Grand Seiko: Making Luxury a Virtual Experience

Ketchum brought an entirely new technology to life in a way that matched the elegance and classic luxury of the Grand Seiko brand. As luxury shops and boutiques remained closed due to COVID-19, Ketchum helped the brand pivot to its first virtual media webinar. We hosted an exclusive media event for editors to see the new Grand Seiko timepiece firsthand through the use of AR technology. This innovative technology, launched through Spark AR and published on Instagram, allowed Grand Seiko to make history in the luxury watch space as one of the first watch brands to provide media and consumers with a way to virtually experience the brand from the comfort of their homes. During the virtual press conference, the AR filter officially launched on Instagram, and Ketchum supported this launch with tutorial videos and instructions for media, animated videos of the filter for social content, and paid ads on Instagram to drive awareness of both the filter and the new watch.

We successfully secured the New York Times in print (International Retail), Esquire (Lifestyle), Robb Report (Business/Tech) and Hodinkee (Watch Endemic). On social, we saw followers for @grandseikousa jump by 200 in less than 24 hours. In the first day of the filter launching, we saw 11.7K impressions for the filter, 1,254 instances of someone capturing the filter in the Instagram camera, and 57 shares of the filter. Results included 22 earned media placements, 3M earned media impressions, 1.5M paid impressions and a 9.4% organic engagement rate at launch.