Lillian:

I regretted it long before landing in Kochi. Pity was ruthless in her aggravation. She hates these forays outside Bangalore and felt that the three of us going to meet a client was a waste of time. Hey, it’s not as if we were on a 16-hour flight to meet the kangaroos. It’s literally just a hop and skip to Kochi. But, no! Our Diva must whine and smoke her way to drive me nuts.

If that was not enough, Maya was on her high horse and was bent on finding fault with everything ever since we landed in Kochi. For God’s sake, I have no clue why the powers-that-be decided to use heavy teak furniture in the Kochi airport. While I was booking a cab to get us to Infopark in Kakkanad, Maya was on her phone (cursing the spotty internet) trying to find out how many trees were butchered to furnish the airport. Talk about priorities!

OK. Let me take a deep breath, calm down and tell you why the three of us are in Kochi on this sweltering hot day. A couple of weeks ago, a friend of a friend of a friend, recommended us to Mr Mathews Tharakan of STARK Technologies. No, Mr Mathews is not a misguided Avengers fan. He says his company is 20+ years old and was named way before Tony Stark was christened by Stan Lee and Larry Lieber. I had to apologetically correct him and let him know that Mr Tony Stark was around in the Marvel universe from the 1960s. But Mr Mathews of course had not encountered Mr Stark and named his company STARK Technologies in ignorant bliss. He did tell me what the acronym stands for but it’s locked in some obscure cupboard in my brain for now. I’ll do the grand reveal as soon as I locate the forgotten cupboard. Well, to cut a long story short, STARK Technologies has been a major IT player with almost 50% of the world’s aviation software being produced by them. Mr Tharakan has now decided to branch out into medical solutions that are enabled by AI and automation. He contacted us to help him build an entirely different brand for this new vertical.

After a couple of disjointed calls where Mr Tharakan and his very subservient team popped in and out of hour-long Zoom calls, I decided that we needed to pin them down for a day-long workshop to make sense of what was required. I persuaded Pity (our creative powerhouse) and Maya (our user research guru) to join me in my expedition. I thought it would be a nice change for the three of us. A chance to get out of the office and have some fun. Well, I am yet to see the fun and can see trouble looming. I’ll just keep my fingers crossed and try and see if I can calm them down with some hot chaya and parippu vada from a bakery on the way... Maybe I could entice Maya with that plum cake she so loves! Hmm… food for thought.

*****

Psst… just wanted to report that things are looking up. The parippu vada and chaya worked their magic. Both Maya and Pity are now smiling and enjoying the view outside the big glass windows. We’ve been waiting for Mr Tharakan and his team to join us. A very welcoming gentleman who called himself Mr Tharakan’s chief secretary (the three of us had a good giggle about how many secretaries did Mr Tharakan have to have a chief secretary) had settled us into this roomy conference room and plied us with drinks, cookies and what not. I pounced on the plum cake slices wrapped in butter paper that I spied amongst the other goodies. Maya, who was clueless about this plum cake avatar, had to be coaxed into taking a bite. And then it was a race to see who would have more. Pity as usual nitpicked about the lack of “kharra” in the offerings and settled on some kharra tapioca chips. We were bickering about our individual choices just as Mr Tharakan and his entourage swept into the room.

Mr Tharakan was the quintessential businessman.Within 20 minutes of the meeting, we were enlightened that he had an MTech in Computer Science from IIT Madras and an MBA from IIM-Bangalore. We murmured our appreciation and made noises about how lucky we were to have made his acquaintance. I had to kick Maya on the shin to stop her from going on a tangent about how she thought all formal education was overrated. Pity and I smiled across the table as we took a moment to enjoy this facet of humanity.

You might be wondering why I haven't mentioned the rest of Mr Tharakan’s team. Well, that’s because they all morphed into a single blob of nodding heads five minutes into the introduction. It was very evident that Mr Tharakan had surrounded himself with an army of ‘yes’ men, who deferred to his decisions and were there only to reaffirm his thoughts. I wondered how the company would survive when Mr Tharakan decided to take a backseat or was forced to do so as age kicked in. I hoped he had a succession plan as it was obvious that his team did not show any leadership potential.

  ****

“So when can you share the brand book for our new vertical, Lillian?” Mr Tharakan pounced on me as soon as we finished with the niceties.

I could see Pity and Maya’s eyebrows disappear into their hairlines!

“Well, Mr Tharakan, that’s what I was explaining in the last call. We need to spend some time understanding the organisation before we can get to that. You were in and out of the call so often that you might have missed that,” I reminded him.

Mr Tharakan very reluctantly agreed and then seemed to make an inner decision. He settled himself into his chair, folded his hands and said, “OK Lillian let’s get this ball rolling. I am all ears. Tell me what you want.”

“Mr Tharakan, we are here to hear from you rather than tell you anything. That’s what brand introspection is all about. First off, we want to know why you want to define a different brand for your new vertical. You already have a well-established brand. Why do you feel the need to define a new one, “ I asked.

“ Hmm, good question. We’ve essentially been a services company building bespoke solutions for airlines and other manufacturing verticals. We have now developed our own SaaS product for medical or health record keeping. It’s driven by AI and ML and I believe it will be a game changer,” clarified Mr Tharakan.

“ Ah! That makes sense,” said Pity.

“ So what is the reason for this new vertical? What gap in the customer’s needs are you filling with this product?”

Pity and I took Mr Tharakan and his team through a journey of introspection. We asked them pointed questions about their “Why”. Yes, we had realised early on in our careers that Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle was a good starting point for these discussions. Of course, modified to suit our context.

In fact Pity and Maya had also done some research into the use of the five whys from the design thinking school, in branding workshops. I must say that open-ended questions like those propounded by the design thinking folks do get the clients' thinking cells cranked up.We also took them through a SWOT analysis. Mr Tharakan gave us a smirk and said that they had already gone through these ‘basic exercises’.

That’s when Maya said in her most confident voice, “Let us take you through our version Mr Tharakan. You might be surprised by the revelations we are able to draw out of you and your team.”

Maya’s confidence was vindicated at the end of the session. It was interesting to see that Mr Tharakan’s lieutenants were very reluctant to voice their views on the weaknesses and threats. But we were past masters at this and were able to coax them into revealing their thoughts. It was heartening to see Mr Tharakan’s surprised face at the end of the session. Apparently, he was not aware of the underwater iceberg (read unknown threats and weaknesses) that stood ready to wreck his Titanic.

Brand introspection allows you the space to reacquaint yourself with your brand, your central guiding principles and your customers.

Pay special attention to the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that are unveiled during this exercise

We then took them through the various brand archetypes and zeroed in on a combination that would suit their product line and resonate with their customers.

We agreed to meet again online, to discuss the other aspects of branding. We walked out with our heads held high, satisfied with a day well worth the trouble, while Mr Tharakan sat deep in discussions with his lieutenants, pondering how to counter some of the revelations of the day.