Creative direction · U.S. market · 2026

Hada Labo
Tokyo.

Three directions, one brand truth: making “layer by layer” visible.

A focused creative-direction engagement for Japan’s leading skincare heritage as it worked to become more distinctive, sophisticated and culturally legible in the U.S.

1 × 5-hour Studio Hours package · five focused hours

The assignment underneath the assignment.

The agency arrived with deep market work, a strategic concept and three initial moodboards. The client’s response to all three was that they felt “too ordinary and basic.”

The unresolved question was not simply what the content should look like. It was how to turn Hada Labo Tokyo’s most ownable product truth—the way three forms of hyaluronic acid hydrate at different depths—into a brand world people could feel.

I was brought in to answer that question creatively, without discarding the useful strategy already completed.

Hada Labo Tokyo's existing U.S. Instagram grid before the creative direction engagement
Before · A recognizable product, but a fragmented and heavily product-led social world

Three commercially plausible futures—not three variations of the same moodboard.

Direction 01

Layering Milk

Make the unusual lotion format the ritual. Product and ingredient education become secondary to the pressable, mochi-bounce sensation of skin hydrated layer by layer: premium, haptic and sensorial rather than sterile.

Layering Milk creative direction
Original rendered photography moodboard for Layering Milk
Original rendered moodboard · created for this direction
Layering Milk category references
Category reference world · the competitive context around the original direction
Direction 02

Three Forms.
Three Depths.
Three Layers.

Own one ingredient story and make the filtration action visible. A crisp, science-forward system uses refraction, glow and depth to turn superior hyaluronic acid from a claim into an understandable visual device.

Three Forms, Three Depths, Three Layers creative direction
Original rendered photography moodboard for Three Forms, Three Depths, Three Layers
Original rendered moodboard · created for this direction
Hyaluronic acid category references
Category reference world · the competitive context around the original direction
Direction 03

Pacific Beauty

Elevate the brand through Asia-Pacific origin and underleveraged wild ingredients. De-emphasize packaging, expand beyond pink and invite a quiet-luxury customer into a world where pharmaceutical precision meets nature.

Pacific Beauty creative direction
Original rendered photography moodboard for Pacific Beauty
Original rendered moodboard · created for this direction
Pacific Beauty category references
Category reference world · the competitive context around the original direction

Senior judgment, made visible fast.

The deliverable did not attempt to finish production before a direction had been chosen. It made three meaningfully different futures tangible enough for a team to react to, align around and build.

This is the ideal Studio Hours assignment: a finite, consequential question answered with concentrated strategy, creative authorship and speed.