L2 Digital IQ Index: Top Watch and Jewelry Brands in Digital 2018

Please check out L2 Inc.’s YouTube channel for a great overview of the Watches and Jewelry “Digital IQ Index”: https://www.youtube.com/user/l2thinktank/featured

E-commerce is projected to represent 1/5 of hard luxury sales by 2025 and watching jewelry brands are finally getting their act together. Over 60% of index brands now feature direct-to-consumer e-commerce and over 3/4 officially distributed on third-party retailers. Brands are also showing market improvements across site investments as they re-evaluate what it means to be a customer-facing brand catering to digitally native millennial shoppers.

While Instagram remains the preferred platform to reach the younger cohort, the pay-to-play platform favors the deep pockets of enterprise brands which dominate 70% of interactions on the platform. Case-in-point, shifting away from their traditional watchmaker image heritage brands, Tudor and Omega are partnering with mega influencers on the platform, directly targeting the growing millennial market. Meanwhile, Facebook offers customer service for index brands with several integrating Messenger directly on site in lieu of live chat. Despite improvements in digital competence, gray market and resale sites continue to threaten sales. While brands are showing outsize investments in display ads, they’re overshadowed by discounters on search who own outsize shares of shopping ads across watches and jewelry.

Tiffany tops L2’s 9th annual digital IQ index, watches and jewelry, for the third year in a row, demonstrating outside visibility across paid and organic search on Google. The jeweler also outperforms in-site functionality driving consumers to purchase through top-tier product discovery and research features. Cartier is second with superior reach and engagement on core social media channels. The brand also invests heavily in search using paid spend to appear on both unbranded and branded keywords across devices. L2’s 9th annual digital IQ index, watches and jewelry, measures the digital competence of seventy watch and jewelry brands globally. For these and more insights, visit L2 inc.com.