Overcoming challenges

Case Studies

Yuzu Kyodai believes that every project has its own unique solution. Our past work is testament to the diversity of the challenges we take on, and the variation in the solutions we can generate. Here are a few examples.

Building a beauty brand for Asia

A global home appliance maker saw an immense opportunity to enter the beauty device market. Technological knowhow wasn’t an issue, but rather how to position themselves credibly in a market already full of strong competitors.

The ultimate goal was to create a brand manifesto that resonated with consumers across every East Asian market, in combination with an innovation pipeline of products that epitomised that manifesto’s central promise.

Coffee Culture

The standard global value proposition of a high-end coffee maker was not chiming well with Japanese consumers. Yuzu Kyodai’s help was requested, to make the brand more relevant in Japan’s current coffee space. Previous qualitative research had identified general trends, but the specifics of both Japan’s coffee culture and individuals’ relationship with it had remained elusive.

The challenge was therefore to reinvent and reinvigorate the brand itself, and to find its relevance for Japanese consumers.

Female empowerment

A global personal care brand was not growing in Vietnam as strongly as forecast: its core message of empowering women to pursue their dreams and passions lacked the traction it had elsewhere internationally.

Yuzu Kyodai was tasked first with discovering why the strategy was failing, and then with creating an approach more relevant to Vietnamese women’s lifestyle choices and social pressures.

In order to tackle the topic in a new light, we reframed the problem to address what ‘being you’ means in the context of womanhood in Vietnam.

Fried Chicken in Vietnam

Like most of South East Asia, Vietnam is primarily a chicken market when it comes to eating outside the house. Restaurant chains not offering chicken find it hard to sustain a loyal following. One global quick service restaurant (QSR) chain discovered this recently: upon entering the market, they stayed true to their global menu and its greater focus on beef. Sales growth was consequently slow, and so the decision was made to introduce a fried on-the-bone chicken product.

But the question remained: how can you adequately differentiate and exploit unmet needs in a crammed market?

The sensorials of haircare

A global beauty and personal care brand wanted to translate their haircare products’ efficacy into a premium sensorial experience. The aim was to captivate and delight a customer beyond the moment of purchase in a mature and sometimes mundane sector.

Yuzu Kyodai was asked for in-depth research on the organoleptics of the product inside the packaging: its look, feel and sound. The logic was that understanding how to stimulate every sense within a single product would elevate the consumer experience well beyond category norms.