Left: Working on
the rebranding
of Gulf Air at
Saffron’s studio
in Madrid.NOVEMBER 2019 SAFFRON
COMPUTERARTS.CREATIVEBLOQ.COMGOING GLOBAL,
WORKING LOCAL
Teams at multi-national consultancy Saffron
are, unusually, based around project, not
location. Tom May finds out more...
STUDIO INSIGHT
F
ounded in 2001 by Jacob Benbunan
and the late Wally Olins, Saffron is
an independent global consultancy
with a client list as long as your arm,
featuring the likes of YouTube, The
City of London, Gulf Air, Siemens, Fujitsu,
Warner Music and many more besides.
With offices in London, Madrid, Berlin,
Istanbul, Mumbai, San Francisco and São Paulo,
you might expect the company to have devolved
into ‘fiefdom’, with each branch guarding its
territory and client list jealously. But it doesn’t
work like that at all. Instead, global teams are
put together across borders, depending on the
need of the project.
We sat down with Gabor Schreier, Matt
Atchison and Roberto Verona to talk about pulling
in the same direction, keeping international
clients happy and building authentic brands.What’s the story behind Saffron?
Gabor Schreier: Our CEO Jacob Benbunan
founded Saffron in 2001 with his friend and
former colleague Wally Olins. The founding idea
of the business was to combine high-quality
strategic thinking with world-class creativity.
Our first offices were in London and Madrid, and
we’ve since expanded across the world, although
we very sadly lost Wally in 2014.
Today we work with international banking
brands and fintech start-ups, from cultural
institutions such as London’s V&A Museum toSaffron
Saffron is a global, independent brand consultancy with offices in
London, Madrid, Berlin, Istanbul, Mumbai, San Francisco and São
Paulo. The consultancy was founded in 2001 by Jacob Benbunan and
Wally Olins (1930-2014) and specialises in defining brand strategies
with a special focus on experience design and innovation, with the
aim of building solid brand cultures.
http://www.saffron-consultants.comthose changing the way we experience culture,
like YouTube. We get to travel and work all over the
world, from San Francisco and LA, where we’ve
just started working with HyperloopTT, to Russia
and Azerbaijan, where we’ve just rebranded both
nations’ national telcos.
Matt Atchison: Since I joined in 2008, the soul
of the company has remained the same. We
lost Wally, but his legacy is still very much part
of the company. We’ve grown steadily, but not
ballooned, which has helped us to keep our feet
on the ground.
Roberto Verona: In almost nine years at Saffron
I’ve often had the privilege to feel proud; seeing
how the company has grown, along with our
reputation. It makes me proud to see big clients
such as Proximus, Belgium’s leading telco, grow
its trust in us. We’ve been working together since
2003 and we have a great relationship.Your offices in London, Madrid, Istanbul,
Mumbai and Vienna work together in quite an
unusual way, right?
GB: We operate a One Office policy at Saffron,
which means that we build our teams of project
managers, strategists and designers according
to each project, not based on location. We work
together as one team every day across the offices
and clients across the world. We take the best
consultant for the job, wherever they need to
go, which means they bring their international
experience of working with the best brands in the
world to bear on all of their projects.
We use Hangouts for video conferencing, and
of course, plenty of travel. It requires an effort
from the whole team, which is what makes it so
special. It’s ingrained in our culture.
MA: I divide my time between Ukraine, Portugal,
the UK, Austria and Spain at the moment. We’re
working on everything from telcos to energy
companies, high street retailers to banks.
All the designers at Saffron connect as a
team across the world every two weeks to share
projects, news, laughs and reports of their