Creating visual equity

Creating visual equity!
Rina Chandran
Design — for everything from soap wrappers to store signage — is taking centre stage as companies seek to differentiate their products, and take on spiffy foreign offerings on shop shelves. Ad agencies are stepping up to offer specialised services.
WHEN Rachna Narang, Executive Director of Mars Restaurants, wanted to position a range of premium chocolates as a unique corporate gift, she went to Lintas' specialised design unit, dCell, for ideas. Instead of a gold-coloured box with a satin ribbon, dCell created `Chocolate Stories' — chocolates packaged like classic books, complete with gold spine and curvy lettering. The `chocoliterature' boxes became instant collector's items.
With the retail environment becoming organised, and with more products crowding shop shelves, design — or visual identity in the form of colour, symbols, shape and structure — has become increasingly important to differentiate brands. Besides, more international brands are coming in, even as home-grown brands look outward, says Sabyasachi Mishra, Vice President, dCell. "These concerns did not exist 10 years ago, but with the likes of Tommy Hilfiger coming in, Indian brands are looking a little tired in comparison," he says. "At the same time, there are international brands that want to adopt an Indian sensibility — so there is opportunity for design both ways."
Potential clients at dCell are taken through an exhibition rather than a PowerPoint presentation, and the items range from soap wrappers and shaving cream tubes to a detergent dispenser, credit cards and retail signage. The division comprises about 15 people with formal design and communications backgrounds, and offers packaging, graphic design, corporate identity, product and structural design, merchandise and naming services. Its recent work includes an export tea brand, collectible cans for Coke in Thailand, a range of Axe products, various Unilever brands, HSBC credit cards, Go 92.5 FM, Surf Excel packaging, Vim bar wrappers, and branding architecture for a large retail chain — store windows, signage, and visual merchandise.
Clients who haggled over a bill of Rs 5,000 for design are now willing to pay several lakhs for specialist services, as they are aware of the need for a unique visual identity and structural differentiation, Mishra says. "Design is basically about creating visual equity through colour — which is the first thing you notice — or symbols, which dominate our religion and is a part of our lives, and through shapes and signature," he says. "It has to differentiate, and take the positioning forward. And while it has to be functional, it can also delight and excite."
So far, a strategic understanding of design was missing, Mishra says. For example, the way a mass market consumer perceives design is very different: a consumer in a small town uses colour — "only flat colours, no vignettes" — and symbols as his handles of recognition, and may not even notice a misspelling, he adds. In the past, large companies have gone abroad for design, while international firms like Shining have done some very visible work for the likes of Wipro and Britannia.
Until recently, art directors in agencies designed the logo, packaging and other visual elements of a product; but lately, structural design — or shapes — has become critical, and this is where a specialist unit of an ad agency scores over a design hot shop, as it has a communication background and a strategic understanding of brands. "We have knowledge of the context of where and how design operates, and that informs our work," says Mishra, who offers a choice of business cards with images of colourful fruits, vegetables, nuts and spices, because the best designs are inspired by Nature. "At dCell, we bring a combination of aesthetic expertise — which is the forte of design shops — and strategic capability."
That is also the reasoning at Design Sutra, Contract Advertising's design unit: originally named Contract Design, the outfit has done work for such brands as Cadbury, JW Marriott, Asian Paints, Platinum, Raymond Group, ABN-Amro Bank, Reynold's and Shopper's Stop. Specialist designers can better appreciate form, structure and shape, and also understand the science of shelf throw, food grade material, air contamination, stackability and spill-proof packaging, says Rajiv Sabnis, Senior Vice President, Contract.
"The task is to get the client better `brand throw' in the marketplace, and make the brand look distinct on the shelf," he says. "Design specialists have the ability to translate positioning into design — and to them, a product label is more important than a print ad."
At Lemon Communications, a Euro-RSCG company, a unique design and identity are seen as essential, as the impact of conventional advertising is limited. For the food court in Mumbai's Inox multiplex, Lemon created the branding and visual identity. Working closely with auto design guru, Dilip Chabbria, Lemon named it `Refuel', and created the identity of a gas station — and extended it to other properties on the premises. For Culture Curry, a south Indian restaurant, Lemon created the logo and the menu, which became such a hit with foreign tourists, that it was priced at $20 for them to buy, says Chief Creative Officer, Ravi Deshpande. Lemon is now working on the retail identity for Gili jewellery.
Today, design projects can cost anything from Rs 50,000 for a label to a couple of lakhs for packaging and Rs 20-50 lakh for integrated retail identity, and design units of ad agencies have become viable profit centres. Retail and FMCGs will be the primary drivers of specialised design services, as design can take the brand positioning forward, and actually swing a consumer's decision: "Packaging, for instance, is the last chance to talk to your consumer before she decides to buy," says Ashish Bhasin, Director - Integrated Marketing Group of Lintas.
One of the challenges — besides convincing clients that the money is worth it — is the lack of research. While dCell works closely with the ad research team to understand how consumers relate to visual equity, the research tools available now are international, and cannot be used in India because design sensibility is so cultural, and because the way we respond to design is so irrational, says Mishra, who would like to get his hands on postcards, railway booking forms, money order forms and road signs, to give them a facelift. "There's too much focus on what should work — but design can also delight," he says.
The distinct shape of the Coca-Cola bottle is perhaps just as recognised as the red-and-white logo itself, and an entire campaign for the new Volkswagen Beetle was created around its unique shape; here, too, the basic truth about design will ensure that its importance will grow: "No one buys a magazine or watches TV for ads," Mishra says.
"But people will buy a shampoo for its colour, or a perfume for the shape of the bottle."