2. 3Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
WHO WE ARE
Ray+Keshavan has been voted as
India’s No 1 Brand Design Consultancy
by The Economic Times four years in a
row from 2008 to 2011-12 (every single
year since the survey began).
We are part of WPP’s global brand
agency, The Brand Union. Together,
we offer more than 35 years of
brand building experience with 500
strategists, designers and researchers
across 21 offices serving every
major market
This means that our clients benefit
from the best of both worlds:
a global network and knowledge pool
combined with deep experience and
understanding of the Indian context.
The Brand Union
Abu Dhabi
India
Beijing
Cairo
Dubai
Dublin
Hamburg
Hong Kong
Jakarta
Johannesburg
London
Madrid
Miami
New York
Paris
San Francisco
Shanghai
Singapore
Stockholm
Tokyo
5. 9Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Brand
journeys
that unlock
business
growth
levers
• Are you well aligned internally to drive growth?
• What do your customers experience when they interact
with your brand?
• What should you be doing to increase their awareness
and loyalty?
• How do your channel partners feel about your brand?
How do you strengthen trade relationships?
• Does your sales force believe in your brand? Is this
reflected in your market share and growth?
• Fragmented markets, diverse geographies, varying
distributor strengths, local vs. central priorities.
Do you have insights into how these variables are
impacting your marketing effectiveness?
• Do your service levels live up to your brand promise?
• Are you treating the symptoms of poor brand delivery,
instead of the root cause?
Our brand transformation programmes address
all these questions and more, helping you find
answers that drive market success.
6. 11Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
To uncover changes that are needed to
drive market share
To create compelling and memorable
brand experiences that maximize
marketing effectiveness
To develop powerful strategies to create
new brands or rejuvenate existing ones
To bring modern, world-class design
solutions to Indian brands
To create engagement that enables
employees and stakeholders to
understand and live their brands
To rationalise brand portfolios and create
robust, enduring architecture systems
To provide companies with tools to
manage their brands
WHY CLIENTS
SEEK US
7. 13Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Established in 1936, Associated Cement Company is the
foremost cement manufacturer in India. The company
changed hands from the Tata Group to Gujarat Ambuja, until
it was finally acquired by Holcim in 2006. This new phase
in the company’s history was accompanied by an initiative
that aimed to strengthen the equity resident in the brand’s
heritage while forging closer bonds with end customers.
Building a house is a once-in-a-lifetime, high-emotion
milestone for most Indians. It is also a period of great
anxiety. Instead of ‘selling cement’, we believed that the
brand should become an integral part of the process,
providing expert advice to smoothen bumps. The company’s
name was changed to ACC and a series of initiatives were
launched that ranged from brick-and-mortar ACC Help
Centers to an online advisory. Besides one-on-one sessions
with experts, the Help Centers also dispensed advice for
home owners in the form of easy-to-understand ‘comic
books’. A new brand identity was created and all interfaces
redesigned. In addition to customers, the exercise covered
important stakeholders like distributors, retailers and
contractors. Country-wide camps were held for masons to
understand their triggers and motivations and these insights
were fed back into the branding process. The design phase
not only signaled a reinvigorated, dynamic brand to the
market, it also delivered significant cost savings through
the redesign of cement bags.
Everything in ACC’s brand world now aims at helping
customers ‘Build with Confidence’.
TRUST IS
A THREE
LETTER WORD
9. 17Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Internal
Growth
Levers
External
Growth
Levers
Brand Awareness
Visibility, Proximity & Availability
Unified Vision
Trade Relationship Management
Pride & Passion
Sales-Driving Processes
Desired Brand Perception
Impactful Distribution
Result-oriented Promotions
Active Sales Forces6
4
A Fortune 5 company
50 years in the Indian market
USD 1.5 bn investment
Only 7% market share of the total lubricant market
THE NUMBERS DIDN’T ADD UP
As many multinational companies have learnt, Indian
markets can be tricky – defying logic and not responding to
conventional measures like increased advertising spends. We
carried out an extensive exercise for them to ascertain the
cause – and remedy – for this low brand traction. Following a
diagnostic phase that involved country-wide research across
their entire ecosystem, we identifi ed 10 ‘levers’, both internal
and external, that could fuel brand-led business growth.
