We started digging the history of the 84 year-old watchmaker and interviewing the employees. The inspiration comes from a note we found in Citizen's Iida factory in Nagano entitled ‘rules of improvement’. The final rule was ‘wherever now is, now is the bottom.’ At first glance it seems a pretty negative thing to say. However in the context of watchmaking, where stasis and status are selling points, it really is a great way of pushing for innovation and improvement in a really humble way. It’s also where the personality of the brand comes from. The employees there are doers. They don't sit round celebrating their successes; they move on and want to do better. With this in mind, we created its first global brand statement: BETTER STARTS NOW and the brand movie “The Endings” and website. Better Starts Now is the simple belief that, no matter who you are and what you do, it is always possible to make something better – and now is the time to start doing it.

BETTER STARTS NOW is the first-ever global brand campaign for Citizen. The website is fittingly designed to reflect a watch face. Viewers are taken on a journey through Citizen's history as the continuous motion of the clock turns to reveal previously unknown stories about Citizen's products, people, culture and beliefs; many crafted specifically from the thoughts and perceptions of real Citizen's employees. To further communicate this belief each message is also animated with a gif and is easily sharable on social channels to help further disseminate Citizen's message. The brand site was picked up by numerous media, including being featured on shots.net in August, the magazine "Web Designing" October issue and introduced in the book "Interaction Design" by bnn publication. The average session time is 01:18, also reached more than 300,000 views over the period of three months.