The Society for Thin Dress Watches

A review of the choices we made in creating a web presence for The Society of Thin Dress Watches.

As we are a non-profit group dedicated to popularizing the wearing of thin dress watches we have limited financial resources and have used Web 2.0 tools to assist our cause. We have chosen to develop an on-line profile with the following internet tools; Youtube, Blog and this Website.

Web 2.0 tools that exist today make it very easy for any cause to lay the seeds for growth at virtually no cost. I have tried to create a professional and upmarket image for myself and The Society for Thin Dress Watches. I have used Web 2.0 tools that allow us to create an effective message as simply as possible. The use of a blog allows interested people to read our blog from key word searches performed and allows people to comment on our movement.

With the focus of our movement as an attachment to high end horology (expensive watchmaking) I have used fonts and colours to give the different Web 2.0 tools a similar flavour. Dress watches and high end watchmakers exist in a large market of wristwatches – top end wristwatches represent 10% of the total market. As high end dress watches from makers such as Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet cost in the vicinity of $15,000-$40,000 I have used upmarket fonts and colours to continue this market appeal. The colours I chose for the website came from a free website template. I chose the blue theme as it was a similar colour to a vintage 1965 Mercedes Benz 230SL Pagoda I owned a few years ago. The Mercedes Pagoda was considered by GQ magazine to be one of the most beautiful cars of all time. The metallic blue being the best colour for this vehicle. The 1965 Mercedes came from an era that is the same as my Vacheron & Constantin dress wristwatch I recently purchased. The Vacheron 6405 dress watch I purchased was manufactured in 1960. In 1967 that very same watch cost $850-. My father had just started his working career with the Commonwealth bank in 1967 for the annual salary of $2006-. Fine dress watches have always been expensive and I have chosen upmarket colours and fonts to relay that message to consumers.

I have used commerical photo editing software to create a logo for the main page. This image was constructed in Photoshop and incorporated some of my photography skills and some editing. I was able to create an upmarket image for the site.

Paul Pluta wearing a white gold Patek Philippe Calatrava 5107 next to a Mercedes Benz 230SL Pagoda.

The central node for the project is our website. This provides a complete summary about what The Society for Thin Dress Watches is all about. Search Engine Optimization of the blogging software and Youtube content however comes up much more readily and acts as a means of drawing people towards the central node – core website. Searching key words as “thin dress watch” immediately brings up our Youtube video on page 1 of Google. The other nodes act as a reciprocator to bring in enquiries and hopefully turn these leads into members.

YOUTUBE
We have decided to further our cause by constructing some quality Youtube videos. All pictures and content was produced by our founding member Paul Pluta. Mr Pluta's dedication to the cause has drawn on his extensive experience as a watch collector over the past 20 years. With the help of Youtube and some still photography I was able to easily put together 4 key video clips. These clips explained the aims of The Society for Thin Dress Watches and also provided a 60 second commercial in a tongue in check manner. To view out Youtube Channel PLEASE CLICK HERE.

BLOG
To allow people to comment on the beliefs of The Society for Thin Dress Watches we have constructed a blog using Wordpress. This allows us to release information to our followers and also take comment from the public. Wordpress allows people to easily construct a blog in minutes. I chose an upmarket theme to go with our cause. The theme has a beautiful picture of a man walking down a laneway of a country estate house (in possibly England or Europe). This sets the theme for our blog and connects with the theme of the website. CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR BLOG.

TWITTER
To attract members from the popular Twitter site I have added some postings in Twitter. This allows people to follow our postings as well as provide a source of interested parties. CLICK HERE TO SEE OUR TWITTER ENTRIES.

WEBSITE
In order to keeps costs down we have chosen to use a Free website template from http://www.steves-templates.com This provided us with a professional looking website without the need to code HTML. We simply chose a colour and theme to match our message and entered text. Photography was performed by Paul Pluta for this project. I have then used Youtube video clip I created to embed into the website to give the site a true multimedia feel. This allows people to easily watch video and read content.

Exegeis