Going back in time: Citizen imagines the past in latest watch ad

Tokyo – Japanese watch brand Citizen has created an advertisement featuring faux historical ads that highlight the brand’s heritage and focus on its craftsmanship and innovation throughout the years.

Created for the brand by Wieden + Kennedy Tokyo and directed by Johan Kramer, the film features several short clips of Citizen designers at work, highlighting the technological innovations that have made the brand a household name since 1924. Shot from a bird’s-eye view, the ad gives viewers a sense of the different time period in which each historical ad is set. The words THE END are written in the typography of the period in question, along with the year in which the ad was said to be made.

The result is a beautiful montage of innovation that uses Faction Marketing – a combination of fiction and fact – to create a narrative that embraces the real history of the brand while showing its playful personality. For more, see our Personality Brands microtrend.