David Beckham, Rafael Nadal, yes, but Michael Wong? Watches with celebrity endorsements – why some work and some don’t

Support from people at the top of their fields say something about a brand – but what’s with the C-listers?

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Rafael Nadal wearing Richard Mille’s RM 27-03 watch – a celebrity endorsement that makes sense. Photo: EPA

Published: 8:00pm, 25 Sep 2019Updated: 1:11pm, 26 Sep 2019

It’s time we had a chat about celebrity endorsements. I’m not against them; some make a lot of sense. But there are those that leave you thinking, “What the fudge?” Case in point, Bremont and Michael Wong Man-tak, which – and I’m sorry for sounding like a teenager – is just soooo lame.

I like Bremont, I do, it makes decent watches. But its collaborations with Wong, with a new addition this month, I cannot fathom. I might be wrong, but Wong is at best a C-list movie star. Beyond that, he endorses everything – whisky, wine, caviar, luggage, shoes, clothing and that’s just off the top of my head. Wong and Bremont’s new watch, the MWII Flying Tiger, is positioned as an aviation piece as, I think, Wong played a helicopter pilot once, or something, probably. I really don’t know.

Look, I’m not dunking on Wong, or Bremont, but who is this watch aimed at? And if you are one of those people, I want you to hand over your wallet for inspection because I am the Wallet Inspector.

Richard Mille is perhaps the gold standard when it comes to celebrity collaborations. The watches it has made for tennis star Rafael Nadal, golfer Bubba Watson and various racing drivers show off the brand’s technical mastery and associates it with relevant, top-of-their-profession people. For example, Nadal wore his RM27-03 (sticker price US$725,000) on court when he won the US Open. The delicate mechanical movement stood up to the superhuman whip force he puts into his ground strokes and it kept ticking. And so many stories were written about it. Vamos, Rafa!

The Tudor Pelagos dive watch, which is endorsed by David Beckham.

Other examples make sense on a technical level, from a relevance perspective or just as an association with A-list fame. Here are three I’ve come across recently.

Let’s start with David Beckham and the Tudor Pelagos dive watch. Beckham is many things but he’s not a diver (well, perhaps on the football field on occasion) so the association with a legitimate dive watch might seem strange. But Becks has super-wattage celebrity so he could put on a plastic Mickey Mouse watch and it would sell – he’s just cool and relevant even though he has a squeaky voice.