SPOTLIGHT: LUXURY GOODS
Style, class, selectivity – amplified.
Clients: Piaget (watches) and Hundred Acre (wine)
Luxury goods and services demand a more stringent set of guidelines for promotion. Those fortunate enough to afford these amenities are far more selective than their mass-market counterparts.
SOTC Multimedia Group has worked with a number of luxury brands and product categories, from watches to wine, vehicles to vodka. Piaget is a niche-market luxury brand specializing in timepieces and jewelry. They did not have the spending ability to compete with larger contemporaries such as Rolex, Patek Phillippe, Omega, and others – but at the time had 2 new products they needed to promote, the Piaget Polo FortyFive (a sporty and elegant masculine watch) and the Piaget Altiplano (slimmest mechanical handwound movement in the world).
SOTC Multimedia Group had none other than Ben Affleck wear the watch in the film “The Company Men”, in which he played Bobby Walker – corporate jetsetter who eventually falls victim to downsizing during a nationwide recession.
Around the same time, HBO’s “True Blood” had just become the most-watched series since “The Sopranos”. The Piaget Altiplano was a sleek & sexy, enigmatic watch – something we felt matched the aura of the show. Up until then, as character development, none of the vampires on the show were allowed to wear watches. SOTC Multimedia convened with crew and show creator Alan Ball at the start of Season 4– to recommend the show’s star, Bill Compton (played by Stephen Moyer) wear the watch – as “vampires need to know when the sun is coming up!” Ball and the show agreed, and the Altiplano became the first watch ever worn by a vampire on True Blood.
Hundred Acre wine is a highly sought after product developed in small batches and sold at $300/bottle retail and up to $1500/bottle at restaurants. Fans gladly pay, as each vintage is sold out nearly 2.5 years in advance. The brand wanted to perpetuate the cult-like following, and was looking for select opportunities to promote. Among other great placements and event opportunities for the brand, SOTC Multimedia Group secured Hundred Acre in the pinnacle of all film scenes for a luxury brand – poured and sipped in the private wine cellar at Tony Stark’s mansion in “Iron Man 3”. The film went on to become the highest-grossing film of 2013, and stands as the 5th-highest grossing film in movie history.
Hundred Acre wine in Tony Stark's private cellar in Iron Man 3
