Well, long before our digital interventionist suggested that our writer put as many of our varied disciplines in the headline above, we made sure all of them (digital maestro and pen chiseler included) not only worked in our offices, but also on the same page.
So that, when a brand like Safal, a fruits and vegetables chain of stores, approached us to fix their alarming loss of market share in Delhi NCR, the team assigned to it could include a technologist from IIT Kanpur, a space designer from Parsons School of Design NY, and a marketing wiz from IIM Ahmedabad. We even threw in a professor from Miami Ad School
(#AlwaysMOreThanOneWayToSkinACat).
Now as this multi-faceted bunch got cracking, Safal’s ex-patrons were tracked down, competition was spied upon, supply trucks were monitored, and franchisees were near psychoanalyzed. Safal’s, naturally ripened produce, they discovered, had lost the perception battle for freshness to the dipped-in-chemical-dye fruits and veggies of hawkers and mandis.
And the solution was as multi-disciplinary as the team that provided it: To counter perceptions of stale produce in concrete structures as against the fresh setting up of shop by local vendors, Stores were fitted with swing out gates for an impermanent fresh display of produce. Plastic crates and displays were discarded in favour of natural materials like wood, cane and stone. Even the printed tags were replaced with handwritten prices. Freshness was semiotically encoded.
Other issues with the store profitability lay with the motivations of franchisees. We crafted a motivational model, ran workshop to train them in merchandising and customer handling and even solutioned for supply chain issues.
To put it in a pea pod, It was the advantage of having so many differently skilled eyes to view a problem and arrive at fresh solutions. At DY Works, that’s something which never goes stale.