Davidoff in Japan: Targeting Tokyo's Trendsetters

Davidoff maintains the position as a luxury brand that targets affluent consumers worldwide. Davidoff’s intuition suggested that in Japan, the position and target group would need to shift towards a younger, hip demographic. The request was an exploratory localization exercise to test this hypothesis with target demographics. A “katakana” logo was also requested to reflect the visual attributes of the original Davidoff logo.

The brand positioning exercise followed a market immersion for the Davidoff brand team in Japan. Gathered data indicated the need for a positioning shift. Working with Davidoff team, hip & trendy Tokyoites were identified as the desirable demographics to attract first. YF conceptualized the set of hyper-localized visuals including a Photo-shoot in Shibuya which captured “freedom and the good times”. This photography then served as the base for the advertising and it’s key visual development – the right mix of the imagery, holding device, copy and the white space.