With some people, particularly young adults and teens, no longer wearing a watch—instead checking the time on their iPhones, BlackBerrys, or other digital pals—Omega has been marketing the thrill of adventure and pioneering spirit it envisions in its luxury timepieces.

In the spring and summer, Omega ads associated the Speedmaster watch it introduced in 1957 with the Apollo 11 astronauts who wore it 40 years ago while taking man’s first walk on the lunar surface and President John F. Kennedy’s goal “to go to the moon.” The idea was for feelings of pioneering adventure to rub off on the brand and its customers, said Stephen Urquhart, president and chief executive officer of Omega.

Omega is taking a different route in its Monocle campaign, launched in October, pairing celebrity endorsers with a 10th anniversary, retro-flavored salute to its Co-Axial technology. It’s not a sexy strike for the ads to highlight the watch movement’s “revolutionary escapement and the other tiny components, which make up Omega’s Co-Axial calibres.” But in duets with a range of celebrities using watchmakers’ loupes—perhaps symbolizing their perception of a watch’s value—the technology is humanized.

Brand ambassadors such as Cindy Crawford, Michael Phelps, Nicole Kidman, George Clooney, and Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin are portrayed in close-ups beside enlarged images of the Co-Axial movement, with story lines tying their lifestyles to their Omega watches and the Co-Axial function of making watches more accurate by reducing the friction among their inner works.

“The Beauty Is in the Detail,” reads the headline in the Cindy Crawford version of the new ads, which appeared Tuesday in the New York Times.

Other headlines in the current campaign include the Aldrin take: “It’s Not Rocket Science. But It’s Close.” And Formula One racer Michael Schumacher’s “When Faster Isn’t Better.”

WWD: Did Omega’s print ads this summer for the Omega watch worn by both President Kennedy and the NASA astronauts who landed on the moon in 1969 represent an appeal to people’s emotions? To their subconscious desires?

Stephen Urquhart: The print ads have certainly appealed to people’s emotions. This year, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, it made sense for Omega—whose Speedmasters were part of that and every other NASA mission since 1963—to recall the spirit and adventure of Apollo. And it would be impossible to tell the story of NASA’s lunar missions without referring to President Kennedy’s challenge in 1961 to reach the moon before that decade was finished. We were delighted that the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation allowed us to use those images, which were a complement to the rest of our campaign.