To introduce its new ambassador, the Korean singer and actress IU, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Manufacture preferred a demonstration of craft to polished photography. The choice of format says as much as the choice of face.
An ambassador campaign is generally limited to a face, a bottle or a wristwatch, and a handful of adjectives. Jaeger-LeCoultre chose a different way in to present the South Korean singer and actress IU, the Manufacture’s new international ambassador: a filmed interview format, The Hour Before, in which IU herself assembles the case of a Reverso while the conversation unfolds, off camera, between an interviewer and her.
An interview built like a watch
The principle of The Hour Before lies in its architecture: each question starts from a watchmaking entry point — a gesture, a piece, a component — before sliding, by transition, towards IU’s memories or personal values. The gestures of manual assembly serve as the literal common thread of the interview, instead of being its mere backdrop. The result, according to the Maison, is an exchange that moves at the pace of the gesture rather than the pace of studio follow-up questions — a way of turning an advertising exercise into a demonstration of method.
What patience has in common
The choice of format comes with an openly stated discourse on the kinship between two disciplines. Jérôme Lambert, Chief Executive Officer of Jaeger-LeCoultre, places the collaboration on this ground: “her authenticity, her rigour in her craft and her understated elegance resonate deeply with the values of our Maison”. The wording takes up an argument the Manufacture has long made about its own work — the Reverso, a watch with a swivelling case originally designed to withstand the knocks of polo, has remained since 1931 one of the emblematic objects of this rhetoric of patient precision. Associating a performer whose career was built over time, rather than on immediate exposure, allows the Maison to extend this discourse beyond the mechanical movement.
A face that does not seek effect
IU has built an unusual artistic trajectory in the South Korean music industry: discovered very young, she has spanned two decades of career alternating between music and cinema without ever leaving the top of the critical rankings, a rare longevity in a market structured around the rapid turnover of faces. It is this continuity, more than raw fame, that the Manufacture puts forward to justify the choice — a line of reasoning that inverts the usual logic of ambassador placement, generally based on immediate audience rather than coherence of career.
The collaboration is set to continue in the Maison’s next Reverso campaign. It remains to be seen whether the interview-demonstration format, more demanding to produce than a classic photo campaign, will become a template repeated by Jaeger-LeCoultre for its future ambassadors, or whether it will remain an isolated exercise, tailored to this particular encounter.
Read also on Luxsure: Jaeger-LeCoultre grave sa garantie au dos de la montre · Robert Pattinson rejoint le cercle restreint des ambassadeurs de Jaeger-LeCoultre · Turner tenait dans deux centimètres carrés : Jaeger-LeCoultre met Venise sous émail · Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Hybris Artistica Calibre 179 Pegasus
Cette publication est également disponible en :
