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Rolex sponsorship gives luxury watch brand a daily online presence with The Week

Rolex sponsorship gives luxury watch brand a daily online presence with The Week

“The readership is loyal and anecdotal evidence points to the fact consumers appreciate the collaborative nature of this agreement.” 

Justin Hogbin, Head of Communications, Rolex UK

The Challenge

Like many luxury brands, Rolex had been reticent to embrace digital, preferring the premium and niche environment of print magazines. The challenge for Rolex was to diversify their advertising by moving out of their comfort zone and into the digital space.

By working with an existing media partner, The Week, the brand transitioned seamlessly to digital.

The Idea

Sponsoring The Week’s Daily Briefing section formed the main content pillar – a list of the ten things you need to know each day, updated throughout the day by The Week’s editorial team.

As part of the deal, thanks to Rolex’s sponsorship and co-branding, the iPad app was offered to The Week readers for free for the first month. 

All the content that appears in the printed magazine also appears in the app, but iPad users get a little extra in the form of the Daily Briefing.

To personalise the experience, The Week and Rolex created an intuitive and clever app that adapted to individuals.

Rich media interactive Rolex ads ran throughout the app, leading into key editorial sections – where each watch automatically updated to the correct date and time as the user landed on the page.

This activity was supported by display advertising and a bound-in supplement in the print title. 

The Results

This was only Rolex’s second venture into app sponsorship, after its successful work with TED conferences. The campaign achieved excellent reach, with an average 637k weekly page views and a total of 128k app downloads over eight months. It generated engagement too: the majority of users accessed the app twice each session.