John Cleese in Accurist 'Accur-wrist'
Leading British watch manufacturer, Accurist, is set to return to TV screens with its first television advertising campaign in a decade – a re-work of its legendary John Cleese ads. The re-released iconic advert is part of Accurist’s high impact 2009 Christmas campaign and will be supported with a targeted TV ad spend of more than £1 million, the brand’s largest to date.
Renowned for bucking trends, Accurist is leading the way for other British brands, by returning to TV as part of its dynamic advertising strategy. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the watch industry, with only 2% of watch advertising currently assigned to television. Originally released in 1978, the John Cleese “Accur-ankle, Accu-wrist!” commercial is still one of the UK’s most memorable TV advertising campaigns, for which Accurist received an array of accolades, including the Palm d’Or Advertising Award.
Chief Executive of Accurist, Andrew Loftus, comments:
“Accurist has always been a market leader in the watch industry and this year, when some brands might be fearful of advertising, we feel it’s important to remind consumers of the strength of our product and our brand heritage, hence our ambitious Christmas advertising strategy. Even today, 30 years after its original release, we still have an amazing reaction to the Accurist John Cleese advert. To celebrate the role of Accurist and John Cleese as British Classics, it makes complete sense to re-release the ad for 2009, to attract new audiences, along with engaging with current fans of the brand. We’re expecting a fantastic reaction and we’re sure our brand and retail partners will also benefit from such a high-profile campaign.”
The management team of the 63 year-old family-owned company decided to re-release the advert to celebrate the brand’s British Classic heritage and to engage with consumers that might not have seen the ad when it originally launched. The advert is part of a high impact TV campaign from Accurist to create stand-out and secure a considerable share of the all-important Christmas gift-buying market.
The 30 second ad, updated for 2009, will air across ITV, Channel 4 and a number of multi-channel stations, with confirmed high profile slots during X-Factor, Champions League and Coronation Street. The ad will air throughout December. Accurist have worked with Moxie Pictures to produce the ad and MGM for Media Buying. The TV campaign will be supported by a strong POS offering, as part of the brand’s wider Christmas marketing strategy.
Accurist is well known for its attention-grabbing and maverick advertising and marketing campaigns:
- In the 1960s, Accurist sponsored the variety show ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’, a form of advertising watch companies had never considered prior to this. Accurist watches were also worn by celebrities such as Princess Anne, Twiggy and The Beatles, gaining worldwide publicity.
- In the 1970s, Accurist signed an exclusive deal for its watches to be worn by pilots of Concorde.
- In 1986, Accurist achieved a major marketing break through by being appointed as the first ever, official sponsor of British Telecom’s Speaking Clock. Since the original sponsorship agreement, Accurist’s speaking clock received the incredible number of almost 3 billion calls, making this the “greatest sponsorship deal of all time”.
- In 1993, Accurist became the first and only Watch company to be formally associated with The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, home of Greenwich Mean Time and The International Meridian Line. Accurist provided them with the new Atomic Clock, which officially records the time for the world.
Accurist prompted considerable public debate with its 1998 ‘Put Some Weight On’ campaign, along with its 1999 ‘No Ordinary Old Timer’ adverts, which featured a Transvestite and a heavily tattooed 60 year-old woman, both wearing the stand out watches.
Tags: Advertising, John Cleese, Television
Why are you promoting the British aspect of your firm? Could you not bring the production back to the UK? You may benefit from the weaker sterling!
Accurist is a wholly British owned company established in London in 1946.
We are immensely proud of our British Heritage. Without reciting our entire history:
Our watches have been worn by members of the Royal Family, the Beatles, they were chosen by British Airways Concorde pilots and all told we have sold over 25,000,000 watches in the UK!
In addition every watch sold by Accurist anywhere in the world has been shipped from our distribution centre here.
Add to this the re-launch of our award winning advertisement of 30 years ago featuring John Cleese which we believe makes the “tag line” Accurist…A Timeless British Classic, totally appropriate to both ourselves, John Cleese and the Ad itself!
Regarding watch production, all watches are made up of a wide variety of components, produced by a number of different specialist manufacturers. It is therefore logical for the final assembly of a watch to take place as close as possible to all these different factories.
You will be pleased to learn however that many of the watch cases and bracelets in our 9 carat gold collection have over the years been made in the UK. The final assembly of all our 9 carat gold watches still takes place here. Our after sales service is also based here, with all repair and refurbishment operations undertaken by our team of skilled watch makers.
where can i buy the yellow faced chronograph for £50.00 as per your latest ad i’ve looked everywhere is this not against the trades description act? to advertise products like this
cheers johgn
We are pleased that you have seen our advertisement and thank you for comments. As you can see, this is a digitally enhanced version of our original advert from 1978 – which we have decided to re-release with a minimal amount of tampering in order to keep faithful to the original award winning ad. The slogan was at the time, intended as an overall statement about our Accurist watches and is still relevant today – all those years later!
The statement ‘give us your £50 quid’ was and still is 30 years later, intended as a general comment to the Accurist collection – we indeed have many watches available between £35.00 and £1,250.00.
In actual fact the yellow dialed chronograph MB754Y featured in the advert has an RRP of £150.00 although we do have one ladies model LB1540P featured which is currently selling at £50.00 in many outlets.
I love the advert, I’ve always had a fascination for watches worn on other parts of the body and wonder why it’s never caught on as a fashion? I know it’s imparctical, but aren’t all fashions??
I remember ring-watches a few years ago although I never owned one, and once saw a woman with a watch set into a pendant on a neckace which I thought was a good idea. I sometimes wear a watch around my ankle after seeing a few other women doing the same, I love the look and the feel of it and it gets a lot of attention!
Thanks for your comment, we do consider ourselves a brand that is pushing the boundaries, whether in the design or marketing of our watches.
We would really encourage you to visit our Facebook site and show us the places where you have worn or indeed do wear your watch!
Stand out from the crowd and become a trendsetter!