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ZENSUSHI
Brand strategy, Brand identity, Social & content, Performance ads, Email & CRM, Campaigns & events
ZENSUSHI at 17: one brand system, a campaign for every season.
Brand book, location strategy, campaigns, paid social, email and menus for ZENSUSHI, the Japanese restaurant group Bucharest has known for 17 years.
The challenge
ZENSUSHI has been part of Bucharest's dining scene for 17 years, with restaurants across the city and an ensō mark people already recognise. Each location speaks to a different crowd, and the brand had never been written down. It needed one reference for how it looks, sounds and behaves, and a steady rhythm of campaigns built on it.
The insight
One brand, different reasons to come back: give each location its own role and let the brand book hold them together.
The approach
We started from what already worked: the 2017 ensō stayed, and we built the system around it. Our strategists gave Nordului and Pipera distinct roles, the place to be and the quiet ritual, and set the bar against the best restaurant brands in the world. The brand book wrote the rules down: story, tone of voice, brand dictionary, location lockups, palette, type, menus and uniforms. Campaigns ran on top of it, always concept first and production second: rooftop parties, an advent calendar inside the app, Black Friday app offers and the brand's 17th anniversary.
The project
Brand book, location strategy, campaigns, paid social, email and menus for ZENSUSHI, the Japanese restaurant group Bucharest has known for 17 years.
What we delivered
- Social strategy and personas for Nordului and Pipera
- International restaurant-brand benchmark
- Brand book
- Location logo lockups
- '23 Days of ZENSUSHI' advent campaign in the app
- '17 Years of ZENSUSHI' anniversary concept, PR kit, invitations and print
- Paid social campaigns
- Email campaigns and newsletters
- Drinks, cocktail and Bluefin menus
- ZEN ABOVE rooftop brand and website (separate case)
Discover — Kick-off and references
A first briefing in July 2025, then a study of how the strongest sushi brands lay out their feeds, before we made a single post.
Brief and social references, July 2025
Define — Two locations, two roles
Pipera became the intimate spot, 'Your quiet sushi ritual.'; Nordului the place to be, 'Good sushi. Even better company.' Each with its own personas and content pillars.
Social strategy, August 2025
Grow — Campaigns on a rhythm
Rooftop launch emails, 'Zen on Friday' parties and a Black Friday offer for app orders, built for every placement in the feed.
Paid social, November 2025
Design — 23 Days of ZENSUSHI
An advent calendar inside the app: a sushi tree drawn inside the ensō as key visual, a polaroid for every day and a tri-fold flyer with app QR codes.
Key visual, daily templates and flyer, December 2025
Design — Seventeen years
The anniversary was planned as a sequence of moments from the brand's history: an identity concept, a PR kit with a DIY sushi set and recipe notebook, invitations and printed envelopes.
ZenAnniversary identity concept, January 2026
Define — Setting the bar
The world's best restaurant brands scored from 1 to 10, with points of parity, points of difference and takeaways. Anything above 7 became an example to follow.
Benchmark matrix
Deliver — The brand book
Story, mission and values, tone of voice on three axes, a brand dictionary, logo and location variations, palette, type, menus, uniform and takeaway packaging proposals.
Brand book, March 2026
Grow — A rooftop becomes a brand
The Nordului rooftop got its own name, identity, sales deck and lead-qualifying website. Read the ZEN ABOVE case.
ZEN ABOVE, October 2026
Results
What it added up to.
The brand book now codifies ZENSUSHI, from tone of voice and brand dictionary to location lockups, menus, uniforms and packaging. Campaigns ran across social, app, email and print through 2025 and 2026, the engagement grew from two locations to the whole group, and the Nordului rooftop became a brand of its own, ZEN ABOVE.
17
years of ZENSUSHI in Bucharest, celebrated with our anniversary campaign
10
restaurants in the ZENSUSHI group, from Bucharest to the seaside
The outcome
What the work changed.
The brand book now codifies ZENSUSHI, from tone of voice and brand dictionary to location lockups, menus, uniforms and packaging. Campaigns ran across social, app, email and print through 2025 and 2026, the engagement grew from two locations to the whole group, and the Nordului rooftop became a brand of its own, ZEN ABOVE.
A note from Alex
With ZENSUSHI the job was never to reinvent anything. The ensō has been on the door since 2017 and people know it. A brand this size needs something quieter: one place that says how it looks, how it sounds and what it never does. The work I'm proudest of here is the most Japanese. Brush strokes, the red, the polaroids: those choices came from the brand, not from us, and that's exactly why they work.
Alex Codreanu
Founder and design lead
What the client said
Credits
FA Studios: strategy, brand book, campaigns, design, paid social, email. Original ensō logo: ZENSUSHI (2017).
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