4 BUSINESS OF BRANDS
NEW-AGE DESIGNERS WANT A SEAT AT THE DECISION-MAKING TABLE
Designed To Succeed
DESIGN MASTERS
Design thinking is a new philosophy that helps designers enter the boardroom and help companies in
brand experience, trends research, business process design and corporate strategy, reports Vikas Kumar
T
HERE’S LITTLE IN MANOJ KOTHARI’S
appearance to suggest the wildly creative
nature of his profession. The relaxed
formal attire and well-trimmed look
point towards a serious business
professional. And when he uses terms
like “brand architecture” and “perceptual
mapping” it’s easy to think of him as a
branding guru or a market researcher.
But Kothari is actually a designer. A
designer with a difference.
Kothari, who founded Onio Design,
and others of his ilk are no longer content
designing refrigerators, mobile phones
and soap wrappers. They now hope to
take on a bigger, more serious role in their
clients’ businesses—from brand
experience and trends research to
business process design to re-crafting
corporate strategy. In short, they want a
seat at the decision-making table.
How? Design thinking is a new philoso-
phy that has helped these firms move into
areas traditionally occupied by research
houses, advertising agencies and
consulting firms. “Design is a mindset. A
design orientation helps see the world in a
different way,” says Santosh Desai,
managing director, Future Brands, a
brand consulting firm.
For someone who has no design
background, Revathi Kant’s position as
head of Titan’s Design Studio is a perfect
indicator of this shift in perception. “The
transformation is happening. We are now
beginning to realise in India that design is
going to be a key differentiator,” she says.
Though it cannot help size the market,
design helps capture even what
consumers aren’t saying yet, she says.
“Market research gets the facts but design
gives a better understanding of deep latent
needs of consumers… To know what’s the
next big thing, what people on the
‘extreme’ are doing, you need design
research,” she says.
A CASE IN POINT IS ONIO’S
recent project for Secure Meters, a
Rs 700-crore company based in
Udaipur that provides metering solutions
for consumers of utility companies and to
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Designer entrepreneurs such as Aditya Dev Sood (left) and Manoj Kothari are bringing new insights into India Inc’s thinking
industrial customers.
Secure went global in 1996 after acquir-
ing British metering company PRI, an erst-
while technical collaborator. It snapped up
five other small brands in Sweden,
Australia and the UK over the next
decade. Pitted against global giants such as
Honeywell and GE, Secure had a million-
dollar question to answer: whether to
continue with a portfolio of local brands
across the globe or opt for a single
corporate identity?
It was, in classical marketing terms, a
choice between a house of brands (like
P&G) and a branded house (like
Samsung). Given the scale of Secure’s
worldwide operations and different
cultures involved, it was necessary to run a
comprehensive and rigorous validation
exercise before arriving at any decision,
says Sanjaya Singhal, managing director,
Secure Meters.
Besides ad agencies and market
research firms, Singhal invited Onio,
which had previously done a visual
re-branding exercise for the company,
for opinion.
“The question posed to us was—how
could we transition these brands into the
overall (Secure) brand without losing
the equity of those individual brands,”
says Kothari.
Applying techniques like perceptual
mapping (where stakeholders’
perceptions about the company and its
culture were mapped on a two-
dimensional scale) and corporate ethnog-
raphy (observation and in-depth
conversations with people to uncover pat-
terns of thought) Kothari and his team
met customers, dealers, distributors and
employees across four locations in
Sweden, India and the UK in an exercise
that lasted six months.
Kothari explains that he used methods
integral to a designer’s toolkit—seeking
insights rather than inferences,
visualizing problems across multiple
dimensions, storytelling, prototyping and
making everyone a participant in the
process. “We involved people in
visualizing the new integrated brand.
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People realized how a small local
company can take on global competition;
what values they’ve observed in the com-
pany; what they would like to build
afresh and so on.”
For example, a senior manager at one
of the acquired companies, Horstmann
Controls in Bristol, UK, who had moved
from a bigger competitor Landis+Gyr, was
surprised about the nimbleness agility of
Secure’s culture. Even casual
conversations weren’t ignored. When he
was first being chauffeured to the
company’s office in Udaipur, Kothari
recalls asking the driver what he thought
of his employer. “Yeh log hamesha kuch
naya karte rehte hain (they are always do-
NEW MINDSET
While designers world over
have been pitching for a more
strategic role in their clients'
businesses for some time, it is
only now that the recognition
is happening
ing something new),” he was told. That
was a simple yet crucial insight into the in-
novative nature of the company’s culture.
