Business and Goodwill Promotion : Exploiting Window Graphics

The promises of global economy have created unprecedented opportunities for businesses worldwide. However, the vulnerable aspects are recessions, slowdowns and business disruptions due to economic crises in one or more parts of the world.

These are challenges for every kind of business, including small and medium businesses that play a dominant role in the local market. Such businesses have to project their offerings with a new accent in order to beat the competition, or augment their marketing efforts to widen the prospect funnel.

The need for window graphics

Below-The-Line (BTL) advertising strategy, which typically covers direct mail campaigns, trade shows, printed marketing collateral, search engine marketing, etc, addresses a larger cross-section of the prospects market. The success of such BTL campaigns depends on various tangible or intangible business parameters.

Passersby may constitute a small segment of the prospects market; however, they make up a very tangible segment; window graphics, a much-ignored marketing tactic addresses specifically this section.

Window graphics are typically stickers or decals stuck on glass windows/doors/partitions of storefronts; they can accomplish what the most prominent signboard cannot. Signboards can only carry the name, logo and tagline of the business.

Window graphics can advertise promotional offers; they can carry contact information and images of some of their offerings; they can display as well any important advertising message with potentials of conversion of passersby into regular customers.

Retail businesses desiring to stand out from the crowd are increasingly turning to window graphics, which can captivate passersby into the shop.

Advantages of window graphics

• Inexpensive advertising:  Window graphics are less expensive than vehicle wraps or billboards. Imaginative and thought-provoking promotional messages through window graphics can spark off word-of-mouth marketing.
• Brand recognition:  Visually rich and well-designed window graphics can subtly create brand imagery for the business and improve memory recall of prospects and customers.
• Added privacy:  A well-designed window film addresses in interesting ways the problem of outside distraction or lack of privacy.

Dynamic advertizing: Window Graphics can be easily ripped and relocated/replaced; businesses can thus exploit seasonal demands to their advantage, and push hard promotions.

Trends in window graphics

1. Complementing online presence: Businesses are experimenting with precious window space to project their image as digitally savvy. You can find these days QR Codes on window graphics to replicate online presence.
2. Forming a large banner: Large vinyl banners, which carry interesting imagery and messages, can cover the entire storefront, including the window.  The storefront becomes thus one large billboard.
3. Targeted messaging: As businesses become more customer-centric, a set of windows can carry a series of messages targeting specific customer segments.
4. Product-centric marketing: New products and slow moving or costly ones already in the market can be promoted for an entire month by displaying their images on windows. This can be very effective in setting off more and more impulse buying on the part of customers.
5. Creating faux decor: Window Graphics can be used to create on the passersby an impression of chic interiors. Interior and decor companies specialize in conjuring up a wow factor and thereby entice prospects into the showroom.

Window graphics may be a rather simple concept that anybody can try to exploit. Yet, it’s surprisingly underutilized, considering the lasting impact it can have. It would be best to engage a reputed professional signage company that can guide you on exciting options to harness window graphics for competitive business edge and enhanced footfall and revenues.

What You Need to Know About Lobby Signage

As trade and business everywhere go global, organizations are under intense pressure to brand and project themselves with a compelling edge. In a recessionary economy where margins are falling, organizations cannot but examine every aspect of their business for better performance and acquisition of larger customer base.

The ambience of business premises is an area, which is increasingly coming under focus. This calls for intelligent and imaginative experimentation rather than costly makeovers. Front office signage accommodates such experimentation with reassuring outcomes.

How lobbies can create best impressions

The reception and lobby spaces of a company are the first point of business interaction with clients and prospects. You can exploit this area to achieve for your business the following:

• Establish authority: A neat, clean, stylish and well-maintained lobby announces to the world that you are in solid business for the long run, and that you value professionalism.
• Establish clarity: At large offices with numerous departments, signage and wall art can provide clear directional clues and help visitors navigate your office quickly with ease.
• Foster brand identity: Brand logos and colors provide you with immense possibilities for rich business imagery, effective slogans, arresting taglines, and useful information that reinforce brand recall in prospects.
• Display laurels: The lobby area provides the right stage to display awards and accolades your company has won, which you can highlight with additional vital information.
• Market offerings: You can display in the lobby brochures, videos, sales scripts and other marketing collateral of your company. You can thus project efficiently your products and desired offerings.

Lobby signage as a huge differentiator

The impact of lobby signage becomes quite effective when all the functions and benefits listed above go nicely hand in hand. Having evolved through time keeping with advances in décor and material options, lobby signage has been in vogue for nearly half a century.

Simple plastic or metal nameplates were one of the earliest forms of lobby signage. Today, cost-effective metal finish laminates have replaced real metal. Foam letters are a popular option if you want to create an embossed effect of the lettering. The face of foam letters can be plain or digitally printed in striking patterns and colors.

