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David Evans

For many people a watch is a mundane and functional item but for G. Nicolas Hayek, president of Swatch, 'it's a canvas of art that you can communicate with'.

 Pretentious?  Mr Hayek is a name dropper. He glibly mentions US actor Peter Fonda, director Robert Altman and late, great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa of Seven Samurai fame, as people he has met and worked with.

  How did Mr Hayek come to be president of Swatch? His father, the confusingly named Nicolas G. Hayek is chairman, chief executive and founder of the Swatch Group.

 Those are the facts; the truth is rather more complex.

 Mr Hayek junior, a Swiss national, previously worked as a producer and director of feature films and talks with a passion about the movie industry that suggests he may be stifled by life in the 'bored-room'.

 He sits relaxed and casually dressed on the sofa of his hotel suite. He says the hotel gave him a room with the best view because an important journalist was coming to interview him. I take to Mr Hayek immediately.

  His English is excellent, but he occasionally appears frustrated and turns to a colleague as he searches for the right word to express his enthusiasm for Swatch, its products, his life and the future.

 'There are moments when you say 'shit, Jesus Christ', and 10 minutes later you start to reflect and you move forward'.

 This outburst is a reflection of his father's management style, a man Mr Hayek junior describes as emotional, a motivator.

 Mr Hayek senior did try to influence his son's decision to join Swatch - but not perhaps in the way one might expect.

 'He suggested that I shouldn't do it because, he said, 'I must be tougher with you because of the others. I cannot do you any favours',' reflected Mr Hayek on his father's words.

 'It is clear that he is exploiting the situation that he is so close to me to push me a little bit harder on certain things.

 'He can give you a lot of motivation and when he pushes you hard it provokes you.'  So how does the producer and director of Family Express, a film featuring Peter Fonda and winner of the best Swiss comedy at the Charlie Chaplin Comedy Film Festival in Switzerland, justify his position as head of a multimillion-dollar business?  According to Mr Hayek, producing a film is the same as running a company.

 To him a film is an emotional mass consumer good, and so is a Swatch watch.

 For a movie you need an idea, the right people to work together, financial backers, to be able to organise three months of shooting, and keep a budget before distribution.

 And for a watch?  'It's exactly the same thing,' he says, in his heavy Swiss-French accent.

 Mr Hayek believes that feature films and Swatch watches represent 'pull-products'.

 They will be asked for and sought out by the consumer. People will go to watch a film, and consumers will search, and ask for, a Swatch.

 'It's not, as with a lot of other products, where the retailer pushes the product and convinces the consumer to buy it. It's a brand that is driving the people into the shops and it has the capability of influencing. So it's very close to films,' he said.

 At this point in the conversation the photographer arrives. Without any prompting, Mr Hayek takes an ultra-thin Swatch from the firm's 'Skin' range that the photographer happens to be wearing, and starts to pose.

 'Do you want me serious or funny. I'll be funny,' he decides before anyone can answer, obviously as much at home in front of the camera as he is behind it.

 The conversation reverts to his decision to move from film-making to deal-making.

  Mr Hayek said he was initially brought in to study budget proposals submitted by agencies vying for a slice of Swatch's advertising revenue.

 'I came in because I could tell from a production-house prospective whether they were telling us bullshit or not.'  Apparently his skills came up to scratch because Swatch offered him the job of vice-president of marketing.

 'It was the management, and not my father as chief executive,' he said apologetically.

 Swatch burst on to the scene in 1982 and in just two years had produced one million time-pieces.

 Its design team set out to turn conventional manufacturing wisdom upside down.

 The tiny space that made up the Swatch watch face proved an irresistible lure to many contemporary artists as designs took on imaginative concepts, unusual ideas and rousing messages.

 In 1985 Swatch entered the history of art, with a special design by Kiki Picasso. This was closely followed with further art specials from Keith Haring.

 Mr Hayek's brush with the directing world's elite came as Swatch asked various celebrated directors to each design a watch that symbolised for them, 100 years of cinematic history.

