Omega, Breitling Watch Brands Collaborate With Innovative Partners

For years, watch brands have collaborated with sporting events and corporations. The Olympics and NASA partnered with Omega, Breitling has cornered the transportation market on land with a Bentley deal, and Ulysse Nardin controls the seas with sponsorships in the nautical world and water sports.

While these associations began for purely business reasons -- to expand into logical demographics -- high-end watch brands are also adding, by way of proximity, a technological and even aesthetic credibility to their partners.

“It’s not the watch technology as much as the peripheral expertise we’ve gathered over the years, along with certain core production values: It’s all guided by our attention to detail,” said Stephen Urquhart, the president of Omega, about the underlying appeal of the collaboration. “Watchmakers are perfectionists.”

The collaboration between Jaeger-LeCoultre and Aston Martin resulted in the AMVOX2 Rapide Transponder Watch, a timepiece that includes a built-in transmitter which enables owners to easily lock or unlock their car doors (assuming that it is an Aston Martin, of course). The watch also features a “Find Me” application to help forgetful car-owners locate their parked vehicles by flashing the headlights for multiple seconds -- an amenity normally reserved for electronic car keys.

Watch brands are also offering safety features as a result of focusing on innovation and integrating watches into the lives of consumers. Breitling, for example, introduced its emergency watch a few years ago -- a product that specifically targeted the needs of pilots and flight staff. Its built-in transmitter can transmit a distress signal, and reportedly more than 20 lives have been saved since it hit the stores.

As watches continue to evolve with technology and help people with more than simply telling the time, there is no end to the possibilities of just how they will contribute to, and change, our lives. Consequently, the branding possibilities, and collaborations, are limitless.