IN-DEPTH: Social media saturation point?

Echoing wider luxury industry wobbles, watchmaking had a shaky 2025, facing challenges including, but not limited to, tariffs, soaring prices of raw materials like gold, and a weakened global demand, particularly from China. 

According to the Deloitte Swiss Watch Industry Study 2025, 43% of industry executives hold a negative outlook for their main export markets. 

Marketing competition among watch brands is fierce, then, going into 2026. Social media was rocket fuel for the luxury watch boom during the pandemic years, which saw the market peak in 2022. But what exactly does success look like now, four years on? And how will watchmakers achieve it in 2026?

Success through brand building

Social media is an expansive storytelling tool for any company when it comes to building its brand – whether that’s sharing new product launches, ambassador partnerships, or behind-the-scenes insights. But it’s no longer a case of simply having a polished feed and building your follower count.

“Brands that embraced new platforms early improved their standings, while those reliant on heritage-focused, conservative posting saw their momentum fade,” found Vogue Business’s Watch Index 2025 (pictured below), which evaluated consumer sentiment, digital marketing, and innovation (not just follower count) to come up with its list of 20 leading watch brands.

“In terms of content, craftsmanship and celebrity – the “making” and the “myth makers” of the watch industry – continue to perform strongly,” it continued.

Rolex successfully leaned into video in particular to support its brand building in 2025, leveraging its testimonees in music, sports and the arts to create in-depth documentary-style content that resonates. And it works: despite ranking third overall in the index, Rolex scored the highest of the consumer sentiment ranking with 98% awareness, and remains the brand “consumers are most likely to purchase in the coming year”. 

Meanwhile, TAG Heuer’s dynamic use of TikTok, where it has 1.6m followers, helped it move into the Index’s top five in 2025. Its heavy focus on its partnership with Formula One – which boasts a growing global fan base of 827 million – has been key to this move up the ranks.

Going into 2026, successful brand building will look like “using social in a different way,” says Zina Wilkins, a social media director and content consultant, who has worked with luxury names such as Liberty, Skydiamond and Swarovski. “It’s about thinking outside the box and coming up with content that chimes with a wider audience.”

This is because the majority of people using social media don’t engage by liking or commenting anymore. For marketers, the most important metric to track now is how many shares a post has had – whether it has resonated enough with someone that they’ve shared it with a friend. 

This means that, whatever the size of your brand – whether you’re a small independent watchmaker, or a giant like Rolex –  providing your content is dynamic and engaging, it has the potential to be viewed by a much larger audience than your follower count. With five billion people using social media globally, the potential scope for brand building is enormous.

Success through community

“Community” is the “buzzword in every boardroom right now,” says brand marketing consultant Maddison Sullivan-Thorpe, speaking on a recent episode of the Style-ish business podcast. 

“The customer has never been less sticky,” she adds. “Consumer loyalty and advocacy is completely out the door. We’re getting so much information [via social media]; we’re seeing so many brands and products… Now, brands are identifying that there is a great opportunity for them to foster a really loyal customer, to bring them in, to create friendships, connection, momentum, and really create a moment [as well as] a commercial opportunity.”

What does creating community look like for watch brands? Many of them are already on their way, with memberships that offer exclusive previews and insights, plus destination clubs, like Audemars Piguet’s AP Houses in London and Manchester. Previous community-building initiatives by watch brands include Cartier’s collaboration with the Dubai and Singapore watch clubs on limited-edition models. There’s also the Omega House, which pops up at events like the Olympics, offering an exhibition space and members club. In 2021, Breitling consulted an advisory board of loyal followers, sourced from its Instagram account. 

But community is “not something you can build overnight,” says Wilkins. “It’s all about loyalty. It’s about building a long-term group that is really loyal to a brand, and giving them a space that they’re able to connect. So it’s room for conversation and room for sharing – giving your community a voice so they can share back.” 

What does a good community space look like in 2026? They need to be more about sharing and less about “extracting”, says marketing expert Nik Goodner in his Instagram video on the “death of brand communities.” 

He warns against “synthetic community” – where companies force the conversation, groups feel mined for their data, and followers are only valued as potential conversions. Instead, brands need to cultivate communities that focus on collaboration (where “a group creates together, not just consumes”), safety (where “people feel safe to share without being mined for data or pressured to buy”) and generosity (where “value flows both ways”). 

Success through sales

Brand building and community are essential, but for any company, success is ultimately boiled down to its sales figures. According to the latest data by Morgan Stanley, the most successful watch brands in terms of sales correlate almost exactly with those who have the most followers.

And conversions (turning browsers to buyers) are potentially going to become even more important with the rise of social media shopping – selling by TikTok Shop and Instagram will generate £9.1bn in revenue for non-food retailers in the UK in 2026, predicts new research from Retail Economics and Unbox. Almost 80% of Gen Z and Millennials also now integrate social media into their shopping journey.

So will luxury watch brands actually want to sell their wares via TikTok Shop? Despite its reputation for selling cheaper goods, the platform is starting to lean more into the luxury market, according to a recent Bloomberg report. You can already buy pre-owned Rolex and Cartier timepieces from authenticated sellers, plus watches from entry-level brands like Hamilton, Tissot and Seiko. Will the bigger names join in? It’s looking likely – according to the Deloitte study, 20% of watch industry respondents said that they expect social media and influencers to be the biggest sales channel in the next 12 months.

Watch this space

We’ve seen how social media can be leveraged successfully to aid brand building and storytelling, as well as how it can be used to create a community of dedicated followers who feel they have a real stake in the brand they love. Social media shopping also has the potential to transform the industry in 2026.

The future success of the watch industry will depend on its ability to tap into a new tranche of watch fans – Deloitte identified that the future of the watch industry will be shaped by female buyers and Gen Z shoppers in particular. In 2023 and 2024, for example, a quarter of the tickets for Watches & Wonders in Geneva were bought by people under the age of 25.

But while social media may be a useful marketing tool, what happens when your followers start logging off? The global average daily time spent on social media has fallen by nearly 10% from its high in 2022. The drop is most noticeable among users in their 20s – exactly the demographic that watch brands should hope to be targeting next.

It’s an uncertain time for those in the social media business, admits Wilkins. For her, if the trend continues, marketing success for brands will be about “less posting and more about in-person events. Maybe we’ll also go back to physical items like catalogs.”

However, she isn’t too worried that its demise is imminent. “I think social will always have a place,” she says. “It’s finding the right balance in terms of marketing and not being too sales-led for those who are still willing to be online.”

This article is from the January 2026 edition of Watch Insider.