Acrylic panels are very handy when logos, captions and imagery need to be projected as three dimensional with layered paneling. Acrylic letters can combine the utility values of all these varieties; they have remained therefore the number one option in recent years.  

The future is that of digital signage, which has already made inroads into hundreds of offices and commercial establishments all over the world.  

Lobby signs: dos and don’ts

1. Avoid extremely colorful signage, which can be distracting and cheapening your brand identity.
2. Ensure a prominent placement of the signage in the lobby; it should be neither obstructed nor obstructing.
3. Avoid in the lobby bright lights that reflect on the signage and irritate the visitors seated there.
4. Match the size of the signage letters with the lobby space: they should be neither too small to read nor too large to be distracting.
5. For greater aesthetic effect and variety, experiment with multiple signage structure and medium.

To achieve the maximum benefit and impact of your lobby signage, you would do well to engage a reputed professional signage agency that can design and develop the best signage for your business.

Vehicle Graphics : Why It Matters

Marketing and advertising needs vary from business to business. While product companies in the high-tech sector prefer more online and social advertising, those in other sectors prefer billboards and a combination of print and online advertising. Here, the unique features of a product become the focal point of advertising. Such information is required when one is decided about buying the product.

Service companies are a whole new ball game; the differentiators here are more subtle and are built around brand perceptions of the service. It makes more sense to keep pushing the brand name in multiple channels. Given that people need service businesses all the time, improving brand recall this way can drive sales growth. Vehicle graphics is precisely one such outdoor mode of advertising that helps improve memory recall.

Vehicle graphics and their types
 
Vehicle graphics are the most effective means of advertising a service on a moving vehicle such as a car, truck and bus; they vary in size, price and material used.

• Vehicle lettering: This uses a small number of vinyl pieces or vinyl sheets on which the company logo, message, or an image is printed digitally and then pasted on to the vehicle. This takes less time to create or apply, and costs less.
• Vehicle Graphics: Vehicle graphics, although a generic name also refers to the combination of painted letters and decals (stickers) made of digitally printed vinyl sheet; they are then cut into desired shapes, or cut out from one single vinyl sheet. After the paint dries, the vinyl pieces are cut and then pasted one after another. This takes a little more time than vehicle lettering and is costlier.
• Auto-wraps: Auto-wraps are at the top end where both cost and time-to-apply are much more. Here, entire or partial body wraps made of vinyl are printed using large-format printers. Highly skilled technicians apply them on the vehicle carefully. This is necessary as the vinyl can shrink or wrinkle at places if not applied properly.

Benefits of vehicle graphics

• Reach a larger audience: Vehicle graphics impinge on the memory of a lot more people and are equivalent to 40000-60000 impressions per day of other formats of advertising.
• Non-intrusive yet effective advertising: Vehicle ads are observed voluntarily, unlike TV ads that frustrate viewers to the point of tuning them off, or print ads that can be ignored altogether.
• Mobile, not static: Because they are mobile not static, vehicle ads come into the vision of prospects more often than other types of advertising in many business sectors.
• Cost-effective: After the one-time expense, you can use and reuse vehicle ads several times at no cost, compared to TV or print ads that can be prohibitively costly.
• Get local: With vehicle ads, local businesses can reach prospects much better and faster, unlike newspaper ads or inserts.
• Free of restrictions: While billboards, print, and TV ads come with umpteen restrictions, vehicle ads give your business complete freedom to experiment, at no additional cost. Protect the vehicles: The vinyl wrap is quite durable and lasts long. Furthermore, it protects the vehicle from scratches, fumes, and the extremities of weather.

Vehicle Graphics bring enormous returns on the marketing spend, both in the short and long runs. You would do well to engage the services of a professional agency that will create stunning visuals and crisp copy, to make your vehicle graphics more effective.

Frames and Displays: Getting them Right

Business development of any company depends on signage – an integral part of its brand messaging or brand communication. Unlike other media and channels that are time- or space-bound and short-lived, signage is a permanent entity that heralds to the world 24x7 the organization and its business message; it triggers better memory recall and enhances impulse buying.

Frames and displays

A-frames and display boards are among the oldest forms of advertising and signage; they are used at the point-of-sales or point-of-purchase (POS/POP) across industry verticals and sizes of business.

Frame display boards find wide usage from restaurants, bars, pubs, cafes, hotels, motels, and salons, to offices, factories and tourist locations. They are simply placed on sidewalks, or propped up on poles without much fuss.

They are thus very efficient and cost-effective. They can be used at all outdoor locations; their modern versions are spring loaded to prevent tipping over by strong gusts of wind.

They are in wide use indoors at hotels, conferences, symposiums, social gatherings, schools or colleges in the form of tripod displays in the lobby or main venue; they promote business or share secondary information that enhances the brand message.

