Adgully Exclusive | Branding beyond advertising, the idea of Lulu Raghavan of Landor

Every brand today is aware of how crucial it is to position their identities in a significant manner to establish that personal relationship with their consumers. Today brands are conscious of their changing environment and undertaking all measures to be in sync with these changing times, also simultaneously being attractive to their prospective consumers. Landor Associations, a brand consultancy agency stresses on the consumer having a brand experience which is tangible and memorable.

Lulu Raghavan, Country Manager for Landor Associates India, recently participated in the Leading Hotels of the World (LHW). In her more than nine years at Landor, Raghavan has worked in the San Francisco, New York, London, and Mumbai offices. She has led corporate and consumer branding programs for a wide range of clients, including Alcatel-Lucent, American Express, Dow Corning, Fidelity Investments, Hewlett-Packard, Jet Airways, One&Only Resorts, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. She is also a member of Landor's global naming network.

In an exclusive conversation with Adgully, Raghavan talks about her association with this event and Landor at large. "It is a great honour to represent Landor at such an important event for the industry. I'm looking forward to discovering a little bit more of Tokyo as well. This will be my second trip," Raghavan said.

"Speaking to the group on the major trends happening in regards to sustainability and how consumers and business are approaching green," she added was the focus in this event.

Lulu Raghavan leads the India office of Landor Associates and handles the overall client and employee satisfaction. Her key clients include Café Coffee Day, GMR/ Delhi International Airport Limited, Hindustan Construction Company, Sterlite Technologies, Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, Tata Group, and Vedanta Resources.

Commenting on her rich experience in this industry, she said, "Landor has been working with Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces for over 7 years now on brand architecture and I have been involved since the very beginning. We have launched three brands ' Ginger, The Gateway Hotel and Vivanta by Taj ' and have helped the company move from a monobrand to a multibrand portfolio with focused brands for different segments of the market"

Also she further added," Our work has spanned the spectrum of brand consulting and design services from consumer research, brand strategy, naming, visual identity systems, customer experience and internal brand engagement. I've also had the opportunity to work with One & Only Resorts when I was at Landor's London's office. Additionally, I'm a regular contributor on branding for Hospitality Magazine Asia."

Raghavan's key associations with Landor has been working on the some of the best global brands and having worked in 4 of Landor's 22 offices (San Francisco, New York, London, Mumbai) and visited 10 of them. Another one has been an 18 month corporate assignment reporting to the then worldwide CEO Craig Branigan

She strongly feels that getting clients to really value the power of branding beyond advertising is the biggest challenge in this space. Talking about the current happenings at Landor, she commented, "We'll be launching our annual trends piece in early December. Our current homepage (which changes every month) is focused on Innovation." | Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]