European marques have long dominated the New Zealand luxury car market.

Lexus has never pronounced its proud Japanese origins here, instead behaving almost like a quiet European.

We needed to create something unique, sophisticated and collectible to focus on the Japanese heritage of Lexus and get people excited about this event. The design had to feel modern to showcase the latest technology but also embrace the traditional Japanese philosophy and craftsmanship that lies at the heart of Lexus. We needed to produce 350 invitations that were perfectly and individually hand cut, using traditional paper stock and intricate paper craft engineering.

We decided to embrace our Japanese heritage and to promote the company’s near worship of design perfection, of handmade cars, of mechanical artisanship.

So Lexus ambassadors and the media were invited to our event via a simple piece of classically graceful Japanese craftsmanship.

The aim was to seed the campaign idea, combining the traditional Japanese philosophy and the latest design technology. So the final design of the invitation was the embodiment of this, using a combination of modern design and traditional paper craft engineering.

On seeing the final design and the response level to the initial mail-out (81% acceptance), our client immediately asked us to double the number of invites, regardless of the size of the venue, as the demand for this piece of art within the industry was unprecedented. The launch was attended at capacity and, perhaps more importantly, our dealership network and the media embraced the whole new Lexus outlook.