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How to convince customers that a watch is shockproof?

3911 Views 8 Replies 5 Participants Last post by  akable
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In 1955 Citizen introduced their Parashock technology to the Japanese domestic market.

At this time Seiko dominated the local watch market and while the Citizen technologies matched, and in some cases exceeded the Seiko range, the public needed to be convinced.

To highlight the performance of the Parashock technology Citizen devised a number of very public tests to show how shock resistant these new watches were.

These demonstrations involved dropping numerous watches from tall local buildings, planes and helicopters live in front of a public crowd.




This example was conduced June 10th 1958 in the Kyoto City Hall Square.



These demonstrations drew large crowds and they were conducted across the country.

Here is a demonstration being held at a local soccer match.



The results were publicly recorded and then published.

From this table you can see that for the five watches dropped at each event, the overwhelming majority of times all five watches had no issues and in only two instances just one of the five dropped experienced a problem. The table lists the venue, how the watches were dropped e.g. from building, Cessna or helicopter and the number of watches that passed or failed.



This innovative public marketing campaign was well received and the public embraced the Citizen Parashock technology.

It is likely that the success of this campaign was one of the reasons that Citizen went on to have another large public campaign to promote their Parawater technology. This involved putting Citizen Parawater watches into floating buoys that were sent across the Pacific Ocean.

For more information on the Parawater campaign please check out Stephen's blog post Citizen’s 1964 Demonstrations of their Parawater Watches or this forum post How to convince customers that a watch is waterproof?

I found most of this information in an interesting article on domestic watch marketing in the World Wrist Watch Time Spec No. 18 magazine that was part of a larger special on the Japanese watch industry.

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Another series of Citizen's tests, these were pretty dramatic! Thanks for posting Anthony :sign0098:

Stephen
amazing pics...
Fabulous, what height were they dropped from ? dose the chart say ? were they dropped onto grass or concrete ?
Fabulous, what height were they dropped from ? dose the chart say ? were they dropped onto grass or concrete ?
According to Citizen they suspended them from a helicopter at 30 meters and dropped them to the 'ground'

Stephen
According to Citizen they suspended them from a helicopter at 30 meters and dropped them to the 'ground'

Stephen
Thanks, very impressive :)
Yes, 30m is the height that I also have described.

From the photos it seems that they were just dropped onto the concrete or paved ground and presumably the grass field of a soccer pitch.

This was a very public demonstration that shows the faith that Citizen had in their Parashock technology.
Wow, great post that really adds to to the overall quality of this message board.

I must say I am very impressed with Citizen. And I thought Casio was rigourous in their testing of the G-Shock!
I have posted a copy of the original Time Spec article in the Reference Articles, FAQ, and Model Guides forum for reference.

Japanese Watch Marketing 1950's 60's - Time Spec No. 18

This article has info on the Citizen Parashock demonstrations, the Citizen Kuroshio ocean campaign and also a little on the the thinness competitions and multi-jeweled races of the 60's.
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