We worked closely with client teams to develop detailed
action plans and responsibilities for each lever. These plans
were then cascaded and communicated across teams. The
initiative has delivered a smarter, more agile and sales-driven
organization that is on target to achieve its ambitious vision.
HELPING A
FORTUNE 5
COMPANY ENHANCE
MARKETING
EFFECTIVENESS
10. 19Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Founded in 1931, Arvind Mills is one of India’s
leading textile producers and amongst the largest
manufacturers of denim fabric in the world. The
company has also expanded into ready-made apparel
and retail, and its stable of brands includes popular
Indian brands like Excalibur as well as global labels
like Tommy Hilfiger and Lee.
Following a major financial and organizational
restructuring programme, we worked with Arvind
to rejuvenate its brand image that largely remained
that of a low-cost supplier. We repositioned the brand,
moving from a narrow ‘manufacturing’ focus to a wider
‘lifestyle’ one. The brand was given an entirely new
look and feel to support and communicate this new
platform. An internal engagement programme was
also launched to rally employees behind the change
the organization was embracing.
FROM
MILLS TO
LIFESTYLES
11. 21Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
To be truly successful, the new Arvind
brand required a change in internal
mindset and culture. The programme also
included an extensive internal branding
leg, where employees internalized the
implications of the new brand positioning.
Pictured here: A brand guide for
employees in the form of a passport.
12. 23Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Ceat Tyres, one of India’s most established brands,
needed to change its image in line with the evolving
industry. For decades, the Ceat ‘rhino’ had symbolized
strength and endurance. However, customer
expectations had changed, the industry was moving
towards radials and tyres now needed to move beyond
this promise. We helped Ceat to refresh its brand
around the spirited theme of ‘Take it on’. The new
positioning and identity has helped Ceat project itself
as a modern, dynamic brand that understands its
youthful audience.
REINVIGORATING
AN ICON
13. 25Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
The name Chettinad has a strong cultural connotation
in South India, accompanied as it is by a heritage
of trust, family values and dependability. The
Chettinad cement brand however had languished
and needed to re-establish itself in the region. We
partnered with Chettinad to develop a comprehensive
new brand and marketing system that included
stakeholder engagement and strategies for marketing
effectiveness. A fresh new brand identity was created
and extended to all touch-points, from cement bags
to signage and advertising to sponsorship. Three
years after the rebranding the company has moved up
two places and is among top 3 brands in Tamilnadu
market.
CONSOLIDATING
REGIONAL
DOMINANCE
15. 29Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Part of the Murugappa Group, Coromandel wanted to be
seen as more than a fertilizer company. We helped the
company distil, articulate and embrace a larger vision that
aimed at enhancing the quality of life in rural India. The
company name was changed from Coromandel Fertilizer
to Coromandel International. We developed a positioning
platform around the idea of ‘Maximise’ and worked
with client teams on a change management initiative to
drive the idea through the organization. This simple but
powerful idea was used to draw up action plans across
all aspects of the business – from organizational culture
to future business plans. A new brand identity was
created to signal the change within. This comprehensive
programme also included the launch of a retail brand for
farmers called ‘Mitra’ (Friend).
FROM
FERTILIZER
TO FRIEND
17. 33Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Sidhee and Hathi are the flagship
cement brands of the Mehta group.
While each brand had considerable
latent equity in its region, their images
had stagnated and not kept pace with
changing consumer aspirations. We
helped the group rejuvenate both brands
and communicate change through
dynamic new identities. The symbols for
the brands were an elephant and a fi st
respectively. Given the large semi-literate
target audience, the best way to signal
change in the brands was through visual
impact. We moved to a more aggressive,
powerful-looking elephant for Hathi and
replaced the limp, left-handed fi st of
Sidhee with a raised, right-handed punch.