 Mr Hayek said he started to explain the concept of Swatch to Kurosawa when the Japanese director, in his faltering English said: 'Jelly-fish. Chrono,' which roughly translated meant that he had seen Swatch's Jelly-Fish range of watches.

 Apparently Kurosawa wanted his watch to symbolise a fight scene, much to the consternation of Mr Hayek's predecessor, who attempted to question the legendary film-maker's artistic integrity.

 'I remember I kicked [the president] under the table and I said 'Come on, shut up,' said Mr Hayek.

 He wears two watches, one set at Swiss time, the other set for local time. Both, naturally, are Swatches.

 'It's a tradition in the house that most of the Swatch people are wearing two watches. It's like working in a chocolate company, you eat chocolate,' he said.

 'We try them out, so we got used to it.'  According to Mr Hayek, a Swatch can also win you friends and influence people. And, if he is to be believed, a brace of Swatches could soon become de rigueur for lonely singles.

 'When you go into a restaurant or somewhere and you are alone you would like to talk with people,' he said.

 'If you sit with two watches on your wrist, people start to talk with you. I had a lot of women in the US say, 'Hey, why are you wearing two watches'. It's a communication tool.'  However, it is the ability of the company's product to market itself that has Mr Hayek moving to the edge of the sofa and lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

 'Swatch is a product that is exposed to about a thousand people a day if somebody wears it because you are in the street, people look at you, and they see what you have. That is why Swatch is a very strong brand because you will recognise a Swatch from very far away.'  There is no doubt that Swatch has been instrumental in the way consumers' perception of a watch has been defined over the years. The idea of the watch as a family heirloom being handed down from generation to generation has all but been dispelled by the mass-consumer market. And Mr Hayek is proud of his company's role.

 'When Swatch came with the idea of having a very high quality Swiss watch that was a provocation and had a joyful approach, we changed the way people used watches,' he said.

 'In the past, people would keep a watch for 20 years or so. And then Swatch came and nobody says 'When I get the watch I'll keep it for my life'. You keep it, you like it.

 'You see another one you buy it, you have another one for sport, you change it. Today it is totally normal.'  Mr Hayek's next admission is enough to make a tai-tai blanche and have many people grasp their 18-carat adorned wrists in disbelief.

 Most of Switzerland's luxury watch brands, from Patek Phillipe to Rolex, have their movements manufactured by Swatch.

 'In our factories, on one side we have the highly modernised automated assembly lines of Swatch which are very hi-tech, then you will see old traditional watch-makers where it takes one year to make a movement,' he said.

 According to Mr Hayek, if Swatch had not generated vast amounts of capital from the mass-consumer market, the money would not have been available to maintain the traditional watch-making skills in Switzerland.

 'So that's why all the famous watches should pay two Swiss Francs [about HK$9.36] back to Swatch for every watch they sell,' he said, with only a hint of sarcasm.

 In the mid-1980s the company started to release limited edition watches that gave artists the opportunity to have a limited edition of their work as well as create a collectors' item that would increase in value over time, said Mr Hayek.

 In developing that concept for the next century, the company has re-interpreted its limited-edition strategy. Instead of offering 30,000 pieces worldwide, certain designs will now be available from only one outlet.

 'We will open in May, a store at the exclusive Place de Vendome in Paris. It's a luxury place,' Mr Hayek said.

 'Inside we will have some specially designed products but the price will not be different from our usual watches. For us it is not the price that makes the prestige of luxury, it's the quality of the product and the people who wear it.' G. Nicolas Hayek Jr was born in 1954.

 Prior to joining Swatch as the company's vice-president of marketing, Mr Hayek produced and directed several TV documentaries and feature films.

  The creator of Paris-based production company Sesame Films, Mr Hayek directed American actor Peter Fonda in Family Express.

  He was appointed president of Swatch on April 1, 1998.

It's a brand that is driving the people into the shops 



Nicolas Hayek sees affinities in making movies and watches, David Evans finds