By Harlan Chapman-Green
In a rather unexpected mood, Swiss watchmaker Tudor has selected a new ambassador to help put its watches on the radar. For them this comes at a good time, when patrolling around the forums I’ve noticed that they have been taking a bit of a bashing from the watch enlightened fans recently. I don’t know exactly what caused this, but it’s possibly due to Tudor’s recent revival and introduction to the American market settling down over the past couple of years. If you’ll remember back to when they first came along, everyone went mental for them, but now it’s being seen as taboo in some places to wear a Tudor.
It’s an interesting choice for David himself as well, being one of the world’s top football (aka soccer for all of you across the pond) players tends to come with a lot of money attached. He’s currently worth over $42m in total, and yet he still donated his entire salary when at Paris Saint-Germain to charity. If you think you have seen him around in watch adverts before, you’d be right. It wasn’t too long ago you would’ve seen him sporting a Breitling or a Breitling for Bentley watch, casually standing next to, presumably, his Bentley Continental GT. But he’s also advertised himself with a lot of different products over the years from the likes of Adidas and Samsung, as well as with Swedish clothing retailer H&M and British supermarket Sainsbury’s. He’s also currently the ambassador for Jaguar Land Rover in China at the time of writing, so it’s fair to say that’s quite a portfolio he’s got there.
But what does it all mean? Will Tudor’s new brand ambassador really help them sell more watches, or is this just a play to get Beckham’s face on more stuff? He already has his own line of aftershave and other toiletries, so could this just be a way to increase the the wealth of the Beckham empire? The answer to all these questions is, as expected, “it’s entirely possible”. Being as we cannot simply stroll up and ask them if that’s the main idea, it is likely that this could be the case. While some will complain no doubt, it’s important to remember that you would most likely do the same if presented with the options of either having more money or having the same amount of money.
At the end of the day, though, who knows what the money will go towards. The Beckhams have a long history of donating vast amounts of money to charities at home and abroad, as well as using their celebrity status to encourage nationwide drives such as raising awareness and preventing childhood obesity. Not only that but David himself is closely tied in with UNICEF, which may forward possibilities of Tudor UNICEF special editions. It’s not uncommon, companies like Omega make the GoodPlanet watches and Blancpain has the Ocean Commitment 50 Fathoms watches, so this may be the start of something great for Tudor. Either way, both will benefit from this, but by how much is something only time will tell. For more info, please visit tudorwatch.com
