J Balvin Is the Latest Tag Heuer Ambassador Making the Case for Future Watch Buyers
Tag Heuer wants millennials to buy its watches … but not just yet. You wouldn’t think that, based on the slew of young brand ambassadors on its roster. Bella Hadid recently signed on as the watch label’s spokesperson, which, as Tag Heuer CEO Jean-Claude Biver mentioned over breakfast at the Faena Hotel in Miami’s South Beach last Wednesday, was a suggestion from his teenage son. But the partnership with Tag Heuer’s latest ambassador, Colombian reggaeton artist J Balvin, came about quite differently.
According to Biver, he and Balvin met at a hotel in Colombia. After chatting for a bit, he found out that Balvin was a fan of soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo, who is also a Tag Heuer spokesperson. Biver did a little research on Balvin and saw he had remarkable reach (his Instagram alone boasts 14.8 million followers), and decided that they should partner together. “It wasn’t a very intellectual decision,” he told Yahoo Style. “It was more spontaneous.”
Biver hopes that Balvin can give the brand an image boost in Latin America. He hopes the presence of Balvin and other millennials who have signed on as ambassadors will spark interest from millennial consumers, but he doesn’t expect to see the results of the choice for a while. Biver (whom Balvin affectionately calls “Boss”) understands that there are a lot of young people who cannot afford Tag Heuer, and hopes that appealing to their sensibilities now will make them customers in the future. He’s playing the long game.
Still, Balvin is helping the brand make a case. The “6 AM” singer already has all the markers of modern cool — he’s a reggaeton artist and a rock star in Latin America, and he has technicolor dream hair to boot (at least for now). “This is the first time [Tag Heuer has] had a Latin musical artist,” Balvin told Yahoo Style last week. “As Mr. Bivers said, music is a universal language even though in some places they don’t know what I’m saying. Music is art and making watches is art too. I want to do something different for the culture. I want to show the world, to change the old version of how people look at Latinos, and show how we really are now.”
As Balvin attempts to redefine the image of Latin people with this partnership, he hopes that his involvement will not only expose people to Latin culture but also bring common ground for those who may not necessarily identify with it. “I just like to think I’m a human being, not just I’m Latino and you’re from Europe, you’re from Asia, you’re from North America,” he said. “I really want to [appeal to people] as a human being and make people dream and make things happen.”
Balvin is entering the watch world, which can skew very old guard, though in spite of his age (31) he considers himself a watch fan. “Watches show who you are, not just inside, but how you want people to look at you,” he said. “But at the end of the day, watches express something. Kind of like my hair. Watches are about status, and I just think watches are cool — they’re pieces of art.”
And oh, that hair? Balvin changes it with frequency. When we met him, it was a glorious candy-colored rainbow coif that would put have Katy Perry to shame. Balvin says he changes his color every few weeks, and that somehow, in spite of all that dyeing, his tresses manage to stay relatively healthy. It’s a mystery that puzzles even his own hairstylists. “[My hair] was gray two days ago! I was in Spain with Cristiano [Ronaldo], and then I got home, and I had this Tag Heuer event. I was going to change it, and at the hair salon they were saying, ‘Your hair is just crazy. How do you keep up with this and nothing happens?'”
The answer is simple: “I just don’t think about it. I ask myself, why is it still healthy?”
Related:
Bella Hadid is now the face of another *huge* brand, because she seriously never stops working
Tag Heuer Teams With Tech Companies for a $1,500 Luxury Smartwatch
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