Swatch Steel Watches

Watch manufacturer Swatch teamed up with Grandlife to stage an unusual interactive promotional event at the Tribeca Grand Hotel in New York on Friday 11th February, with Swatch using the social micro blogging website Twitter to promote the event. A dress which was made completely from Swatch pastel coloured watches was paraded in front of the event audience by a model who was named as 'Swatch Girl', in total the watch dress consisted of 107 blue, purple and white Swatch watches from the new pastel coloured collection. Anyone who had attended the event was given the chance of getting their hands on one of these pastel Swatch watches simply by sending a tweet to the Swatch Twitter page @swatchus and the unique twist was that the watch would then be removed from the model as tweets came in. The watch dress itself had taken around 2 hours to fit to the model and the event started at midnight. Tweets started coming in faster than anticipated and by 1.30 am all the watches were gone, although many male event goers were left disappointed as the model was wearing another dress underneath. All in all the event was a great success for Swatch and a fantastic promotional idea, and according to Mashable Swatch estimated that around 400,000 people had found out about the event just through Twitter alone.

TweetEmailI came across an interesting site recently called timeanddate.com whichhas answers to pretty much any and all time/date related questions. Among theirmany articles and resources, I found an extremely thorough explanationof Swatch Internet Time, including a tool for converting Internet Time to "standard"time in about 130 different time zones.I wrote about Internet Time in my reviewof the Swatch Paparazzi (watch pictured at right). Internet Time is to timewhat the metric system is to measurement. It was invented by Swatch, and as faras I know, isn't much more than a marketing gimmick at this point, although Ipersonally think it's a pretty interesting concept. Internet Time does away withtime zones, and with the basically arbitrary units of 60 and 24. The day is dividedinto 1000 "beats" with each beat equaling 1 minute and 26.4 seconds. Since thereare no time zones in Internet Time, the time is the same all over the world withthe reference point being Biel, Switzerland, the location of Swatch Group's headquarters.This "new meridian" is referred to as BMT, or Biel Mean Time. Internet Time isexpressed by the number of beats proceeded by an "at" (@) symbol. For instance,2:27 PM in San Francisco is expressed as @997.I really like the concept of Internet Time for two primary reasons:It has the same kind of intuitive logic as the metric system.You don't have to worry about time zones. I often work with people all overthe world, and doing the conversions can be a pain.Of course, time zones do serve a very valuable purpose. They allow us to relatemore easily to other parts of the world. For instance, if I schedule a meetingat @997, and I'm expecting people from all over the world to join, I have no wayof knowing if @997 is in the middle of the night, early in the morning, or rightsmack in the middle of the day for the other attendees. Time zones, on the otherhand, allow me to get a relative sense of time so I can schedule meetingsat times that are convenient for all parties.Check out the articleon timeanddate.com for a much more thorough analysis ofInternet Time.