When we see the media of the system linked to the GPHG being obliged to provide “after-sales service” for the Aiguille d’or 2024, it’s a sign that no one has understood how a watch like IWC’s eternal calendar, conceptually interesting on a mechanical level, but damn banal on an aesthetic level, was able to win as “watch of the year 2024”, while in the final we had pieces that were much stronger, more creative and more worthy of praise, at all price levels and of notoriety. For the pleasure of the eyes, reread the justification of this Aiguille d’or by Worldtempusmedia partner of the GPHG: “Why IWC deserved the Aiguille d’Or for its eternal Portugieser calendar”. Indeed, it was better to clarify it by insisting! The least we can say is that there was no consensus on this Aiguille d’or, neither in the room, nor in the watchmaking community. [ni d’ailleurs chez les jurés, qui ne se souvenaient pas d’avoir fait preuve d’un vrai enthousiasme au sujet de cette montre lorsqu’il avait confié leur vote secret à l’huissier de service]…
On the other hand, there was a real consensus to make fun of of the GPHG’s choice concerning the unfortunate Carole Bouquet, who had done everything to get in shape and who showed a euphoria that was sometimes wavering and stammering: as we told after the awards ceremony , it was for a good cause! It was necessary to save this evening from the immeasurable sadness and the unfathomable boredom in which it was bogged down: the petulant Carole, as lost as a lioness in a mountain pasture among the sheep, dared everything to tear the Swiss assistance away from its torpor, repeated blunders to support it. It is true that, throughout its history, the GPHG has never been very lucky in finding good facilitators…
Knowing that Business Watches has already commented at length the preselection of this GPHG 2024, in principle (Business Watches for November 4) before knowing the results (Business Watches for November 6 et Business Watches for November 8) as immediately after the proclamation of this list (Business Watches from November 13), we are not going to repeat ourselves. On the other hand, beyond our criticisms, too many readers ask us for our “solutions” so that this factor is not precisely… critical! Let us attempt a synthesis of the five major reforms to be undertaken, without delay, to change everything so that nothing changes in the hoped-for magic of this annual meeting, of which we will never repeat enough that, if it did not exist, it would be necessary no longer invent it, but above all reinvent it…
▶▶▶ 1) Redesign the price list
It’s about making the categories fit the real situation. competition in the market and customers’ understanding of it, by doubling or even tripling certain official categories based on their public price (Challenge, Petite Aiguille, Men’s, Women’s, Jewelry, Artistic Crafts, etc.), according to their caratage, according to their mechanical complexity or according to other criteria more relevant than man/woman, complicated/uncomplicated, sport/jewelry or calendar/chronograph. Some cohabitations in the 2024 final were absurd, if not scandalous in the mix of tea towels and towels! It is just as essential to “invent” price categories that are not linked to the watch itself, but to its design. [pourquoi a-t-on supprimé le prix Design ?]to its purpose [par exemple, les montres « hommage à »]in his style [imaginons un prix de la Montre à secret] or even to its concept [pourquoi pas un prix de l’Élégance, de l’Humour ou de l’Insolence horlogère?]. We can also imagine super-prizes to be awarded between brands that have already won awards: a Diamond Needle for brands that have already won Aiguille d’Or? When will the Audience Award return, modestly hidden because it was so rigged? The prizes awarded to people – designers, craftsmen, specialists in artistic crafts and other virtuosos of watchmaking mechanics – make it possible to vary the pleasures by honoring the “little hands” of the industrial and artistic upstream. Imagination to power! With almost a thousand academicians and brands to survey, we should very quickly come up with a list of thirty to thirty-five prices that would make sense. [nous verrons plus loin comment cette multiplication des prix, aujourd’hui interdite par les absurdités d’un cérémonial compassé, permettrait au contraire d’animer et de dynamiser le spectacle]…
▶▶▶ 2) Review the internal regulations
It must be purged of its contradictions and ambiguitiesby better specifying the boundaries of each price [surtout les nouvelles catégories] and by tightening the admission and selection criteria when registering watches by brands. In particular, we need to strengthen controls on watches that are not really new, nor really of the year. More than two prizes for the same brand in the same edition should be prohibited. The GPHG must admit to awarding one, two or three prizes to brands not registered whose watches would have been urgently selected by the academicians, with a quota of votes to be expected. We must allow the community of academicians to weigh as majority voices [et non comme minorité] on the final prize list, all prize categories combined – the physical jury [devenu minoritaire et plus spectaculaire que décisionnaire] reserving the right to “invent” prices outside official categories for watches that justify it. There is a problem of governance and transparency: the jurors should also be informed directly of the result of their vote, which would limit the suspicions which taint a prize list whose final preparation remains very opaque…
▶▶▶ 3) Rethink the economic model
