• January 12, 2012

Haute horology brand (that's "expensive watch" for the 99%) Audemars Piguet is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its Royal Oak sports watch with a new global ad campaign and brand identity.

The campaign, created by the Lowe Superculture in London, will feature shots by still-life photographer Richard Foster and landscape photographer Dan Holdsworth.  

Also new is a tag line, "To break the rules, you must first master them." 

The bi-focal campaign has a vector highlighting this year's collection as photographed in extreme closeup by Foster. Those ads take the "Grey's Anatomy" (the book) route typical of the sector, where watches are shown artfully dissected, with components in bijou-esque arrays.

The second part of the campaign focuses on brand iconography through history, featuring Holdsworth's photography in the Swiss watch-making region of Vallée de Joux.

The company has also altered its logo and switched its "Le maître de l’horlogerie depuis 1875" line with "La Brassus," the name of the village in the Vallée de Joux from which Audemars Piguet hails. 

In a statement, the company says it is trying to avoid the watch-as-heirloom tack, which these days has been pretty much mined to death by Patek Philippe,  whose ads feature blue-blooded patricians 'cold lam ping' with their sons.