Q4 of 2023 and its time to uncover the performance of the Watch and Jewelry category.

The ranking itself offers insights into how brands are performing, in China, across social media.

Many brands in the W&J space do not maintain much in terms of topline awareness and instead tend to focus on more targeted marketing to UHNWIs (for reference Audemars Piguet generated a total of 179,726 engagements on Weibo in the entirety of 2023, to the 404k for ROLEX and 4.3m of Hublot).

Brands such as AP and Patek Philippe offer much more in terms of user generated content – showing the power of desirability without much in terms of direct social media marketing.

With that said – What did we learn from the top 10:

💎 Bulgari jump back to the top again with significant marketing dollars behind their collections - Serpenti and Diva's Dream.

💎 Longines Watch Co. Francillon Ltd. was the talk of the last listing, and whether you believe it be luxury or not, it still generates an impressive amount of engagement in the China market – narrowly slipping down to second place.

💎 Cartier and Chopard are on the up, with Tiffany & Co. and OMEGA SA moving down - while Tiffany unveiled their Bluebook event it couldn't out pace Longines and Bulgari, and Cartier jumped over Omega in a sign that the jewelry category is outpacing the watch category in China.

💎 The best performer of or list comes as perhaps a surprise to some – Boucheron had a breakout quarter thanks in large part to its signing of XiaoZhan as its global brand ambassador – a move that resulted in more revenue in a single day on TMall than the previous 10 months…. combined.

💎 ROLEX heads up the tail end of the ranking in #8 which is impressive if we consider that the brand does little in terms of social media activation – this doesn’t stop users posting about the ever desirable and synonymous brand.

💎 Brands we've seen moving down our list include IWC Schaffhausen who had a quieter quarter, as well as TAG Heuer who were affected by the scandal surrounding Cai Xukun.

Moving forward into 2024 we should expect to see some interesting moves in line with two key milestones that are vital to the success of these brands (especially jewelry) – Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day - can Boucheron ride the Xiaozhan wave in Q1? How will LVMH Watch brands fair with Frédéric Arnault are the helm of the watch division? Tune in in April to find out.