Lavazza
Do you speak cafe?
Lavazza
Project overview
Mission
Lavazza had a credibility paradox. One of Italy's most established coffee brands, it was not perceived by American consumers as genuinely European. Despite authentic heritage, the brand read as generic premium rather than distinctively Italian, leaving it without a defensible position in an increasingly crowded specialty coffee market.
Discoveries
1. American and European coffee culture exist in completely different contexts. In the U.S., coffee is a utility — a delivery mechanism for caffeine consumed before you go do something else. In European cafe culture, coffee is the thing you are doing. The cup is a reason to sit, to slow down, to be present. The cultural gap isn't about the coffee. It's about what coffee is for.
2. The person you are on vacation is the best version of yourself, and is mostly gone by the time you've cleared customs at home. When Americans experience European cafe culture, they're not just drinking better coffee. They're inhabiting a version of themselves that is calmer, more present, and more alive to small pleasures.
Approach
We positioned Lavazza not through the lens of Italian cultural tropes, but through the experiential truth of what Italian cafe culture does to the people who encounter it. "Do You Speak Café?" frames the brand as a language that Americans briefly become fluent in when they travel, and that Lavazza can help them speak at home.
Our creative mission statement: show that Lavazza is a direct flight back to the person you were while on vacation.
Landing
We won the pitch. The client cited the strategic platform as the decisive factor in awarding the business, describing the vacation-self insight as the first time the brand's positioning had felt emotionally true.