Benefits of their use

Various surveys and studies conducted by Signs.org, Bang Advertizing and What’s your Signage highlight the importance of on-premise signage systems such as frame display boards. According to their findings, such signage can achieve the following:

• Alert prospects about your presence: In the small and medium business segment, 85% of the prospects targeted belong to the neighborhood.
• Bring in new customers: Signage can attract passers-by effectively; as much as 35% would miss noticing your business unless there is catchy on-premise signage. A recent survey to find out how customers discovered a business revealed that about 50% of them were solely drawn by on-premise signage; 33% by word-of-mouth referrals; the rest by print and broadcast media.
• Attract impulse buyers: One survey showed that 20 to 45% of window shoppers who passed by were impulse buyers. This is quite significant, considering the revenue payoffs that come from spending small amounts on signage.
• Increase profits: Adding or changing pole signage, directional signage or plaza identity signage for retail businesses can increase revenues in the range of 8.6% to 15.6%.

Getting frames and displays right

• Planning: Give yourself 2 to 3 weeks to come up with the right themes, draw the best designs, do error-free proofing and printing, and think of the most appropriate installation.
• Format and location: Given the wide range of formats and locations available on your premise, map them precisely for maximum business impact.
• Weather factor: Install wind- and rain-proof frame displays; factor as well the need to use tent pegs or cables to fasten them secure, so that they can withstand the worst of any weather condition.
• Maintenance: Check the signage regularly for signs of damage or impact of weather and fix/replace them accordingly.
• Transportation: If you need to use the frame display boards at other locations or events, move them with care, as slipshod transportation could lead to damage.

Frame display boards are easy to use and cost-effective as well. Invest in a professional signage agency and you can rest assured of excellent design and installation, and maximum returns.

The use of Humor in Signage

The American humorist Mary Hirsch once said, “Humor is a rubber sword. It helps you make a point without drawing blood”. In an increasingly stressed world, humor brings fresh perspectives, makes interesting observations, breaks long-established stereotypes, and helps lighten the mood in a social gathering. The huge popularity of stand-up comedians, comedy talk shows, and TV channels dedicated to comedy, is ample proof that people are seeking more and more humor in their daily lives.

Using humor in signage

Signage is one of the most important, yet a highly undervalued aspect of marketing and advertising. Though signage requires neither much real estate nor expenditure, advertisers have often downplayed its role in advertising. Another reason is the increased use of online advertising, and the proliferation of businesses that can bring to your front door everything from a pizza to a car.

Yet, signage is very significant as it is the first and foremost aspect of a business that you notice, even if you don’t step in to transact any business. Aesthetically designed signage can in fact attract people from afar, a point of advantage well exploited by rooftop and rotary neon signboards.

Humor can add an extra zing to signage, as it creates an instant connect with the audience. A touch of humor creates differentiation and improves brand recall: a funny logo, or a funny tagline below the company name, is bound to be recognized and talked about by consumers repeatedly.

Industries best suited for humor in signage

However, not all businesses are equally suited for using humor in signage. The inherent nature of some businesses makes them too complex, too intricate, or too serious to use humor in their signage. Accordingly, some businesses are more suited than others are.

Retail: In the deluge of brands, and unimaginative advertising of the vast majority of retail businesses, the few standout companies exploit humor as the cutting edge marketing tool.

Travel, Tourism and Hospitality: This segment can afford the comfort of a generous budget, and so can experiment with humor, as it targets huge revenue from international tourists.

Marketing & Advertising: Marketing and Advertising Agencies help improve the image of several businesses; they can use humor imaginatively to improve their own business.

Transportation & Logistics: Given the tense nature of the activity of this business, the use of humorous signage, can make things easier for everyone involved.

Clothes, Footwear and Personal Accessories: In the luxury segment of this sector, consumers show a taste for the finest things of life, and so can appreciate humor better.

Food, Confectionery and Beverages: Here again, in the face of tough competition, innovative entrepreneurs can make significant headway with the tool of humor in their ad campaigns including signage.

Construction, Architecture & Decor: This is also high budget sector, where humor is well appreciated.

Service businesses in general: A service company can project a sophisticated image of its services;  it can succeed in marching ahead of the pack by using humor in its promotional activities including signage.

Humor in signage is a great marketing strategy, no doubt; however, beware! It can be a double-edged sword: get it wrong, or belabor it, you are very likely to dismay your prospective and existing customers. It’s important, therefore, to engage a professional signage agency who have the expertise and experience for creating funny, effective and engaging signage for your business.

Wall Graphics: Get it Right

Wall graphics are a great way to showcase your organizational identity, culture, and values. It makes for a great first impression on visitors, clients, customers and employees every time they enter your office.

No wonder, interior decorators, construction companies and brand marketing agencies integrate graphical elements into homes and offices, in order to give the enclosure a unique identity. Inside a home, wall graphics can be used to present the residents’ taste and outlook to life.

