India, May 23 -- It doesn't matter if you're not into watches. You can't have missed the Audemars Piguet x Swatch drama over the weekend. Because, like the Indian influencers at Cannes, the algorithm made sure you saw it. The TL;DR: Big-ticket collab between luxe AP and more affordable Swatch. New Royal Pop (the colourful $400 rendition of AP's $25,000-on-the-waitlist Royal Oak design) drops at Swatch stores. Reels of people camping out at NYC Swatch stores even four days ahead, long queues at stores in cities that have civic sense, crowds everywhere else. And then what? Videos of people pushing barricades to enter (to buy a watch), angry hordes chanting to be let in (to buy a watch), stores cancelling the launch, citing public-safety concerns (over buying a watch) and spokespersons announcing that the watches aren't limited-edition after all. It's a bad look for both the brands. But zoom out for a bit. The watch market is tanking globally. We check our phone for the time. Why was everyone so happy to queue up, crowd and share the watch-buying experience online? Lifestyle influencer and investment banker Rizwan Bachav was tracking the collab days before the launch. He knew there would be crowds. Not because waiting in line for a product drop is a status symbol. But because "participating in the frenzy makes them feel part of something exclusive or culturally important, even if they are not particularly fans of the brand". It's why young people line up for the iPhone 17 Pro Max, Air Jordan 1 Retro High '85 OG 'Bred / Banned' sneakers, and other hyped-up products. Boomers will cringe. They've lived through an era when food was scarce, and people queued up at ration shops for rice, oil and sugar because subsidised staples were all they could afford. But in a time when anything can be ordered online, waiting to buy a thing in person is the experience to chase. No ration card needed. Bachav says that launch/drop queuing used to foster a sense of community. Now, brands turn your experience into their marketing content. It generates publicity, which generates hype. And it sets the playbook for the industry. "The AP x Swatch launch showcased how powerful hype can be in making a brand culturally relevant and globally talked about almost instantly," says Vibhuti Munjal, manager of marketing and product at L'Occitane India. "The key is to ensure that the energy around the launch feels curated, enhancing the brand's exclusivity while bringing luxury into regular conversation." The collab did that well. You, who may not even buy a watch this year, knew about the launch. The collab's store-only launch minimised one retail problem: Resellers who bulk-buy items online, hoard, create scarcity and sell their stock for a huge profit. Sure, many of the people in the queue around the world were probably resellers. But that's still a crowd; in videos, that's still hype. Hate on the hype machine, by all means, says Bachav. But "what happened shows how participation in the frenzy has, for many people, become more important than ownership." You're no closer to buying a watch, but you recognise it now. The brands are happy. "Very few industries today can create this level of global conversation overnight around a watch launch."...