Open Letter to IWC from John Mayer (Hodinkee article)

What ever happened to free speech?

Je suis India Whisky Charlie ...

I guess mine just got posted before the cutoff. But I did post quickly on Saturday evening USA EST. I believe it was disrespectful to publish the original Mayer blog right before SIHH. Then the error was compounded by cutting off debate.

Great PR regardless. IWCs social media has always been strong. It's why they've been able to capture so many new / young audiences vs. other 'sunset' brands.

Just look at what bad PR did for Sony's rubbish film :)

To me, everyone is at least 50% right. John Mayer, good for you to use your celebrity and watch collector status to say what many here have said for years. However, you're not absolute, IWC does make some great tool and fun watches and has so for the past 15 years.

Ralph, LevDog, Andrew, Bill and others, you are so right, IWC does a great job on so many fronts. Sure they've had their misses and we don't buy those. Andrew, after you collect your Nobel prize, I recommend you take over PR for our friends at Schaffhausen.

I'm just playing Switzerland here. It's been great reading and it woke up the forum. And a little controversy is definitely healthy and it gets the keystrokes going again.

Larry

+1 Larry! Finally someone understands!

I think most understand. But some people simply criticise point blank, relentlessly, without acknowledging the flip side and the good things IWC are doing. Or accepting the fact that time moves on and change is constant. So people feel the need to defend/explain.

Cheers,

Jarrod

I can't resist adding a related comment to Larry's Switzerland approach.

There has been a spirited discussion here. Some agree with Mayer's position, some disagree, and some are in the middle. Everyone has expressed their opinions clearly, and generally with respect for the fact that others may feel differently.

Compare that to what has transpired at a popular Panerai site. It started with reaction to Panerai's new releases for SIHH. BY my casual observation, the reaction was 80% to 90% negative. "Too far from their roots! Panerai has lost their way! They've sold out! They don't care about collectors!

Fair enough for people to feel that way. Everyone has an opinion and is free to express it. But from there it devolved into personal criticism of other posters, name calling, questioning of family origins, etc. As I read the "conversation", all I could think of was "thank goodness for our hosts, our moderators, and most of all our collector group, which seems to be a whole lot more mature."

Regardless of whether one agrees or not, the discussion here has been great. Thanks, all, for being the group you are!

I believe that Larry Seiden expressed best what many think. After reading all the comments , one can extract valuable and true points from each of the 57 constructive posts in this thread sofar. About half of the reacting collectors (29), are relatively short on the Forum : they have less than 500 posts. I took this completely arbitrary cutt-off at 500 posts to distinguise between "new" and "old" collectors. 28 Posts are coming from collectors, who are longer on the Forum than 5 years and most of them have more than 2000 posts. This indicates that for this topic young and experienced collectors have given their opinion.
Striking for me is the fact that one celebrity, John Mayer, ( I never heard of him, sorry) can evoke so much fuss that even IWC has responded to the open-letter in Hodinkee. I guess that IWC never would have done this if such letter had be sent by a Forum member and I regret that. How beneficial it would have been if IWC had reacted on the Forum to questions such as aftersale service, a topic that caused a lot of negative reactions a few months ago.
How helpful would it have been when the German IWC Forum was in trouble and finally was closed down. We still miss our German and Austrian friends. Yes, I do realise that we have freedom of speech and of course I do know that IWC should not comment on most topics. But for a few tricky items, I guess collectors would appreciate some feed back from Schaffhausen.
Kind regards,
Addrian,
(alwaysiwc).

Adrian, +1

Well said, Adrian.