ABND is a Mumbai-based brand consulting firm that’s helping companies unlock growth through meaningful brand strategy, identity systems, and experience design.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day Medianews4u.com caught up with Maghan Varkey, Strategy Director, ABND. She is an influential leader in the branding world.
Q. Are many brands targeting women coming across as boring, inconsistent, or simply not compatible? If so, how can a sharp visual identity, clear positioning, and a tone of voice change the situation?
You could add dumb to the list too. It breaks my heart to see brands targeting women still think pink packaging and a lame empowerment slogan qualify as strategy.
They don’t.
What you usually see is a strange identity crisis. One day the brand is patronising. For example, products “designed for her delicate hands.” The next day it’s shouting bukwaas like #GirlBoss, like it just discovered feminism on Instagram.
That’s not positioning. That’s mood swings. The real issue is that most brands still treat women as one giant demographic blob instead of understanding actual human contexts. A 24-year-old founder, a 40-year-old CFO, a farmer running her land, and a new parent, are not waiting to be spoken to in the same tone.
Sharp identity, clear positioning, and a strong tone of voice are not cosmetic upgrades. They force the brand to answer a harder question: who exactly are we useful for?
We recently built a mom and baby care brand where we deliberately avoided putting women on a ‘motherhood is a superpower’ pedestal. Instead, we focused on parenting as a shared responsibility and acknowledged the role of partners, families, and communities. Ironically, that resonated far more with women.
Women don’t want a pedestal. They want relevance.
Q. Could you talk about some of the work ABND is doing with brands that target women for Women’s Day and beyond?
We don’t do such work, just like we don’t do anything for Men’s Day. Women’s Day has become the marketing equivalent of a school’s annual day performance. Everyone rehearses a speech about empowerment, posts a graphic with flowers, and by March 9th, it’s back to business as usual.
The work we do with brands is about understanding women in real economic and cultural contexts, not as a marketing checkbox.
For an FMCG client, that meant spending time in farmlands understanding how women farmers choose fertilizers and pesticides. Their decision making had nothing to do with empowerment messaging and everything to do with yield, risk, and long-term cost.
For a skill-based education brand, we interviewed women across different regions looking for vocational training. What emerged wasn’t a narrative about “empowering women through education.” It was far more practical. They were evaluating whether learning a skill could translate into respect, income, and independence quickly enough to justify the time investment.
Women’s Day communication should ideally be the least interesting thing a brand does.
If your biggest act of support happens on March 8th, something has gone terribly wrong in the other 364 days.
Q. What are some of the things that brands need to keep in mind to build a real connection and trust with women? How does data analytics help here?
Trust is built in very unglamorous ways. If your women’s product costs more than the men’s version for the same functionality, people notice. If your brand celebrates working mothers but your meetings are always scheduled at 6 pm, people notice that too.
Consumers are far more observant than most marketing decks assume.
Data analytics helps cut through internal assumptions. It reveals what women are buying, when they’re buying it, and what trade-offs they’re willing to make.
But numbers without context can be dangerously misleading.
We always start with qualitative conversations. Real people explaining real constraints. Data then helps validate those insights at scale. Otherwise, you end up with what a lot of brands have today: beautiful dashboards explaining behaviour they never actually bothered to understand.
Q. Is authenticity becoming increasingly important for women-centric brands given that Gen Z and Gen Alpha prioritise authenticity?
Authenticity has always mattered, doesn’t matter whatever Gen.
Gen Z and Gen Alpha seem better at detecting nonsense. They grew up surrounded by advertising disguised as content. They’ve seen influencer partnerships, brand collaborations, sponsored posts, and algorithmic targeting their entire lives. Their default setting is scepticism.
They’re not impressed by empowerment messaging or body positivity campaigns if the product itself doesn’t deliver. They’ll cross-check your claims on Reddit, watch three de-influencing Reels, and read ingredient breakdowns before making a purchase. So, the bar has quietly shifted.
It’s not about sounding authentic anymore. It’s about being useful and honest. (Just like how it should have always been!)
