When watch marketing was fun...and honest
"This is the only egg-timer that makes you look like a he-man" is how Hamilton advertised its then-new Calibre 11 chronograph, built in collaboration with Heuer and Breitling. There's something so refreshing about this ad's total lack of pretentiousness. It's funny, it's honest, and it's aware that 99.9% of the market for chronographs—even in an era when they were legitimate tools for racing drivers—were just regular folks who would use their watches to time the mundane things they actually do. No racing-driver endorsement, no blurry photos of cars crossing the finish line, no pretending that you, dear customer, are or will ever be a daring adventurer. It's so much more honest than how Omega, Tudor, Rolex, TAG, Bremont, IWC, etc., pretend with utmost seriousness that their watches are built for, and the choice of, divers, pilots, drivers, mountain-climbers, and all sorts of other macho men doing dangerous jobs that, in reality, moved on from mechanical watches decades ago. Nope, back when watches actually were affordable tools, ads like this winked knowingly at us. Personally, I love this type of marketing, and it really puts into perspective how comically earnest the marketing of (cough cough) "tool watches" by modern luxury brands has become and why I'm becoming more and more cynical about the current state of this industry and the reality-distortion field it perpetuates.
Design obsessive who loves watches but loathes the watch industry and the snobbery and flex-culture that feeds it. What’s a boy to do?
thanks for sharing! Have you found much other original material on these? I have the blue one too.
thanks for sharing! Have you found much other original material on these? I have the blue one too.
This is the only ad I found, but I did find an original, NOS strap recently that was sold with the Chrono-Matics in 1969 and it totally completes the watch (I also have the blue)
That’s neat! I found a french service manual for the movement, but the link I had seems to be broken. Maybe it’s available elsewhere. The article I learned about this model from does have and ad too: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/chronomatic-heuer-breitling-hamilton-50th-anniversary
I will FOREVER refer to chronos as egg timers moving forward!