The branding ‘circle’
Working alongside a complete design team can be very rewarding. Like-minded people, working together to inject new meaning into a tired or misleading brand. This project did exactly that.
The brand needed a new visual identity that would sit with the design developed by the interiors team. This is how I did it.
The right financial brand identity
Of the many differing strands of brand identity, sometimes tailoring your design to the right style is an important art direction decision. Many clients get convinced by the front of stall. If you set this out correctly you can get buy-in from the get-go. So begin with your fascia design, and try and cascade all other design elements down from that
Guide them through it
By providing a signposting system you can guide your customers to the important services that you do provide, this also works as a reminder to the customer that your offer does indeed, include a ‘Financial Health Check’ for example.
Window dressing
Providing a kit-of-parts that can be adapted intelligently to the flagship store right down to the out-of-town satellite branches is the most cost effectively and efficient method to maintaining brand consistency.
The all important Welcome Wall
After the fascia the Welcome Wall is your first opportunity to build awareness and push your customer offer. Here, the developed outline typographical style, the exaggerated half-tone style and the customer ‘take-aways’ are all brought harmoniously together.
Branding the ATM
To some customers the in-branch experience does not exist, all they see and associate with their bank is the ATM, or the cashpoint. To combat this, branding the device and it’s zone plus, if possible, working with interiors to bring the service into the store or employ the notion of ‘putting your milk at the back of the store’ is a method of forcing your customer to engage with the brand more. But be careful with this, as this can wind your customers up – see your local convenience store.
How to ‘meeter-greeter’ your customers
Taking leverage from the hotel industry, installing a ‘meeter-greeter’ is a popular way of welcome customers. Also, used as a filtering device, this ‘meeter-greeter’ can advice customers, offer top-level direction and even book appointments. This design is therefore very open and underlines the ‘Can I help You?’ message.
Promoting your offer
Regularly updated with seasonal or calendar promotions, these graphic panel and displays should be used to as a story telling device and a way of delivering on your brand promise.
Bringing it all together
Here the fascia, the in-store graphics and the promotional poster content all portray the brand as a centre of financial knowledge, as a hub of vital information available to you, the customer. This builds confidence amongst the cliental and enables the staff to start believing in the brand. Therefore providing that vital injection I talked about a the beginning of this post.
The A B C Message
Financial literature is an important part of the branding experience. Customers, of course, want to feel special in-store but it is always important to provide that take-away option. Something for them that can continues to build the brand out-of-store.
What is the ABC method? First attact (A) your cleint with superior design and great offers, then build (B) on that offer with game-changing content and finually, capture (C) the sale with best-in-class deals.
Peaked your interest?
This is but part of a selection of design information russellwebbdesign generated for the creative community out there. Please contact us further to discuss if your brand really wants to benefit from the new mobile channel:
info@russellwebbdesign.co.uk
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