Swiss Advertisements

Christine Broyhill
November 11, 2009

Upon arriving at the Geneva airport, there were a few images that I saw repeatedly that informed me about an important product in the Swiss culture: the watch advertisements. They followed one after another down the hallway, each one a different brand, but each advertised the same way. The only thing I remember from seeing these advertisements were the watches themselves. Swiss media foregrounds the importance of images rather than words and images together. I haven’t come across many Swiss slogans that I can remember, but I do remember the way the watch looked because of the way it was presented. The Swiss are able to get their message across effectively by just showing the basics of the product. There is no need to go into the engineering of the watch or describe the detail of its elaborate design. The image itself does this for us. We can immediately get a sense of the quality of the watch from the way the watch is displayed. I also haven’t seen many watch advertisements here that have been endorsed by celebrities, apart from George Clooney and the Omega watch, which is also displayed in the same way back in the States. Swiss media focuses on what is key in what they want to communicate to the viewer by limiting the use of words and symbols in their advertisements, which I believe has made them effective.