Wall graphics win attention

Homes and offices have abundant wall and column surfaces, often left unused. This is a precious thing that can be utilized to convey necessary information, engage people in a lively manner, and promote business or homeowners’ passion in subtle ways.

Wall graphics aim at the focused attention of prospects, clients, employees and vendors, to enable ‘top of the mind recall’. However, to ensure that wall graphics are very effective, they must be designed to serve a clear purpose, and to blend nicely with the external architecture as well as the interiors.

Types of wall graphics

Wide ranging multiple elements:

Wall graphics range from miniature wall borders and cutouts to more complex wall decor that covers entire walls. They may contain elements of logo, photographs, text, motifs and sculptural elements in various shapes and sizes.

Non-PVC options

Smart technology has created a range of non-PVC wall graphic made from a finely woven fabric, and a tape that sticks at the back. It does not wear and tear, peel, or stretch, and can be used repeatedly, or moved around.

Decals

Decals are adhesive stickers, which you can peel off the template, and apply onto the wall easily. Popular versions of wall decal have motifs, animals or elements of nature in the design.

Essentials of wall graphics

Wall graphics poorly designed are a waste of money and of no purpose. Here are some essentials of wall graphic design: 

• Tell your story: Tell your organizational story effectively to convert viewers to your services/products.
• Project your vision and values: The wall graphics should project the vision and values of your business.
• Personalize: Reproduce photos of great events and turn them into murals.
• Try bold positioning: Experiment with bold positioning of wall graphics in unexpected and secluded places.
• Use decals instead of artwork: The latest trend is to put wall decals into frames to make them look like paintings. A series of framed decals can give the look of a museum gallery.
• Separate wall graphics from art pieces: Never put wall graphics alongside your art pieces; the former can steal the spotlight from the latter.
• Avoid over use: Avoid the temptation to use too many wall graphics. That would turn people off and take the edge off your brand name.

Considering the fact that wall graphics reflect your brand identity or unique personal image, they must be designed with care; this is what specialist-painting agencies excel at. They make use of custom tools and materials in order to create skillfully the designs and execute them efficiently on desired surfaces. You would do well to entrust your requirements to experts with considerable experience.

Latest Trends in Signage

Display advertizing has become more complex over time. Static display or signage steps up the game these days, as print marketers explore the full bandwidth of an online-integrated advertizing strategy.

Compared to online or print advertizing, where a whole lot of information can easily distract prospects, signage stays focused and has the power to make greater impact. This is why signage is indispensable from both utility and branding perspectives.

It remains the most effective medium of branding, as it uses messages that are intelligent, icons that are self-explanatory, and images that can entice. Listed below are a few rapid strides in signage trends and concepts, witnessed during the last two decades.

Interactive signage

Digital Signage has changed the face of display techniques and the current business perception of prospective clients and regular customers in general. Increasingly, business owners tend to use a mix of physical and digital signage, in order to derive maximum returns.

The older signage is used in the interiors, basements, car parks, foyers and all those locations that a customer is likely to frequent. Digital signage shines prominently in the exteriors of establishments to help customers identify the location, advertize its unique brand value to, and create a lasting impression on them.

Interactive digital signage (IDS) empowers greatly advertisers and marketers. One can create amazing multi-touch projects that are simultaneously displayable on multiple screens, across multiple locations. IDS systems are more user-friendly:  they provide a tech-savvy generation with familiar features like ‘touch’, ‘pinch’ or ‘zoom’ that are common to most designing software.

Interactive digital signage is ideal for high-impact marketing initiatives, events, businesses or even locations. For example, UK’s largest indoor digital signage screen is irresistibly arresting at Waterloo Station; it is massive as it measures nearly 40 meters, sweeping the entire length of the Waterloo Station Concourse.

Customizable displays

Customizable displays reflect the increasing need to port displays quickly across locations, or speed up the installation for events. They range from miniature bespoke stickers to a more comprehensive package that includes design, specification, manufacture, installation and maintenance. The latest software capable of heavy-duty processing is at the heart of their design.

Indoor/outdoor banners

Banners, one of the most efficient, cost-effective and popular instruments of advertising have also evolved over time. Poly, nylon, and flex face banners, in addition to the more prevalent and versatile vinyl banners find an increasing use today; they are trendy in a range of businesses including retail, hospitality, construction, and food & beverages.

These banners are available in a wide range of sizes and colors to suit your needs. Some of them such as vinyl banners are environment-friendly and ideal for businesses that have a strong Corporate Social Responsibility agenda.

Signage is one of the most time-honored and cost-effective alternatives to costly print advertizing. Experienced signage consultants and graphic designers can visit you for a free consultation and offer expert professional advice on options that are ideal for your business needs. Well-made signage goes indeed a long way in maximizing the ROI on your marketing spend.