Swatch X Audemars Piguet: Royal Pop

Pop! They Did It Again.

By: Roger Ruegger

On May 9, Swatch and Audemars Piguet have confirmed on Instagram that they were indeed launching a co-branded Royal Pop collection on May 16. To do so, selected boutiques had received a sealed box (similar to the launches before, see below) a week before, confirming not only the collaboration between the two brands, but also that there are eight color variations, powered by a hand-wound version of the Swatch’s Sistem51 mechanical movement.

“Introducing Audemars Piguet x Swatch, a disruptive collaboration that fuses joyful boldness and positive provocation with the art of haute horlogerie. Two Swiss icons come together to reimagine a complete new way to wear time and bring future generations to the world of mechanical watches.” – Swatch on Instagram

The use of the first hand-wound mechanical movement in the history of Swatch has brought the price to CHF 350 to CHF 375 (for the two versions with small second subdial), similar to the Swatch X Blancpain Scuba Fifty Fathoms from 2024. Speaking of firsts: The “Royal Pop” does represent the first collaboration with a brand from outside of Swatch Group, after Swatch having teamed up with its sister-brands Omega and Blancpain before. In earlier interviews and presentations, Swatch Group-CEO Hayek repeatedly hinted at having asked for several prototypes based on watches like the Royal Oak made, before the introduction of the MoonSwatch in 2022, and the MoonSwatch 1965 (SO33M106) even saw display watches from Longines and Rolex on display. Still, Swatch and Audemars Piguet sharing a dial is definitely taking things further than ever before.

The Timeline

Swatch had started its global teaser campaign on May 3. Three days later, the first hints at the new collaboration and the Royal Oak were dropped (using the same font as the Royal Oak), the box shown here was finally unveiled on Saturday, May 9. In the same period, Swatch Group shares (SWX: UHR) went from CHF183 on May 6 to CHF 210.10 on May 8, creating an ideal segue way to the company’s Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders on May 12. On that day, Swatch finally unveiled the entire collection, first on Instagram later on the site: “Eight unique pocket watches made for endless creative styling. […] All of the watches are available in one of two unique styles: Lépine and Savonette.” More precisely: Huit Blanc (Ref. SSX03W100N), Green Eight (Ref. SSX03G100N), Blaue Acht (Ref. SSX03L101N), Orenji Hachi (Ref. SSX03L103N), Lan Ba (Ref. SSX03L100N), Ocho Negro (Ref. SSX03W101N) and Otg Roz SSX03J100N).

The commercial release of the Royal Pop was on May 16 (with around 200+ boutiques involved for the first drop).

Looking at the partnering brand, searches for “Royal Oak” on Google doubled compared to the week before the campaign, “Audemars Piguet Royal Oak” is seeing eight times more search volume (worldwide), and the official reel on Instagram generated 280,000 likes and 5,600 comments in the first two days. On top, some Swatch stores already saw people setting up camp outside (five days before the launch, and before it came clear it was a pocket and not a wristwatch).

Compared to the MoonSwatch and Scuba Fifty Fathoms launches, however, something else definitely changed in the way these collabs were being perceived in the days leading up to the release:

A Monster Created by the Community?

With the mind-blowingly fast progress made in AI in the last couple of months, social media was immediately flooded with digital mock-ups of what influencers thought the Royal Pop might look like. While we haven gotten used to some of the larger watch blogs doing mock-ups and predictions before Watches and Wonders, now everyone became a designer with a single prompt. As a result, several shockingly convincing videos of animated Royal Oak wristwatches in bioceramic, even instruction manuals and fake catalogue scans were uploaded over the weekend, and sadly quite often mistaken for leaks by those scrolling through their feeds. The problem with that (besides the bigger discussion about trust and the authenticity of online content): How can a brand manage this level of expectation, and potential disappointment, despite both parties having given some rather obvious clues that it wouldn’t be a 41-mm bioceramic version of the Royal Oak? – After all, Audemars Piguet had just launched the Établisseurs Nomade (Ref. 75200TI.OO.01), a timepiece that “shifts effortlessly between a pocket watch, desk clock and pendant”, and Swatch also hinted at a “new way to wear time” in the teaser campaign.