The exercise validated a single brand
identity approach that would espouse the
core values emerging from the research.
For a mid-sized player like Secure, it also
made economic sense to promote a single
brand globally, as a ‘branded house’.
Singhal says it was the back-to-basics
approach by Kothari and his team that
made decision simpler to make: “They
were not just the solution but part of the
solution, which we crafted for ourselves.
We learnt the methodology and process,
so the choices were conscious choices.”
F OR ADITYA DEV SOOD, DESIGN
is about making insights actionable.
“Crafting the path to making
insights actionable is a good contemporary
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definition of design,” says the founder and
CEO of Centre for Knowledge Societies,
which he describes as an innovation
consulting firm that employs design
principles to address business and social
development issues.
A design firm can visualise a problem
so that more people understand and
become part of the solution-decoding
process, he says. Breaking up large
challenges into small, discrete groups is
also a designer’s default approach to a sit-
uation. He shows us how.
A huge process flowchart on a wall at
CKS’s Greater Kailash office in New Delhi
is so long that it needs more than just a
glance; it needs a walk-through. The chart
tells a story—of how immunization
vaccines are delivered and administered in
villages, complete with the key players,
the problem areas, social and operational
issues along the way to vividly depict what
happens at various stages.
It’s part of a Gates Foundation project
to develop an efficient vaccine delivery
mechanism in rural north India where
immunization rates were low. Says
Sood, “We sought first to understand
how vaccine services are being
delivered, where the system is most vul-
nerable, and how health workers
interact with recipient families.” The
CKS team used extensive photographic
documentation and design diaries in the
field to map the process on the flow chart
so redundancies and errors were more
clearly identified.
A variety of solution concepts were
generated and visualised as storyboards.
Each solution was then shown to front-
line health workers, district level adminis-
trators and Indian and international
healthcare experts for feedback on viabili-
ty, impact and cost. Finally more than 25
ideas were generated and refined such as
an improved vaccine delivery kit, mobile
phone based reminders and call outs to re-
cipient families.
What might appear utterly simplistic in
the above process may not be as evident
through conventional methods of
research and problem solving, says Sood.
FREEWHEEL NEXT STAGE IN INDIA WILL BE ABOUT BROADENING PC BASE
Future of Atom is much
more exciting: Intel
I NTEL, the world’s largest chipmaker, believes the
evolution of the PC market in India is at a "point of
urgency". If the first stage was all about ensuring
wide availability of the product and the second stage
was about building desirability, the third stage is about
evolution of technology, style and new form factors. In-
tel wants to build on this facet across its marketing and
branding strategy in the Indian market. Talking to
Writankar Mukherjee, Intel South Asia marketing
director Prakash Bagri spoke about the evolution of the
Indian PC market, how Intel is championing PC pen-
etration and how successfully it has build the ‘Core’
brand of processors in a market where Intel has been
synonymous with the ‘Pentium’ brand. Excerpts.
What’s the way forward for the Indian
PC market?
At Intel, we believe our role is to make the mar-
ket and grow it. In the early days, we played an
active role to create the sales and distribution
of market evolution, where it is vital to create
constant excitement around the product with
newer form factors, newer devices and style. PC
is now much more mainstream, so we need to
develop a sense of urgency around it to ensure
consumers immediately take their purchase
decision. All our communication and
marketing strategy will be centred around
this.Going forward, we think the next stage of
evolution will be all about broadening the
availability of PC in rural areas, create newer
usage of the product, ensure support for local
* THE ECONOMIC TIMES MUMBAI MONDAY 2 AUGUST 2010
ON A NEW HIGH
From Cola war to organised liquor
retail, all have lined up India plan.
