Wipro (IT industry). Conglomerate focused on the IT industry as its engine. Repositioned in 1998.
CONTEXT
After India’s economic liberalisation in 1991, different Indian companies contacted us in Paris. We did not have our Indian operations at that time. In the mid 1990s, Wipro, a multi-million dollar company with a variety of products and services in several industry domains, called us. Before meeting them we looked at the company in the market, and found that brand salience was a puzzle box, but the company had a high reputation of being very ethical. The diversified group had products ranging from food to toiletries, baby products to lights, IT services to hydraulics to finance and medical products with GE collaboration. Information technology was its rising force.
PURPOSE
How to make Wipro, an acronym name, become a word-of-mouth brand and make it connect to the globe.
OBJECTIVE
Taking their IT service as the company’s key driver, the objective was to make Wipro an “essential to intelligent” product and services group with one recognizable entity across the conglomerate for the local and global market.
STRATEGIC EXECUTION
We counselled Wipro to have a value system that drives the company’s promise to the customer, and get out of their value system of Beliefs. We introduced “innovative solutions” as the core of the organisation in all activities. We strategized for the group to lead with their IT business as the engine and the other businesses as wagons. That is why we articulated “Applying Thought” to be the nucleus of communication for the conglomerate. The brand with a rainbow flower design initiative was to express the diverse industries the group was in. In the IT service business, the different colours were to address the different industries they were serving. So Wipro Applying Thought became a household name in India. Wipro’s IT business has a footprint across the world today, and has become a multi-billion dollar business within a few years of this new Wipro Applying Thought strategy.