This created immediate awareness that
the brands – and their quality – had
improved.
OLD LOGOS
FITTER,
YOUNGER,
STRONGER
19. 37Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Following a family-settlement, our client, the DN
Munjal family, was allowed to use the Hero brand name
with several restrictive caveats. Hero is a very well-
respected brand in India and we developed a solution
that would allow our client to benefi t from this equity,
comply with the agreement and at the same time
create a new corporate brand that would integrate
their different lines of business. A group brand called
Hero Eco was launched and a unifi ed identity applied
across all businesses – from electric vehicles to cycles
and other exports. The detailed brand architecture
and decision-making system specifi ed guidelines for
corporate entities, product brands and acquisitions, and
covered every possible business and brand scenario.
One of the most important benefi ts of a complex
journey like this one is that it clarifi es business vision
and direction for the group. Hero Eco realized that their
focus should be around electric vehicles. Shortly after
the branding programme, Hero Eco acquired Ultra
Motors in the UK, and now owns the popular A2B line of
electric bikes that sell in markets across Europe.
UNLOCKING
A LARGER
VISION
21. 41Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
As is the case with many industrial organizations,
rapid growth at the steel and power group headed by
Mr. Navin Jindal had eclipsed branding considerations.
Names and logos had proliferated, but a robust
branding initiative focuses as much on what to
keep, as it does on what to change. Our solution had
two key recommendations. First, stop the usage of
the acronym JSPL for the flagship company and
move instead to Jindal Steel & Power. Second, use
an integrated brand identity that cues that Indian
national flag. Both these recommendations were
based on the enormous equity that the founder
has. Mr. Jindal is well-known for winning a legal
battle that gave every Indian the right to hoist the
flag. The message-rich identity for the group now
reflects this distinctive patriotic flavor and has
successfully created higher awareness of its scale
and achievements.
CAPITALIZING
ON EXISTING
EQUITY
23. 45Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Medium-sized businesses in India are increasingly
waking up to the power of branding. Makino
manufactures high-quality components for the
automotive industry but found that it was difficult to
take on multinational competition without a strong
brand. The intense program we carried out for them
started by questioning existing views of the business,
thus helping them move from ‘brake linings for 2
wheelers’ to ‘components for the automotive industry’.
The journey encompassed the board-room, employees,
distributors, retailers, OEM clients, end-customers
and all-important influencers like mechanics. We
configured the brand narrative for each stakeholder in
Makino’s eco system, ensuring that a strong, cohesive
brand personality emerged without large above-the-
line (ATL) spends.
HELPING AN
SME ACHIEVE
A BIG VISION
25. 49Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Symega is a leading producer of food
ingredients and blended seasonings.
Their strategy of backward integration
and high quality research gives them
a unique competitive edge. Like many
B2B players, Symega found that brand-
pull was critical for sustained business
growth. We helped them create a brand
platform called ‘the science of great
taste’, that highlights their differentiators.
A complete brand world was designed
that included a new identity, sales
collateral and digital presence.
THE
SCIENCE OF
GREAT
TASTE
26. 51Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
When they need an ingredient, the world’s
leading food companies turn to Synthite.
Before their branding initiative, this was a
little-known fact. Even though Synthite had
close to 30% share of the global market
for oleoresins, the company lagged in
awareness and recall, even amongst its target
audiences. We helped Synthite address this
issue by clarifying and distilling their value
proposition – ‘the finest natural raw materials
with complete traceability’. This idea was
incorporated into their entire brand narrative
and experience. A new identity was launched
and a comprehensive go-to-market strategy
developed.
FROM
VOLUME TO
VALUE
27. 53Ray+Keshavan | The Brand Union
Contact us
arvind.hegde@rayandkeshavan.com
M +91 98450 64414
tasneem.ali@rayandkeshavan.com
M +91 99204 03968