21st Century Branding: Mr. Charles Wright, MD, Wolff Olins

23rd October 2012 saw the World’s #1 Brand Consultancy firm, Wolff Olins, mark its presence at IIML. None other than the MD, Mr. Charles Wright, addressed the inquisitive students and shared his insights on 21st century branding. The talk was organized by the Industry Interaction Cell in collaboration with the Placement Committee. Representatives from leading media houses thronged to cover the event. The venue was a packed house!

Mr. Wright is a CA by profession. He worked with Accenture before joining Wolff Olins as CFO. He has worked throughout Europe, China and India. Some of his international clients include the London 2012 Olympics, Tate, GE, Unilever, Sony Ericsson, (RED), New York City, Mercedez-Benz, AOL, PWC, Asian Art Museum, and Orange. In India, he has worked for the Adani Group, Hero Moto Corp, Tata Docomo and the Tata Group.
Mr. Wright owned the stage right from the start and instantly built rapport with the audience through his humor and poised disposition. His talk was very well structured and he presented as if the audience was his client. He started off with an overview and history of Wolff Olins, after which he spoke on his recent key achievement, the branding of London Olympics, and his experiences in building its brand and logo. He then took up 3 clients from his extensive client list and presented his work on them one by one. These included TATA Docomo, the Adani Group and (RED).
On the TATA Docomo front, it was about competition and how to stand out in the plethora of mobile carriers by branding. Docomo’s identity was retained and the brand was positioned as playful and unconventional. Mr. Wright pointed out that the size and color of the letters in the logo were different in order to signify playfulness, a key attribute of the brand. Among Wolff Olins’s key suggestions was per second billing, the service innovation that disrupted the Indian market and allowed Tata Docomo to build a substantial base in spite of being a late entrant. This chimed in with Wolff Olins’s philosophy of not just building a better image for the firm, but a better reality.
Mr. Wright spoke of how he helped change the view of the Adani Group both within and outside the firm. Earlier, the Group viewed itself as a ‘behemoth’ spread across twenty plus businesses. Wolff Olins helped structure these businesses and helped the Adani Group view itself as an integrated business with a presence that stretched from the sourcing of raw materials, through the logistics involved in transporting them, down to the production of energy from these raw materials.
(RED) leveraged the core insight that charity must not rely on guilt but on the pleasure of consumption to raise its money. Based on Wolff Olins’s suggestion, (RED) affiliated itself with the top brands of the world, including Apple, Nike, Starbucks and Volkswagen among others, and created (RED) products made by each of them. The strategy was termed ‘ethical consumerism’ by pundits, and created a massive amount of buzz around itself.
Mr. Wright spoke on various other aspects of branding, stressing that branding is all about storytelling in a creative and concise manner. He then explained that Brand Consultancy is a healthy mix of strategy and creativity and, as a result, faces competition from both management consultants and advertising agencies. Mr. Wright also spoke of how each function, including operations, HR, marketing and finance, are looked into in order to formulate a holistic brand strategy. Branding is a step wise approach; it first converts hostility to acceptance, then to liking and finally creates love for the brand. He cited the example of Skype.
Mr. Wright ended the talk by planting a question in the minds of the audience: “Why can’t India do for marketing what it has done for IT?” Many tried to answer this question which eventually quickly turned into a
good discussion. After that it was the question-answer round with questions ranging from his personal experiences to his views on Indian brands.

Mr. Wright was really delighted with the enthusiasm of the listeners, and IIM Lucknow was happy to host such a vibrant thinker on campus.

P&G Unplugged: A Talk by Mr. Damon Frost

The Industry Interaction Cell brought to IIM Lucknow its first offering of what is going to be an exciting year - “P&G Unplugged:  The Strategic Role of Technology in P&G”

On the 28th of June, IIM Lucknow hosted Mr. Damon Frost, Associate Director, P&G Global Business Services. As the Global Business Services leader, Mr. Frost drives the strategic use of technology by Proctor & Gamble’s 127,000 employees in more than 80 countries worldwide. With over a decade of senior management experience at P&G, Mr. Frost has been instrumental in leading the company’s Communication and Collaboration services globally and formulating its digital strategy, along with the development of the next generation of Business Intelligence tools within the firm’s business units.

