The Brief

We had no existing customers! Okamura is one of the biggest office furniture makers in Japan, but in America they have almost no name recognition. The Luce is a strikingly unique office chair with a seat that rises forward. Our campaign strategy was to push the envelope to the extreme and make a bold, differentiating claim that would earn this chair the attention it deserves. That message was: this chair will make you more creative. Our target wasn’t office managers or buyers, but the influencers of the office world - people in “creative” offices like design, architecture, or software.

Creative Execution

Our creative execution turned an office chair into something more: a symbol of creativity and collaboration. It was the first time any office furniture brand has made the overt claim to improve your mental and creative performance through comfort. Instead of relying on pretty showroom photos or a generic promise of “great design”, we showcased the brand’s innovation and creativity in a way that rewarded close reading and even wall hanging. (salesmen have reported that customers have hung the posters in their offices and asked for more to give to friends).

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

We were trying to impress cynical, jaded creative workers – basically, ourselves. We wanted them to appreciate the technical innovation that went into this bizarre (but very comfortable!) forward-leaning chair. Our desired response was not immediate sales but word-of-mouth influence and identity branding. Our creative solution was a DM of five double-sided posters filled with a mix of humor, design and technical detail. One side was a parody newspaper filled with funny articles about office collaboration and creativity that referenced technical details of the chair. The other side showed a dramatic visual that explored the same theme as the newspaper page.

Results

The response to the mailer was very positive. 1,616 people visited the Luce at the NEOCON tradeshow, giving the Luce a successful launch at one of the biggest furniture fairs in the world. When used as takeaways at the tradeshow and in showrooms, the newspaper and posters have impressed and entertained sophisticated buyers in Europe and America, branding the Luce as the chair of choice for creative office workers.