Social Samosa Agency Feature - Wow Design

Who are we?

WOW Design is an independent strategic brand design consultancy located in Mumbai.

WOW Design was Deepti Kshirsagar’s brainchild and was further incubated along with Saiprasad Karalkar and Saswata Das thus forming a Powerful Trio. WOW Design has been the strength behind some of the major brand launches and revamps in the country, and has been growing steadily under the able leadership of Deepti Kshirsagar, Saswata Das and Saiprasad Karalkar. Each one of them has brought in the best industry expertise and experience to form a strategically strong, creatively fresh and technically perfect team. Currently, it is a private limited entity with a team strength of 40 people and caters to clients in India and abroad.

What's in the name?

A name must say it all in the simplest manner. ‘WOW’ is a natural response to anything that we notice to be positively beyond expectations.

The idea is to generate the WOW effect in every aspect of the organization. From the team that works to our services & brand assets that we offer to our clients,the sole aim is to deliver and hear a “WOW”.  Hence, our team’s motto is to always WOW in each thing that we do!

What we do?

Brand creation: Strategic Brand Foundation, Brand Positioning and Tagline, Brand Architecture, Brand Naming, Brand Story, etc

Brand Visual Identity: Brand Logo, Brand Design Manual, Brand Styling, Brand Collaterals

Packaging Design

Retail Communication: Retail Design Strategy, Campaign Creation, Activations, Retail solutions for Modern & General Trade.

Space Design & Branding: Corporate Space Design, Retail Store Design, Shop in Shop, Kiosks

Why we do it?

Indian Retail has been evolving with time when it comes to brands. It gradually became more than just utilitarian space imbibed in the minds and homes of people. It was imperative to create lasting brand experiences rather than just popular communication campaigns. Therefore, it was left to experienced professionals like us who have decades of experience in the world of brands and branding, to do that. A specialized service industry was emerging and we wanted to make a difference. Hence, we aspired to make the brand owners understand the difference between branding and mainstream advertising.

While Advertising is about promotion and awareness campaigns, which is typically short-lived, what we focused on was core Branding – creating and naming the Brand, defining the Brand world, giving it a foundation, which is much more long lasting. The Brand Foundation and story that we developed could well be then taken onto campaigns. Packaging and retail was  also evolving in India and we found this to be a great opportunity to enter into this segment with value added offering where we could shape emerging brands and not just the big names.

How we evolve?

A lot of physical aspects like new mediums, design trends and the technology that binds both the UI and design in the Branding & Communication industry, keep evolving. Other than these, there are certain aspects vital for approaching branding strategy. We have our own processes and modules developed to work on these core aspects of branding. For the rest of the things, we believe in doing lots of ongoing research and trend tracking (both online and offline). Our teams do regular market visits and are exposed to symposiums on various aspects of branding, retail, and design happening in India.

We learned the hard way

During the start-up days, we used to aggressively participate in pitches for some namely brands. However while doing so, we did not pay much attention to the pre- pitch documentation that would protect our intellectual and design property from being misused. We burnt our fingers with one such pitch, where we did not win it but our design was replicated with a few minor changes here and there. That’s when we learnt how to safeguard our work the hard way.

Did we just share that?

It was during the initial days of WOW when we were a team of four and operating from a room in Deepti’s house. We were in talks with one of the top bosses working in one of the big group of companies for new business. The quantum of work expected was large, so we obviously portrayed the team to be double than what it actually was. Due to this, he got convinced and decided to share the brief. That was a Eureka moment! But eventually, he added that he wanted to come and meet the team at the office the next day. As soon as we thought we could escape with a little lie in good faith of the company, the next moment we realized pitfall. He was flying in from Delhi very next day. The next quick steps were to then rope in Deepti’s husband,  a friend’s wife, another intellectual looking friend along with their respective laptops (that was the criterion of choosing the friends), to pose as a part of the team. We headed towards BigBazaar, brought the DIY computer tables which took us the whole night to assemble, cleared one more adjoining room to make space for the new make shift trolleys and we were set. The meeting went excellent and we treated the whole gang after the client left putting a couple of projects in our kitty. It’s one of the most amazing experiences we went through which was filled with all kinds of emotions- stress, daring, conviction, camaraderie and loads of fun thereafter.

They work with us

• ITC Ltd.
• Heinz India Pvt. Ltd.
• Amul,
• Kellogg India Ltd.
• Starbucks
• Parle
• 3M
• J K Helene Curtis Ltd.
• Hersheys India
• Berger Paints
• CavinKare,
• Future Group
• RSPL Ltd
• HyperCITY
• Jyothy Laboratories Limited.
• Indagro Foods
• Frigorifco Allana
• Emami Ltd.,
• Bectors (Cremica)
• Abbott Healthcare
• Piramal Enterprises Ltd.

A day without Internet

Chaotic to start with from a functional point of view , but we would use that as an opportunity to conduct a creative workshops with the team to let them go wild on their thoughts, put them on paper in the crudest forms possible with zero influence from shutter stock, how design and other so-called ‘inspirational sites’. We might urge the marketing team to connect with their client counter parts and discuss things one on one. In fact, there are infinite possibilities to explore that day!