Elephant Wraps up 2011 with 25 new businesses
Elephant wraps up 2011 with 25 new businesses
By Sai Prasanna
Thursday,Feb 09, 2012
With design thinking increasingly being recognised by brands as a necessary brand tool for positive differentiation, Elephant Strategy + Design, India’s largest independent strategic design outfit with a presence in Pune, Delhi and Singapore, is experiencing a steady increase in the number of new clients. Last year, Elephant Pune added over 15 new clients from diverse domains, which included Axis Bank, BCCI (CLT20), Essar Steel, General Mills, Glenmark Pharmaceuticals, Heinz, Mars International, Piramal Realty, Promethean Power, Reckitt Benckiser, and Wagh Bakri Tea, while Elephant Delhi added over 10 new clients, including Delhi Duty Free.
In conversation with exchange4media, Ashwini Deshpande, Director, Elephant Strategy + Design, spoke about some of the significant work executed over the year. She said, “Over a hundred projects of varying sizes and impact were executed between Delhi and Pune. The Complan re-launch, Britannia NutriChoice snacks launch, Suzlon One Earth experiential branding work, Experience Strategy, Design and visual language for Axis Bank, strategy, identity and communication for Delhi Duty Free, visual language for Champions League T20, and two innovative cookware ranges designed for Nirlep would be the highlights.”
The year was lucrative on the awards front as well. Elephant won Merit Award for retail design for Venky’s Xpress chain of quick delivery chicken outlets. The first edition of the Designomics Awards recognised examples of excellence in strategic design for the year 2011. Nirlep won the first ever Designomics Award for Strategic Brand Identity Programme done by Elephant.
Mukund Bhogale, MD, Nirlep, said, “Nirlep has partnered with Elephant for product design, product innovation, branding and package design since 1990. The newly launched brand identity, freshly defined brand values and a sharper brand vision has helped the company to streamline internal as well as external image and processes, which in return brought in 50 per cent more revenues. We couldn’t be happier.”
Britannia was conferred a Special Designomics Award for Outstanding Package Design. Britannia has been partnering with Elephant for branding and packaging work since 2006. Elephant created/ rebranded and packaged Britannia brands – NutriChoice, Marie Gold, Bourbon, 50-50, Treat, TimePass, Tiger, Tiger Zor, Pure Magic, Choco Decker, Cakes & Breads.
At the CII Design Excellence Awards, Elephant’s work done for Suzlon One Earth Global campus at Pune was recognised as the best Environmental Design. Elephant was also given a special excellence award as ‘best of the best’ across several categories for the same project.
However, despite winning several accolades, standalone design firms still don’t receive as much recognition for their contribution to building a brand’s image when compared with ad agencies. Agreeing with this, Deshpande said, “Design is a much younger profession in India. We believe sound design thinking is the foundation of good, user-led product or service. What advertising agencies do very effectively is to communicate about that product or service. But designers rarely are able to iterate the impact of good design as we still don’t have measurement tools. As the developmental and exploratory nature of work that necessitates confidentiality, design agencies do not speak about the process or details before or sometimes even after launch. And once launch happens, media is in a hurry to write about campaigns. So, design agencies do not get their due for sure.”
As for the focus areas for the year 2012, Service Design will see a lot of action at Elephant. Deshpande added, “Ongoing practices of product innovation and branding will continue to grow, but with a broader focus on Asia as our Singapore team is ready to bring in richer insights. As for adding a location, it is a strategic decision. Pune will always remain the centre of excellence for innovation and design at Elephant. We started Elephant Delhi in 2008 to be able to offer stronger strategic connect for national clients with base in North India. The Delhi team has also gained business from the East. Elephant Singapore was started in 2011 for global businesses, being handled from Singapore. There are no plans of adding a location in 2012.”
Deshpande divulged that the firm might be strengthening its operations with the addition of a research team this year.
CII Design Excellence Award 2011
CII Design Excellence Award 2011:
In its ongoing pursuit to establish design as a tool for national competitiveness, CII had announced “CII Design Excellence Awards” (2011).
The award is meant to be celebration of the very best of Indian design over the past 24 months. It seeks to demonstrate the value of design to the Indian industry. It is a true acknowledgement of the design excellence, innovation and originality of Indian Design.
Elephant Strategy + Design was given the best Environmental Design award for its work for Suzlon One Earth @ Pune.
Elephant was also given a special excellence award as “best of the best” across several categories for the same project.
The judging was done by an illustrious international jury that included personalities from design, academia & industry from India, UK & The Netherlands.
Elephant is an independent, multi-disciplinary strategic design consultancy with a team of 80+ specialists at Pune, Delhi & Singapore.
The awards were declared during the 11th CII NID Design Summit at Delhi on 8th December.
Elephant bags CII Design Excellence Awards
CII Design Excellence Award 2011: In its ongoing pursuit to establish design as a tool for national competitiveness, CII had announced “CII Design Excellence Awards” from this year (2011). The award is meant to be celebration of the very best of Indian design over the past 24 months. It seeks to demonstrate the value of design to the Indian industry. It is a true acknowledgement of the design excellence, innovation and originality of Indian Design. Elephant Strategy + Design was given the best Environmental Design award for its work for Suzlon One Earth @ Pune. Elephant was also given a special excellence award as “best of the best” across several categories for the same project. The judging was done by an illustrious international jury that included personalities from design, academia & industry from India, UK & The Netherlands. Elephant is an independent, multi-disciplinary strategic design consultancy with a team of 80+ specialists at Pune, Delhi & Singapore. The awards were declared during the 11th CII NID Design Summit at Delhi on 8th December.
