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.