If your product works, say so clearly. If it doesn’t solve every problem on earth, say that too. Gen Z women (or men) aren’t looking for brands to empower them. They’re looking for brands that don’t waste their time or intelligence.
Q. Is the brand’s ability to evolve a huge challenge but a necessity to grow loyalty among women?
Evolution for every brand is necessary irrespective of genders, categories, or geographies. But evolution doesn’t mean chasing every trend or trying to follow women through every stage of their lives like a clingy friend. It simply means staying relevant as culture changes.
Five years ago, certain narratives around gender, work, and identity were widely accepted in marketing. Today some of those same narratives sound completely tone deaf.
Women themselves haven’t changed overnight. The conversation around them has evolved. Brands that stay relevant are the ones that update their lens without abandoning their core value proposition.
In other words, evolve your thinking, not just your campaigns. (don’t be a Pepsi + Kendall Jenner or a Jaguar).
Q. To what extent does the theme of sustainability in marketing campaigns appeal to women?
Sustainability appeals to women the same way it appeals to anyone with common sense.
When it’s real, it matters.
When it’s marketing theatre, it’s irritating.
Women, especially those managing household decisions, are often evaluating products through multiple lenses: long-term health, cost efficiency, environmental impact, and reliability. But they are not lining up to pay a premium for a green leaf on your logo.
If sustainability is part of your story, show the receipts. Explain what has changed in your supply chain, packaging, or manufacturing process. Tell people what measurable difference their choice creates.
The brands that get this right remove the fog around sustainability. The ones that don’t simply add another buzzword to the packaging.
Q. What role are women playing in helping ABND grow as an organisation in each practice area be it the B2B practice, consumer practice, Edunoia, culture Practice, or the Signoia (Spatial Practice)?
The same role as men. Majority of our team is women, including leadership across multiple practices.
But honestly, we don’t frame it as “women helping the organisation grow.”
Across our B2B practice, consumer branding work, Edunoia (education consulting), culture practice, and Signoia (spatial branding), our team members are leading strategy, running client engagements, shaping creative thinking, and building businesses.
The interesting part isn’t gender.
It’s the diversity of perspectives. Different life experiences produce sharper questions, which usually lead to better solutions.
In strategy work, that diversity is a competitive advantage.
Q. Work-life balance is an issue for women in the corporate world. How does ABND tailor its HR policies in this regard so that women employees stay loyal?
Work-life balance is an issue for everyone. Framing it as a women’s issue is exactly how organisations quietly avoid fixing the real problem.
Our approach is straightforward. We don’t operate with rigid remote work rules or complicated flexibility frameworks. If someone needs flexibility, they take it.
No forms. No drama.
We have parental leave, not just maternity leave. We have insurance with maternity benefits. But policies alone don’t build culture.
The real question is whether someone feels comfortable using those policies without worrying about career consequences. If someone needs to leave early for a parent-teacher meeting or a family commitment, the reaction shouldn’t be surprise. It should be normal.
Q. Does ABND have mentorship programmes so that women can advance smoothly through the organization’s ranks?
We’re a mid-size firm, which means we don’t have formal mentorship programs with assigned mentors and calendar invites titled “career conversation.”
What we do have is a teaching and learning culture embedded in how work happens.
Everyone sits at the same table when strategy is discussed. People challenge ideas, question assumptions, and contribute thinking across projects.
Growth comes from exposure to difficult problems, honest feedback, and increasing responsibility. It’s less about climbing a ladder and more about expanding your capability and impact.
Q. How much does ABND invest in the upskilling of its female employees in areas like AI, deeptech, data analytics?
At this point, talking about AI and data literacy as a special initiative for women would be odd. These capabilities are becoming basic survival skills in our industry.
Everyone at ABND is learning, constantly. If someone discovers or develops a workshop, framework, or tool that can make the team sharper, we support it. Not as a one-time training exercise, but as an ongoing habit.
People experiment with AI in client work, test data frameworks, and build capabilities through actual projects.
The real metric isn’t how much money we spend on training. It’s whether our team feels confident navigating an industry that’s being rewritten by technology every year (or every day, these days).
