The watch brands that won Instagram last year have just been announced
Russell SheldrakeThe watch space is increasingly becoming driven by Instagram. This has been the case for a few years now, with watches being such a visual medium, it is no surprise that the image and video sharing platform would dominate our space in such a large way. But as with all advances in technology, the industry and brands have been slow to pick up on it. But who has done the best out of all the brands in the last year?
Thankfully, Romain Milet, the founder of app TimeWorld that brings together brands, customers, and watch news in one place, has published a ranking on his LinkedIn of the watch brands that gained the most followers over the course of 2024 and the table shows some surprising results.
The winner in the highest percentage gain in followers was Furlan Marri with a whopping 55.9%. This took the young independent brand’s following from 48,737 to 75,975. An impressive leap, but one that perhaps shouldn’t be too surprising when you look at the year they had. Kicking things off back in January by launching a collaboration with us in the form of our Studio Edition Outback Elegy, then later in the year we saw the sale of their collaborative effort with renowned indy watchmakers Dominique Renaud and Julien Tixier as the Secular Perpetual Calendar unique piece sold for CHF 130,000. Last, and certainly not least, we have the release of the distractingly good looking Disco Volante, yet another example of how Furlan Marri is able to take historically important designs and transform them into modern hot takes.
While it’s clear whatever Furlan Marri has done this year has been working, let’s take a look further down this list as there are some more surprises to take away from it. You might have assumed that the brand that saw the biggest total gain in followers would be the biggest name in the industry, Rolex, but they actually came second, or one of the exciting big box brands like AP or Patek, but it was actually the brand that maybe has the most visually arresting watches on this list, Jacob & Co. The flashy jeweller/watchmaker gained an impressive 1.3 million followers throughout the year. Although considering that they are connected to the most followed person on Instagram, Christiano Ronaldo, it probably doesn’t come as too much of a surprise.
While this list is an interesting reflection of which brands have been executing well on social media, it’s clearly not the whole picture when it comes to success of these brands. As we’ve pointed out, Omega had an incredible year with its releases, not only having a high frequency, but also nailing the collector-favourite features. So perhaps playing to these core collectors has kept them very happy, but hasn’t expanded their following on socials massively? Although they did gain a respectful 277k.
While I don’t think this will become an index for brand success in the same way the Luxe Consult and Morgan Stanley figures have become, it is still an interesting metric by which we can compare where brand’s have placed their focus over 12 months, and what impact these decisions have made on what can be a fairly superficial number.