Water to rebrand to Interbrand India by January '13

Interbrand released its 13th annual Best Global Brands report on the morning of 9 October 2012, within the premises of the Bombay Stock Exchange.

Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM, Google and Microsoft are the top five brands in the list of top 100 Best Global Brands.

While Apple, Amazon, Samsung, Nissan and Oracle were the top risers in the list; there were new entrants in the list, namely Facebook, Kia, Mastercard, Pampers, Prada and Ralph Lauren.

Graham Hales, chief executive officer, Interbrand London, said, "It takes about five months to compile the report and while each of Interbrand's 40 offices is involved in it, there's a dedicated team of 15-20 people who work on Best Global Brands project."

The report is developed on the basis of three aspects determining a brand's value: the brand's financial performance, the role brand plays in influencing consumer choice, and the strength the brand has, to command a premium price, or secure earnings for the company.

On the same morning, Interbrand announced that Water Strategy & Design, the brand consultancy and design wing of DDB Mudra Group, will integrate with the parent group and be rebranded as Interbrand India with effect from January 2013.

Ashish Mishra, chief strategist and head, Water, said, "We have been working towards this shift for the past five months now. It will take us three more months to finally integrate with the parent group."

With an existing team of 10 people and external consultants, Mishra plans to bring out Interbrand India's report on the most valuable Indian brands by Q1, 2013.

"After we complete the integration, it will take us three to four months to put the report together," he added.

So, how will Interbrand India be any different from Water? "As Water, we didn't have the expertise, the experience and the analytical tools to understand brand value the way Interbrand does," Mishra explained.

Over the past three years since its inception, Water has worked on brands like Union Bank of India, Godrej and PepsiCo, among other small projects. On the revenue front, the assignments have ranged from $ 4,00,000 for large projects, to $ 50,000 for small projects. With Interbrand India, the effort will be to further move to more upstream and valuation led assignments,  said Mishra, by leveraging the consultancy's global relationships with Samsung, Hyundai, P&G, GSK and ABB in the Indian market.

As Interbrand India, the consultancy would continue to provide a mix of brand strategy and design offerings. But design would essentially follow strategy as per Mishra.

While the global tools and resources would be readily adopted, Interbrand India would simultaneously focus on growing local talent than sourcing talent from abroad.