Well if you remember, about a year or so ago a small Swiss watch company called Romain Jerome came out with the unusual wristwatch that DOESN”T tell the time, and that was a huge hit, completely out of left field, and if you were reading you would remember that I have praised this watch as a move of marketing genius.  A watch that misses the primary mark entirely.

Well I’m delighted to say that they have done it again!

Yes Omega has a watch WORN on the moon, but this watch actually has parts of the moon on it.

Ye s this is Romain Jerome’s “Moon” watch, and unlike any other watch bathed in gold and platinum, this watch has pieces of the moon on it, and here it is:

I have to say that on a marketing and branding level, it’s just brilliant, it’s like a car company that makes a car that doesn’t go anywhere.  It’s so fresh and so unexpected, and what’s more is that you can claim to have part of a celestial body on your wrist.

I love the angle this company is taking, and I hear that they’ll even have a watch with steel from the RMS Titanic.  That will be a very special watch indeed.

I’m sad to say that there is no real shortage of watches surpassing the 6 figure mark, but what is just staggeringly unique about this watch, and ONLY this watch, is that it is the only watch in the world that does NOT tell the time.  I repeat:

THIS WATCH DOES NOT TELL TIME!

So, you may be asking, what DOES it do?

Basically the idea behind the Day&Night is that you have two rotating tourbillons, one that represents the day and looks like a sun, and one that represents the night and looks like the moon.  For 12 hours (day) the sun tourbillon would run while the moon tourbillon remains idle, and after that period of time the moon tourbillon (night) will run whilst the sun tourbillon remains idle.

Now for those who don’t know what a tourbillon is, I will say that it is basically an elaborate and very expensive watch complication that rotates the watch’s “engine.”  Its main purpose was to counter the negative effects of gravity in pocket watches, but in the day of modern-day wristwatches they are merely an exercise in master watchmaking and aren’t of much benefit.

In even more layman terms, they are spinning thingamajigs.

That’s right, there’s no minute hand, hour hand, date displays, or anything like that.  All you get are discs telling you when it’s night and day.  I think we may those already, they are called the sun and the moon, and for me the absence of light is also quite a good indicator of nighttime as well.

Another unique thing about this watch is that instead of filling up its enormous price tag with jewels, precious metals, complications (besides the tourbillons of course), and all that bling-y nonsense, Romain Jerome fills up the Night&Day with rust.  The rust may have come from the Titanic, but it’s still rust nonetheless.  Yes that’s right, if that bezel looks like it’s covered in rust to you, that’s because it is.

If this all sounds really silly to you, that’s because it is really silly.  It’s even more silly to think that this quarter-million plus dollar watch has already sold out.  I mean come on, the very definition of a watch is that it needs to at least ATTEMPT to tell the time.  It doesn’t have to do it very well or hold up in a heavy downpour, but the purpose of a watch is to tell the time when you need it.  Isn’t it?

The Romain Jerome Day&Night, however, doesn’t even bother and instead sells a pre-rusted thing that I am very hesitant to even call a watch.

But hold on, there’s more…

Now I spent all this time bashing this thing for being a rusted and useless contraption that is a complete waste of money, but what I really should be doing is praising it for its marketing genius.

You see in the watch world it is very easy for a company like Rolex, Omega, and even Seiko stay on top of the watch world.  Rolex, after all, practically invented the wristwatch while Seiko invented the quartz watch and Omega made watches that would later be worn on the moon.  It’s really hard for an upstart to succeed in this industry against the giants who have been doing it for years.  You really need to make something innovative and great, but apparently Romain Jerome didn’t have the talent and decided to go another route.

So one day no one has heard of Romain Jerome, and then the next day all of the watch world is clamoring over this rusted contraption.  Pure genius!

As an example from the automotive world, take the Bugatti Veyron.  As a brand Bugatti has not been really heard of since the first half of the 20th century, so instead of just re-launching their brand with some pedestrian family sedan, they built an incredible 1000 horsepower car that can go up to 253 mph and thus become the fastest car in the world.  In other words, to re-enter the car market they made one model that just smashed everything that was thought possible out of road cars.

Achieving that incredible feat for Bugatti took some serious engineering and serious resources, but after seeing this Romain Jerome watch, it makes me think it probably would’ve been easier if Bugatti had built a car that didn’t move at all…