The GPHG lives today mainly from the registration of watches [tarif correct pour le premier tour, mais totalement dissuasif pour le second tour : songez que le groupe LVMH a dépensé plus de 93 000 francs pour ses seules montres en finale !]but also the racket over the dinner which follows the GPHG and which only satisfies the egos of the CEOs who invite their guests [valeur ajoutée pour la communauté horlogère : zéro !]. Budget supplement: the subsidy from the city of Geneva, all the more uncertain since a local bureaucrat will eventually realize that the GPHG benefits non-Geneva brands four times more than brands from the canton [valeur ajoutée pour l’économie du canton : zéro, les quatre principales marques horlogères du canton – celles qui réalisent 98 % de son chiffre d’affaires horloger – étant aux abonnés absents]. More official categories automatically mean more registrations, and therefore more financial income. We must also ask ourselves whether traveling exhibitions – horribly expensive in terms of insurance and transport costs – have any real use, since they only consolidate the worldly relations of a community already too focused on exclusivism and navel gazing: we do not win in these buttocks or new votes [les jeux sont déjà faits]nor new customers. The next economic model of the GPHG must include prices offered by brands, obviously in fact out of competition: for example, why not, for specialized artisans only, a Métiers d’art prize presented by Vacheron Constantin [la marque en assurant le financement avec le GPHG] ? Still as an example, why not a Tourbillon prize awarded by La Joux-Perret? Given the driving role of the watch industry in the luxury industries, it is aberrant that the GPHG has not prospected 360° around watchmaking to find more or less prestigious sponsorships, in Switzerland as well as abroad. ‘stranger. A detail that is worth specifying in order to professionalize the GPHG and finally put it at the service of the entire watch community: it would still be necessary to provide the GPHG with a team of managers who are somewhat familiar with what is a business, a business strategy and a business project – and the GPHG must become a kind of business serving a working community…
▶▶▶ 4) Rework communication
Rely on a handful of partner media [mais néanmoins concurrents entre eux] remains the best way to confine the GPHG in its fatal confines, by placing it at the mercy of the multiple cliques which attempt to cartelize it by monetizing the distribution of trophies through occult transactions. Everyone understood it and everyone knows it: Business Watches has already talked about it, there is no need to insist (see the drawing at the top of the page). The best promotion of the GPHG and its prize list is not in the echoes of the parrot media which sing its praises, but in the communication plans of the brands which echo their own success, in the first as in the second or third tour (final) and which extend the effects of their price by logos in the windows of retailers. This collective promotion of the GPHG is to be promoted by raising awareness among the general public of amateurs and collectors: it is the official logo, and the little hand for the winners, which are the best references and the best vectors of communication of the GPHG. We must privatize the reputation of the GPHG, and not the cantonalize with the local administration. This with the help, we will see, of a real quality international show which remains to be put in place. This will be the mission of Horlovision, based on the model of Eurovision which is so successful in Switzerland…
▶▶▶ 5) Reimagine the “show”
This awards night is also expensive (especially in time and energy) that deeply soporific, because slow, very conformist and very uncomfortable, agreed [même avec un électron libre comme Carole Bouquet]predictable and perfectly dispensable. The smartest ones understood everything by watching it on screen [les plans sont meilleurs] rather than in the seats in the room. Here again, we must change everything so that nothing changes and stage a real video show, a 90-minute Horlovision [entièrement sous-titrée dans un florilège de langues, dont le français !]based on quick presentations of the finalist watches, non-inflated explanations of the awarded watches and pre-recorded thanks from the winners [passons pour mémoire les trois ou quatre phrases de rigueur chez les politiques]. All with a contemporary montage, breathtaking in the staging, punctuated by the suspense before the major prizes and punctuated by less musical interludes. gnangnan than the cheesy jazz of 2024 – it will always be better than the blunders of a faltering star. With absolute control of time, by eliminating dead time from the room to the stage and back, without speeches or lame presentations, we can largely award thirty to thirty-five prizes in 90 minutes, while guaranteeing an effect of surprise for the audience. start to finish. The international diffusion of this Horlovision could only be infinitely wider than that of an official ceremony which even generated overwhelm when watching the video of its retransmission [on vous laisse imaginer ce que c’était dans le confinement de la salle]. Let us add that the cost of staging this Horlovision is compatible with the budget of the GPHG, knowing that it is not prohibited to slip in some advertising messages. to this : thirty prices, thirty paying signs “ Presented by… ”, that brings in more than the actual profit of a dinner! Between a more or less DIY cheerleader show and a Netflix-style atmosphere, there’s no hesitation…
So, five basic principles for reworking the subjectotherwise a cloud of more or less wild, but directly competing initiatives will multiply, on the periphery of the GPHG, through the multiplication of prices, rewards, awards and the Oscars that they will cause. Instead of encysting itself in the gently sloping decadence into which it sinks slowly but surely from year to year [toujours moins de grandes marques boudeuses, toujours plus de petites marques frustrées]the GPHG must reverse the chessboard and recalibrate its entire proposal, if necessary by regaining an independence lost during its recovery by the public authorities in Geneva, who maintain this purely private initiative in an indolent Soviet-style bureaucratism. The future of the GPHG is international, not Geneva-based: the Horlovision concept gives it this dimension by decantonalizing it and breathing in the air of the open sea, that of great daring and great ambitions. Is it really too much to ask to change everything so that nothing changes and everything starts working efficiently again in this price distribution? We’ll let you think about that…
