Sair

The founders of Sair approached Opposite HQ with an idea to build an online platform for all 'in-destination' travel needs - experiences, activities, and travel. Basically, catering to the new-age audience who believe that packaged tours are tacky and prefer managing their own trips.

My work involved project management, formulating the positioning strategy, brand personality, and support creative direction of the visual identity for the brand.

Industry

Travel

Scope

Visual Identity, Brand Positioning, Brand Personality

Team

Abhisek Sarda, Indranil Udupi, Mukul Soni, Priyanka Poulose

Project Planning & Execution

The task at hand here was to translate the positioning we identified for Sair into the visual identity of the brand. We had to strategize for a digital-only brand positioning. In addition, the design team had to work in tandem with the strategy team to develop the ideal brand identity. As the project manager and strategist, aligning creative direction, positioning strategy and design within an extremely tight schedule, was the challenge.


The brand had to on-board the visual identity at their end in parallel to our task completion, starting out with the logo, brand colours, tagline, social media templates, etc. This hurdle was overcome by dedicating the right resources to the project in terms of designers and copywriters; an agile methodology was followed where major deliverables were broken down into smaller tasks with a quick review system, so that they could be shared with the clients for a go-ahead and subsequent on-boarding.

Brand Positioning

The brand offers an online platform that would be a one-stop destination for all travel needs targeting the new-age consumers who manage their own trips and stray away from gimmicky packaged tours and travels. Sair plans to offer curated experiences that can be booked on their website, to allow the modern traveler to pick, choose and build their own travel story and adventure. In this light, we researched the travel and tourism space thoroughly and concluded with certain inferences, there are basically two categories of brands:
1) Journey-led (Airbnb, Zostel, Taj) and one that is
2) Convenience-led (TripAdvisor, Klook, MakeMyTrip).

Sair, in terms of offerings, fell in neither categories, therefore, we had to create a distinct positioning route. We knew that Sair wanted to build an aspirational brand, one that led with emotions and not product features. Sair was also driven by the ideologies of new-age tourists who are all about managing their own itinerary, who desire an extraordinary experience beyond the regular touristy sites, who don't care about souvenirs but only enriching experiences.

We thought about the people of today, those who feel the urge to share their travel experiences both online and offline. Those who travel to earn stories, to live stories, and to showcase stories. Taking this into account, we starting a building a narrative that used the charm of stories to elevate travel experiences. We arrived at the positioning through a rock-solid statement:

“Journey to make stories.”

Find below the positioning document:

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Brand Personality

With the positioning in place, we had to identify the brand with a personality that stood out. We had to find relevant examples of players in the market, place them on various spectrums of character, traits, and archetypes and accordingly plot where Sair seemed to fit perfectly and distinguishably. Find below the final brand traits:

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Visual Identity

Each logo exploration had to be a meaningful abstraction of our positioning and personality. We had to not only create a visually distinct and pleasing logo but one that had a valuable message attached. Since this was primarily a digital brand, we had to optimize keeping that in mind and its ability to work in small, recognizable sizes. In addition, the logo had to seamlessly lend to the visual language. 

My role here was to help abstract meaning from the best logos that the designer and creative director worked on. This was collectively done at our scrum meetings or 'reviews' as we internally called it. 

The direction we finalized, spoke of the idea of 'a world of stories', through a highly recognizable collection of circles. The colour and type mark we finalized was unique to the space, vibrant, and friendly.

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Learnings

This was a unique opportunity for me to interact closely with multiple stakeholdersrepresenting different verticals of the business like sales, marketing, and design.

I had to be exhaustive with my preparation while presenting project progress to the clients.From explaining positioning in the market viewpoint to conveying meaning behind visual identity explorations and decision making to answering resilient questions from the clients.

One of the hurdles I faced here was deciphering and application of client-feedback. When multiple stakeholders voice their opinion, it is difficult to identify opinions that count and will truly affect the outcome. I had to pick and choose client feedback that would truly make application sense, in a diplomatic manner so as to maintain a healthy client relationship.