How Stupid Are We! Happy Clocks Sell More….

I know what you’re thinking, what are happy clocks and why does not knowing what they are make me stupid right? Well in all honesty I’ve only recently been made aware of this marketing phenomenon myself. Have you ever been browsing in a shop or online at clocks and realised almost EVERY clock is set to either 8 minutes to 2 or 8 minutes past 10? Well so have I, and when I somehow stumbled across the truth as to why, it blew my mind.

Now, you may have your own mythical theories as to why clocks are set to this time, you may think it’s because it symbolises the time of death of J.F Kennedy, Martin Luther King & Abraham Lincoln. Well let me just quickly put you out of your misery, that’s all absolute nonsense. It’s been proven the genuine time of deaths and shootings of these icons do not come close to correlating with the time clocks are set to. Lincoln was in fact shot at 10:15 and pronounced dead the next morning at 7:22am. JFK was shot at 12:30pm and pronounced dead at 7:05pm. And finally, Martin Luther King was shot at 6:01pm and pronounced dead at 7:05pm.

Another theory some of you might be aware of, which I’ll be putting to bed unfortunately, is that the time is specific to when the atomic bomb impacted with Hiroshima & Nagasaki. And our survey says? UH-UUH! This theory has also been proven wrong, as the actual time the ‘fat man bomb’ impacted on Hiroshima at 11:02am local time. The ‘little boy bomb’ impacted on Nagasaki at 8:15am local time.

So, by reading this far I’m sure you itching for me to announce the god damn reason clocks are always set this way. Well, it all comes down to AESTHETICS. When purchasing something and spending our money, as customers we are all obsessed with beauty or the appreciation of beauty whether we like it or not, we all do it unconsciously. The 10:10 position on a watch or clock is visually pleasing to us for a number of reasons…..

The hour hand and the minutes hand are not overlapping making them clearly visible and proportionate for the customer to admire.
The arrangement of the hands is symmetrical, which proves more pleasing to the eye than asymmetrical, again making the clock/watch more appealing.
The company’s logo, whether it’s Rolex or Quartz, is clearly visible and nicely framed by the hands.
Additional elements on the base of the clock or watch, for example, date windows or secondary dials.

According to the fine clock makers at Timex, who set their merchandise to 10:09:36 exactly, the old setting used to be 8:20, but it had to be changed as it looked as if the clock was somehow frowning. Which sounds absurd considering we are talking about an emotionless clock here, but you’d be surprised the way our brain correlates between the image of a clock and the emotion we then feel towards it.