Your company brand is one of your most potent assets as a business. If you leverage your brand asset well and execute your core mission with excellence, you will find success. Your signage is the visual manifestation of your brand and so, you should execute it with excellence so that it represents your brand to the outside world. Executing your brand strategy with excellence requires long-term consistency. Everything your company does should fit into your brand guidelines, even your signage. This is easier said than done, however, as companies run into several roadblocks in their efforts to maintain long-term brand consistency. Maintaining cohesive signage, though, is key to getting the most out of your signage budget.
In this step, we'll explore the common problems companies encounter in sticking to their brand guidelines and how to overcome those hurdles.
Common Signage Hurdles
When it comes to executing your brand in your signage, companies encounter many of the same problems with maintaining consistency: outside influencers, unavoidable situations, and a lack of fidelity to guidelines.
You have many outside influencers who want to have a say in your signage. These include facility managers who want to have their stamp on a building, vendors who think they know best and employees who act independently.
Unavoidable situations also crop up regularly. Signs get damaged from weather or vandalism. A new city or county ordinance might require specific signage immediately. When these situations arise, urgency too often trumps brand guidelines. All of a sudden, fidelity to your branding strategy goes out the window.
Putting Your Brand First
Despite these common hurdles, you can achieve long-term brand consistency in your signage by recognizing these problems and creating plans to address them before they happen.
Start by identifying three key details for your signage:
- Brand color — Pick limited and specific colors your signs can include.
- Brand logos — Identify what versions of your brand's logos will go on signs.
- And measurements — Determine the specific size of an array of signage so replacement signs and new signs measure the same.
After you have identified these key details, you need to communicate them to all the stakeholders — your sign vendor, employees and others like building managers. Knowledge is power after all and many lapses in brand guidelines occur because people weren't aware of the guidelines in the first place.
You should also keep the circle of people who can make final decisions on signage small. When fewer people have the authority to order new and replacement signs, the likelihood of errors will decrease.
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