Downturn brought attention to India potential
Growing up in Aurangabad, Ashwini Deshpande hadn’t ever seen design as a natural career choice. It was her aunt, a corporate communications specialist for an MNC, who believed she should look at a wider canvas. “My aunt had worked with a few designers and thought NID was the place for me to grow,” she says. Deshpande applied and recalling that time almost 27 years later, still seems amazed that she got through at the prestigious institute. “Amazingly, I got admission after a nationwide entrance and interview in 1983,” she recalls.
Elephant Strategy + Design was launched as a multi-disciplinary design consultancy in 1989 by a bunch of fresh faced NID graduates which included Deshpande, her (soon- to- be husband) Ashish Deshpande, Partho Guha, Sudhir Sharma, Gargi Sharma and Vineet Limaye. She explains, “When we started Elephant, each one of us brought our own specialisation and our own perspectives. We were like blind people touching the elephant and discovering it to be a wall, a rope, a fan, a snake, a tree trunk, a spear… It’s only when we pieced our individual perspectives together that we would see the big picture.”
She recalls, “We used to read about Frog Design and Pentagram. Those were inspiring stories of collaborative interdisciplinary work. We had a collective belief that design is teamwork and that sum total of working together would be much more than adding up individual work. I continue to believe that all of us matured as designers because we worked in a collaborative, co-creative atmosphere.” Deshpande’s first big break came while she was doing her graduation project with a German company in Pune. She says, “I designed a whole lot of collateral for them. The global corporate communications head of this company saw the work and offered me a project to design their global corporate brochure and audio-visual that would be used across 13 countries. As for compensation, he was apologetic that his budget was just a hundred thousand Deutsche Marks.”
That first big break was worth a tidy amount to start Elephant, recalls Deshpande. It also gave them the confidence to hold out for interesting projects. “The money from our first project gave us the confidence to refuse work that did not seem worthwhile,” she says. They did quite a few international scale exhibitions, some product design and a trade magazine at the start. They also “got wiser with a few bounced cheques.” Real growth, according to Deshpande, really started in the mid-nineties after the Indian economy opened out. “This was a time when Indian companies started to compete with global ones on parity of products, technology, service and differentiation,” she says. It’s also when India got its first retail bank in the form of ICICI Bank. Elephant designed the user experience for the brand. “We designed India’s first automobile retail standardisation programme for Bajaj Auto. We designed India’s first user-friendly all plastic geyser for Symphony. We also designed a lot of medical devices that became import substitutes for India,” she adds. Elephant set up its second agency Brand Planet Elephant two years ago. Deshpande says the recent global downturn was an opportunity for the Indian design landscape with global brands finally taking the potential of the Indian consumer base seriously.
She explains, “They started thinking about developing products and brands specifically for India.This benefitted us as we are the homegrown team that brings real Indian insights. We gained more than ten new clients last year including Akzonobel-Dulux, Allied Breweries and Distilleries, CEAT, Colgate Palmolive, Mahindra Powerol, Sakal Media Group, Abbott, MVW among others.” A common view on Indian design from foreign designers abroad is that Indian design tends to be derivative, borrowing from Western design sensibilities. Deshpande has strong views on the subject. She says, “I don’t see why we need to design in a manner that convinces designers from the west about our roots. India has been the most flexible, welcoming and all-encompassing culture for centuries. I am an Indian, I studied design in India and I have practised it for 21 years. Can I do anything that is not Indian inside? I don’t see the need to overtly place a paisley on the wall or use hot pink in the logo to make overt statements about being Indian.”
What does she have to say about competing with advertising agencies, which also offer design capabilities? “I think it is important to draw a line between specialisations. Evolved clients understand the difference between advertising agencies that ‘also’ do design and design agencies that ‘only’ do design. We just need to become as visible and accessible,” she contends. “Today, it is acknowledged that design thinking can be used to identify newer opportunities in business to strengthen and increase brand value. We did a corporate identity programme for Venky’s last year, helped streamline the business verticals and arrived at newer business opportunities.” As for recent work from Elephant that Deshpande is particularly proud of, she says it would be their work for Piramal’s Lacto Calamine and Britannia’s ‘Zindagi mein Life’ and packaging work for Dulux Velvet Touch, Britannia TimePass and Britannia NutriChoice Diabetic Essentials and retail design for Titan Eye+.
On staying relevant, she says, “Everyone at Elephant is encouraged to go out and observe users or shadow customers at retail. We are constantly searching for the next insight, next technology, next material or next software that would help us achieve user delight in design.”
Lowdown 1989 to Present Founder director and Principal designer, Elephant Strategy + Design
Read more at:
http://www.campaignindia.in/article/profile-downturn-brought-attention-to-india-potential-elephants-ashwini-desh/413092