Mr. Frost’s arrival on campus gave all of us a privileged insider’s view of how a huge corporation like P&G is using technology to win in the FMCG sector. For instance, the integration of the entire value chain using technology has yielded rich insights into consumption patterns. These insights are very specific, local, and enable rapid managerial response to fluctuations in consumption.

Additionally, Mr. Frost spoke of the innovative ‘Virtual Stores’ concept, that enables quick, and potentially automated changes in layouts to influence sales.

Over and above his interaction with the students of PGP27 and PGP28, Mr. Frost also agreed to collaborate with Professors from IIM Lucknow for the creation of Case Studies on P&G’s IT function.

Anjuman 2012

Anjuman – The Annual Leader’s Corporate Luncheon stands unique in its aim to bring together students and industry leaders for an informal interaction over a sumptuous Nawabi Lunch. Anjuman 2012, structured along the same lines as its predecessors, brought together renowned industry leaders as keynote speakers and provided an ideal platform for corporate heads, IIM Lucknow faculty and a select set of students to learn from each other.

Organized around the theme ‘ Innovate, Implement and Inspire: Build a Legacy’, Anjuman sought to celebrate the business houses, leaders and institutions who have through their continuous and consistent show of brilliance shaped the county.

 The Keynote Speakers for this year’s event were:

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·         Mr. S D Latkar  (CFO, Computational Research Laboratories)

·         Mr. Jayant Krishna (CSI Lucknow Chairman & Principal Consultant, TCS)

·         Mr. Chaitanya Kalbag (Editor, Business Today)

·         Mr. Sheshadri Rajaram (CEO,  Erhardt + Leimer India Pvt. Ltd)

·         Mr. Santosh Nair (Editor, moneycontrol.com)

The event was flagged off by a keynote address by Dr. Devi Singh (Director, IIM Lucknow) who set the theme of the discussion by expressing how legacy stemmed from the fact that some were brave enough to think beyond the obvious, employ successfully ideas which no one else would dare to employ and then persistently work on those ideas to make a substantial difference to the lives of all those it touched. He pointed out that most of us Indians believe that we are creative but it is our failure to take those ideas to conclusion that threatens our quest to establish India as a global power in the next two decades.

Mr. S D Latkar (CFO, Computational Research Laboratories) shared his long experience with the Tata Group, narrating to the audience not only various innovations he had seen but also the work done in developing Computational Research Laboratories

Mr. Jayant Krishna (CSI Lucknow Chairman & Principal Consultant, TCS) sought, through examples to explain how an enterprise builds its legacy. Narrating anecdotes highlighting the rise of the Tata Group, he illustrated how at times through innovation, how at times choosing to focus on strengths and how sometimes through the sheer desire to change the way you want the world to see you can inspire a company to rise from humble beginnings to become one of the most respected names of the world.

 Mr. Chaitanya Kalbag (Editor, Business Today), the first Asian to rise to one of the most senior positions at Reuters, shared with the audience his views on how Indian culture and work ethics are different with in relation to innovation, from that of its western counterparts. He put before the house that perhaps we as Indians should detach ourselves from our culture in order to innovate and build India as an economic powerhouse. He did concede however that countries such as Japan and Korea have managed to embrace innovation as a part of their culture and grow economically while holding steadfast to their traditional values.

Mr. Sheshadri Rajaram (CEO,  Erhardt + Leimer India Pvt. Ltd) stated that perhaps it is easier to innovate when you are in charge of a smaller organization than when you are involved in a large company and hindered by countless processes. He used his own experience as an example of how being hindered in a big company before his business education, he chose to work for a smaller firm post MBA and how the satisfaction of being able to innovate as he chooses stops him from even thinking of swapping organizations

Mr. Santosh Nair  (Editor, moneycontrol.com) bought to the table his technical insights from moneycontrol.com, impressing upon the audience the need for innovation for a nascent idea to grow and eventually establish itself in the wider scheme of things.  

Following the keynote addresses and an insightful Q&A session with the audience, the event concluded with a sumptuous lunch which presented the lighter side of the leaders, as they opened up to informal discussion with the attendees. Speaking about the event, Rishikesh Tripathy, a second year student of IIM Lucknow remarked, “Events such as Anjuman help the students in viewing the regular course work at IIM through the lens of Industry people. These interactions truly are an invaluable part of an IIM experience.”