolex and Patek rapidly rises and peaks just before a song mentioning the brand hits the charts. I think the Lil Uzi Vert case is particularly interesting. Searches for the term “Patek” increased five-fold when ‘New Patek’ started to gain serious listening numbers. The song fell off the Billboard chart after seven weeks but the intensified search interest persisted until then and even after. It was only after five months passed that searches started to revert to their pre-song level. Patek similarly benefited from the ‘Ric Flair Drip’ mention: searches more than doubled and then stayed elevated for four more months. A similar pattern emerges when it comes to searches for Hublot: thanks to Jay-Z and Kanye, searches for that brand more than doubled and actually stayed above their pre-song level for six months. The Rolex bump from ‘Nonstop’ was of a similar size (more than doubling search volume), but the effect was not as persistent, lasting perhaps two to three months. This may have more to do with the fact that the term “Rolex” was not actually mentioned in the song or contained in the song title. And for some reason “Rollie watch” searches were generally more volatile.

This last case presents a cautionary note. Not all songs or song mentions are created equal. Early in his song ‘Watch’, Travis Scott tells the listener to “Look at your Rollie, uh, look at my Rollie, uh.” As ‘Watch’ gained listeners, there was no noticeable impact on Google searches for Rolex (or Rollie watch). Part of this may be due to the somewhat meteoric nature of Scott’s hit. It debuted at number 16 and then rapidly burned out and fell off the charts in five weeks. More extensive research would be required to determine how often a mention prompts interest.

Travis Scott. Image: finance.yahoo.com

Nevertheless, I think the evidence here points to another important on-ramp to watch collecting. As I’ve recently written, there are many challenges in the watch industry, including unstable demand in the more accessible segment of Swiss watches. And with the trade shows in flux this year, causing quite a stir among retailers, it is worthwhile to know that there may be opportunities for brands to capitalise on that months-long window of time when an artist gives them a shoutout and the audience turns their way. Alongside innovations like microbrands and crowdfunding, it is novel forms of reaching consumers such as this that are vital for the future of the watch industry.