The brief
Michael Landor’s love for watches began when he was very young. He spent his early years watching his father build a luxury watch collection, and eventually he began collecting prestige watches himself as a hobby. He realised fairly quickly that he could turn a passion for watches into a viable pre-owned prestige watch business, and so The Watch Hor, a business sourcing and selling rare, pre-owned prestige watches was born.

As the business grew, it became apparent that the brand did not effectively communicate the expertise, bespoke sourcing service or high end product range that Michael offered, and didn’t provide the luxury cues that the category demanded.

Oi began working with The Watch Hor in February 2021. Our brief was to orchestrate a complete rebrand, including everything from a new name, logo and colour palette to photographic style, graphics, and tone of voice. All of which would be applied to a range of luxurious branded collateral and a striking, fully functioning e-commerce website, a first for the business.

The process/strategy
First, we reviewed the category, identifying the competition, profiling the customer and establishing a clear positioning for the brand, which established Michael as a partner, as well as a trader. It directly linked his personal passion for the category with the passion that obsessive watch collectors feel for their next watch. From this positioning we created a new name for the brand, Heirloom Watch.

Next we developed an identity to make Heirloom Watch part of – but distinctive within – the world of prestige watches. Luxury demands a classical, timeless look and feel that focuses squarely on product, but for the brand to stand out we incorporated a glimpse of the unexpected – a pop of bright yellow, which, paired with macro product shots, provide the perfect balance between the expected and the new.

The new brand has now been brought to life in a responsive e-commerce website which we designed, built and pushed live in a matter of weeks. We wanted the luxury brand experience to extend beyond the web however so we’ve created things customers can touch, including wax-sealed thank you cards for every customer.

Finally, we developed a digital marketing campaign to launch the new brand into the world, getting Heirloom Watch known among this rarefied audience and generating revenue for the business. With such clear brand positioning, identity and messaging, we were able to move from creative concepts to live ads within two weeks.

The results
Our paid search campaign was hugely successful and returned over 13k (88%) of users to the site in the first two months of launch.

“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with Oi on the development of my brand and business. They understood who I was and what I wanted to achieve, and have built the perfect platform with me to grow a successful business doing what I love.”

– Heirloom Watch founder, Michael Landor

“Michael’s clarity of purpose and trust in the agency made the development of the Heirloom Watch brand and infrastructure an absolute pleasure. We’ve gone from nothing to a name, an identity, a website, collateral and a campaign in less than two months, and we can’t wait to help Michael grow the business in the coming months and years.”

– Nick Stewart, Oi’s Head of Strategy