A design culture is an organisational culture that emphasises on employing design to optimise consumer experiences. Design is important in every business as it enables the organisation to identify its customers and their needs. Design culture, in principle, means putting design at the centre of every action in the business, from planning process to implementation. While businesses often turn to design when looking to create tangible aspects like packaging, it can be used for much more than that. One of key areas lies in marketing, especially in the digital space with the rise of social media platforms.
BoAt Nirvana, a consumer audio brand launched in 2016 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta was one of the first D2C brands to get their marketing just right. The reason is that they used design culture to drive innovation in their marketing strategies. BoAt Nirvana is a lifestyle brand that deals in affordable and fashionable consumer electronics for millennials. With a powerful branding and tagline that reads ‘Plug into Nirvana’, they have conveyed their brand philosophy effortlessly through their social media campaigns.
In a very short span of time, the brand has managed to capture their target audience and form a community of BoAtheads in the growing audio market. They primarily use social media channels like Instagram and YouTube to interact with their consumers. They have used design culture in three ways on their social media platforms:
Creating the Brand Identity:
Engagement is one metric that is really important for the brand and hence, to capture the audience’s attention, they built a distinct identity for the brand on social media. By personifying the brand through funky visuals, they stand out for millennials looking to establish a connection and be a part of a community. With the growth of digital content in the past few years, the audience is constantly shifting from one platform to the other. And the key to survive amidst all the competition, is adapting your visuals to different platforms.
The brand always aims at staying relevant by understanding the behaviour, likes and dislikes of their target audience. They manage to analyse it right because their marketing team comprises young individuals with an average age of 23 who don’t have prior experience of marketing but are keen to identify gaps and find solutions for them.
Designing their Graphics:
The design language used in their social graphics is consistent but adapts well to different themes and events. The brand is frequently seen using creative bricolages which basically means constructing or creating an artwork from any materials that come to hand. They are static like with #DoWhatFloatsYourboAt or animated like #GoodOldVibes. Bricolages are one of the most beautiful metaphors in design that are all about the idea of encouraging people to look at concepts creatively and then come up with designs, each different from the other.
The brand believes in going with the flow of market dynamics and making sure their design language matches their vision. For that, they rightly identified how trends can be converted into content. Their instagram graphics are more meme centric while YouTube is more ad centric. Design is also about topicality and that translates well to BoAt’s digital presence.
Design Events and Collaborations:
BoAt is known for accessorising their products, often through collaborations that add to their storytelling. One of their most recent collaborations was with Sanaya Irani, a Mumbai-based artist who painted speakers for them while encouraging creators to value their art. They have found innovative and fitting depictions for all these partnerships, like the comic strip for BoAtxMarvel, the funky rebranding for Bira91xBoAt or simple illustrations for #ZodiacSigns.
This is not the only occasion where they promoted design and creativity. They recently launched a #DoWhatFloatsYourboAt design challenge in collaboration with Yanko Design. They asked designers, thinkers, and creators to redesign their boAt Stone 1200F speakers in a way that portrayed the aesthetics of the brand well. This is just one of the many instances which go on to prove how much design is involved in their marketing process and digital presence.
They have hosted several promotional campaigns where designers and creative thinkers are invited to redesign products or narratives around those products. When the brand announced their ‘Make in India’ initiative, they conceptualised and executed the campaign ‘Rock in India’ with Digitas India, their creative partner. The aim was to create a progressive narrative around boAt’s Make-in-India initiative and use their global platform to show the unique creativity that hides in our society.
Apart from these aspects, BoAt also uses influencer marketing heavily in addition to targeting event specific marketing like IPL or special occasions like Valentine’s Day. By using technology and getting their design language right, BoAt is basically making its niche audience associate the product with the culture of skating, concerts, graffitis, cricket, Bollywood etc.
Design culture is not just limited to their marketing or social media, it is effective in every aspect of their brand building. Apart from its digital presence, BoAt is also looking to integrate these principles at several other stages of consumer experience including unboxing videos.
BoAt Nirvana was one of the first D2C brands in India that succeeded by creating a unique visual language for their products and promotions alike. With India being the home of over 600 D2C brands and a massive potential for their growth, integrating design in the digital space, especially social media is now more important than ever.
Given the tremendous rise in customer expectations fueled by big companies like Amazon and Apple and the rise of digital content, only the greatest design ideas stand out in heaps of promotional materials. Hence, using design culture as a tool in your marketing is crucial to understand what your consumers want from your brand and eventually conveying that to them through your visual media. Having a designer expertise at your end will give an edge to your marketing and help your brand reach a wider audience.