MAX OFFENCE
ZAHID
PEPSICO IS EXPECTED TO REVIVE
the cola war in the country when it
launches a campaign for Pepsi Max,
its zero-calorie cola within two
BHARAT CHANDA
weeks. The cola company will bring
out a television commercial, which
will be followed up by a print and
outdoor campaign, industry officials
told ET. PepsiCo will take on market
leader Thums Up by positioning
Pepsi Max as a macho drink with no
sugar and low calories. The
commercial is being made by JWT
India. Interestingly, the new Pepsi
Max campaign in the US also revived
the cola war by comparing it directly
with market leader Coke Zero in a
“Beyond the obvious, traditional research
often fails to uncover the insights that are revamped version of its 1995 ‘Diner’
so crucial. Designers have been trained to Super Bowl commercial.
capture latent needs,” he says. And it’s that
ability that is catching the attention of
companies looking for that extra edge to
HIGH SPIRITS
prepare for the future.
DROPS TOTAL
W HILE DESIGNERS WORLD
over have been pitching for a
more strategic role in their
clients’ businesses for some time, it is
only now that the recognition is happen-
Spirits, a subsidiary
of Bangalore-
based Pace Power
Systems, is making
ing. “Design is entering the boardroom a spirited entry into
now,” says Ashish Deshpande, co- organised liquor
founder at Pune-based Elephant Design, retail with 10
which started as a product design outfit in outlets across Bangalore in two years.
1989. Now it advises companies on “We see an opportunity to offer a
developing new products to redefining superior shopping experience in
consumer segments. high-end spirits outlets,” Venugopal
“The term ‘out-of-the-box’ is part of Rao, chairman of DTS said. After
design thinking,” he says. For example,
the use of ‘triggers’—random set of consolidating in the city, the company
words that are non-related—can set a plans expansion in other metros.
designer thinking in a new direction.
Another technique, co-creation, is about
involving everyone in the research and
INDIA CALLING
development process, from engineers to
housewives to villagers. “When you un- KENWOOD
derstand the concerns, you understand DeLonghi, one of
the need and then you can think of solu-
Europe’s leading
tions,” says Deshpande.
So does all this mean design thinking small appliances
will be India Inc’s latest ticket to global makers, will roll out
glory? Not yet, says innovation and its premium
strategy consultant Shantanu Saha, co- DeLonghi brand in
founder of Nationwide Primary India by next year.
Healthcare Services, who previously The company plans
headed Idiom Design & Consulting. to roll out a portfolio of coffee makers,
Unless design firms break out of their heating equipments and ACs in India
image as mere graphic hot-shops and under this brand. This comes on the
show tangible value addition in other ar- heels of the company launching the
eas, corporates won’t bite the bait, he
says. “Design’s powerful impact on busi- Kenwood brand of kitchen appliances
ness strategy will require a whole new in the country. “We want to utilise the
way of thinking by introducing the Kenwood distribution channel in India
concept of ‘creation of equity through to roll out DeLonghi in India,”
design’. This means that companies will Kenwood DeLonghi commercial
also have to demonstrate to their
stakeholders that design intervention in
business strategy adds equity to the
overall business,” he says.
director Mark J Broad told ET. The
company wants to set up a wholly-
owned arm to handle both brands.
languages and simplify the user interface.
Over the last two years or so, the company
has created a new line of mainstream
processors under the Core brand. How dif-
ficult was this transition?
Undoubtedly, Pentium had become the gold
standard in computing and a household name
in the Indian market. The brand stood for qual-
ity and, hence, it was a huge market challenge
to move to a new brand and build it. We never
told consumers that one was better than the
other. Instead, we told them that Core is the
smart way to computing.
Have you measured the brand recall of
Core versus Pentium in India?
Yes, we have internally studied this, and all I can
say is that the Core brand enjoys equal status
like Pentium in India. Even from the aspiration
point of view, Core has huge brand recall.
What is the future of Atom? PRAKASH BAGRI
Atom has created a new breed of internet-cen- MARKETING DIRECTOR,
tric devices across form factors like nettops and INTEL SOUTH ASIA
netbooks. The processor will find its way into
tablet PC and will create the truly smart range
of smartphones with much better power
optimisation and multi-tasking capabilities.
Atom is today opening itself to the eco-system At Intel, we believe our
of developers, whereby it will move to the next role is to make the
level. The future for Atom is truly much more
exciting than what we have seen till now. market and grow it