I sat in the middle school library, on a slightly uncomfortable chair at a round table, with the latest Car and Driver magazine. (October 1980) It was English class, and they wanted us reading. The teacher didn’t care what we read as long as we were reading.

Being a car guy at an early age, I read car magazines. I read about the latest Porsche or Ferrari, dreaming of the day when I could get behind the wheel of one. As I turned the pages, I came across an ad for a Movado watch, beautiful, elegant, simple: just a black face and a gold circle where the twelve would be. Classic.

When I switched magazines, I picked up Motor Trend and started reading and turning pages; there it was again. The Movado watch ad. Wow, that’s nice. Wouldn’t it be cool to have one? Man, that’s stylish.

What I know now that I didn’t know then is that this is how Movado got their repetition. They knew men looked through multiple magazines and read them every month because they had subscriptions. Back then, there was at least one magazine for every affinity group. Today, websites, online forums on social media, and email newsletters have replaced those magazines.

This both sucks and is great at the same time. It sucks that magazines have all but disappeared because the readers’ behavior is different. A magazine is exciting when it arrives. A magazine sits there waiting to be looked at again. The cover makes you want to open it. The headlines suck you in. Digital versions don’t hit the same way and are easily overlooked or ignored when you are busy scrolling on your phone.

Can social media sell an internally triggered upscale product like a Movado watch? Remember, an internally triggered product is a want or a desire; an externally triggered product is a need.

The answer is “Yes.” Follow the same principles: elegant photography, beautiful words, glamor, and the creation of desire.

Notice they didn’t think you would see the ad once and run to the store to buy one. It was years of slowly building pressure through constant repetition, each time ratcheting up desire, until the magical day came when the pressure could be released and the purchase made.

Do you have the patience to wait? To put advertising out in the world that works, but you can’t measure it because you have no idea when someone will buy? Yet every year sales seem to increase magically. Do you have the confidence to let a campaign run, and run, and run without changing it?

They had the patience to wait, to slowly build the pressure on the internal trigger, until my desire became unbearable. Movado had no idea I would buy that watch twenty-seven years later, in another country while on vacation. All they cared about was that I would buy one someday, somewhere.

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