GILAD ZADOK IS making waves in the international watch world with an insider point of view, an iPhone 14 and a sense of humor honed by a background in improv comedy.
Zadok launched @zadoktime in February 2022 after it had become clear that Zadok Jewelers’ main Instagram account, focused on jewelry and diamonds, had an audience that was 90 percent female, and that the guys, particularly the watch collectors, were tuning out. “Watch guys would follow for a while and then stop,” Zadok says. “If we’re showing 95 percent jewelry and diamonds, the guys who are watch aficionados or watch geeks, they didn’t want to see that.”
Zadok Time’s content is often playful and humorous, and it has organically captured the attention of everyone from celebrity watch collectors and professional athletes to executives from prestigious timepiece brands.
Gilad Zadok
Before becoming marketing director of Zadok Jewelers in Houston, Zadok trained in improv and sketch comedy at the Groundings Theater in West Hollywood and attended the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television for a graduate program in feature film producing and screenwriting. He also worked as a production assistant, both as a freelancer and for producers/directors/screenwriters Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz at the Bedford Falls Company in Santa Monica.
The Instagram tone can be humorous but can’t go too far since Zadok is representing not only the family business but also the Zadoks’ watch brand partners.
“When you make a reel, you have to use different audio to get more reach,” he says. “Sometimes they’re funny, and there may be a curse word in there, but I know who my audience is.”
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Because Zadok uses his own distinctive voice and point of view, viral possibilities seem limitless.
While attending the March 2022 trade show Watches and Wonders in Geneva, Zadok learned that Bulgari had just released the thinnest mechanical watch ever made. After he posted a photo of it, notifications on his phone went “nuts.” Within a year, that post had garnered 550,131 likes and reached 27.4 million accounts.
“I was born and raised in this business,” he says. “I have a perspective and a lifelong experience with brands. An industry insider perspective. I sit with the CEOS, I sit with the presidents, the head of Cartier North America.” He has conversations and sees products that are well out of the scope of most people’s experience.
His efforts have brought awareness to Zadok’s as an elite watch destination. “People started reaching out and asking if that watch were available, or when are you getting those in, and I’d wind up on the phone talking with watch collectors,” he says. “We see a lot of traffic coming from our website to our Instagram. I constantly hear feedback.”
As director of marketing, Zadok had stepped into a hands-on social media role often enough to know his watch account would be a major commitment. “It’s a machine,” he says. But his background in film and television saves time when he’s editing and creating content. “I have a passion for it and it comes out,” he says. “It’s also storytelling, and with my film background, creativity comes into it. I enjoy myself, and so I can find time for it.”
Zadok works with his parents, Zadok founders Dror and Helene; his wife, Lisa; two brothers, Jonathan and Segev; and sisters-in-law Amy and Michelle. Of the three Zadok brothers, he’s the creative one, he says. “That’s just my brain,” he says. “That’s how I view the world.”
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