The CEO of Audemars Piguet has declared that their collaboration with Swatch “smashed web records”, as Bloomberg put it. So what?

CEO of AP Ilaria Resta talking to Bloomberg. Screen shot: Bloomberg Television

The CEO of Audemars Piguet, Ilaria Resta, went on record on television yesterday to state that the launch of their collaborative watch with Swatch caused a massive spike in traffic on their website, choosing to elevate digital traffic over the chaos witnessed and experienced on the street. It is easy to sense that what Ms Resta said had to do with her KPI. It was a performance for her bosses, not for the thousands still incensed that they were so badly treated. This wasn’t quite a retail strategy; it was an executive performance review stunningly wrapped in a marketing campaign. “Our website received more than 10 times the visitors that we have in a year in only one day,” Ms Resta tried to convince Francine Lacqua of Bloomberg Television’s The Pulse. Truly riveting. The watch bears the AP logotype, but, conversely, the energy was strictly Pantene haircare. Her well-crafted phrasing had the cadence of a consumer-goods boast, but not a heritage watchmaker’s statement. Perhaps that does not matter because lines, as we have said before, are now so smudged that you can no longer discern that they were there in the first place. When pressed on the launch-day fracas, Ms Resta asserted, with palpable satisfaction, that the chaos was a positive indicator of “overwhelming” demand.

It is thrilling to learn that AP has successfully engineered an increase in digital loitering. We can only imagine the sheer, exhausting labour it took to convince people to peek at their website. But it would be more enlightening to have the answer to one question that was so consistently unasked: Which modern business manual equates making customers queue for days—or overnight, for those lucky enough—with exemplary service? Is a bad back or strained neck now considered a premium loyalty perk? We are entirely fascinated by the corporate alchemy required to spin the subsequent scuffles and, notably, the pepper sprays used in New York and Paris into a triumph of customer care. This is perhaps the new phase of experiential shopping. It is certainly a bold restructuring of the loyalty program: points are no longer accrued, but survived. We look forward to the quarterly reports detailing consumer satisfaction among those who teared painfully. It is amazing how consumer culture increasingly makes grand the suffering of waiting in endless lines, battling crowds, or even enduring physical discomfort as proof of devotion to a brand. Or mere curiosity.

Which modern business manual equates making customers queue for days—or overnight, for those lucky enough—with exemplary service?

Ms Resta not only totally ignored the entire ground-level failure, but showed how elated she was now that “a week after the situation normalised, we’re very excited to reveal and continue. We’re talking about this bold and incredible collaboration with Swatch.” Even if we lived under a rock, as 孙悟空 (Sun Wukong) was born from a egg of stone, it would be unlikely that we’d expect her to be talking about a collaboration with Pampers. It was odd that she claimed the situation “normalised”. If it did, surely it was not normal at launch. Dust does not settle unless it was stirred. When asked if the images of people queueing “hurt the halo effect”, she quickly pivoted to the positive results of the collaboration that led to “sold-out masterclasses where we explain watch-making”, as well as “all the visits at the AP Lab, which is a new form that we launched recently, where we explain watch-making, where we engage with the new generation and explain [how] our movement is assembled. And it’s a very important part of our strategy of openness and connection with the new audiences. We intend really to create the love for watch-making.” She did not show the sale of the Royal Pop and the attendant debacle directly led to the increased demand for programs that show participants how to appreciate watch-making. Ms Resta never said a clear “yes, it hurt” or “no, it didn’t”. She deftly sidestepped, as a seasoned politician would.

The loveliness of that reveal is its refusal to acknowledge corporate blunder, even if isolated. It is the logical, if painfully undignified, grand finale of a long-festering institutional rot. Audemars Piguet is playing a “long game of survival”, many observers of the brand’s pairing with Swatch have said. It is a reflection of what the luxury market has been aggressively embarking upon: the shift from elevated as prestige to attention as currency. Five days after the launch of the Royal Pop, Gucci staged a massive fashion show in Times Square. The clothes were nothing to scream about; the entire presentation was eye-openingly underwhelming. Visibility is now the first step to survival. The halo effect is no longer just about mystique or heritage; it’s about being the most talked‑about brand in a crowded cultural feed. The AP X Swatch collaboration and the Gucci show are two sides of the same coin. But unlike Gucci, AP doesn’t need mass buyers, it needs mass attention. As it turned out, the non-buying public can easily be instrumentalised to fuel the desires of the ultra-wealthy. And in this era, attention is generated by engaging the very people who will never ever own a Royal Oak, but will make sure everyone knows what it is.