Out of the Box

What’s in a Sign?

By Menachem Lubinsky on January 12 2009

Signs, the kind that are on storefronts and other businesses, come in different shapes, designs and colors. I frequently stop to read signs as I travel through New York City and am amazed at how many signs there are with misspelled words. The other day I passed a grocery mart that had amongst other things a list of some of the things the store sells: “nespapers, candees, cheese, diary, meat , ATM, watch repair.” I could not imagine why the storekeeper spent money to put up a sign with so many mistakes in the English language, not to speak of the fact that the combination of items did not make much sense.

A sign is as important to the branding of a business as are all other elements of the marketing mix. It is in fact in many respects even more important since it is the very first point of eye contact with a business. The best known signs are those that have only the name of the store on it. Walk into any mall and the brand names confront you on every turn. There is only the name Macy’s on buildings and stories throughout America with consumers instantly associating the name with the giant store and what it sells.

Obviously, stores that are able to merely list their names are those that have secured broad brand name recognition. They are the businesses that after many years of investing in their brand can rely on instant consumer awareness. Some well-known stores constantly reinforce their brands with a slogan that reminds consumers of why the brand is so popular. In the case of Wal-Mart, it is “Always Low Prices,” which more or less defines the huge discounter.

Stores that are not as well known generally invest a great deal into their signs. They recognize that the sign is one of the ways in which they can flag new business. Shoppers on a busy shopping street rely on the signs and the show windows to decide whether to shop in the stores. In one survey of a Manhattan street, almost 20% of shoppers said that they decided to shop in a store based on the sign and the window.

Marketers are apt to advise their clients that signs have to be managed. What they mean is that it should be cleaned, logos and slogans periodically updated, and the sign itself should be replaced from time to time to reflect newer trends in fonts and graphics. In addition, like all other aspects of business, the sign must be competitive, meaning that if most other stores on a street have upgraded their signs, it almost dictates that holdouts consider changing their signs as well.

A small Midwest department store that takes up the better part of a block had no less than 4 different colors for its signs, a marketing no no. One of the cardinal tenets of successful marketing is to have a universal look, which means both the design and color.

There are businesses that appear to be tempted to put as much as possible on the sign with the idea that the more they include the better chance they have of attracting more customers. The evidence is that more is not necessarily better. It isn’t likely that a customer will stop to read every word of a sign, especially if they are driving or in a hurry to get to work.

There are some rules about signs that some businesses always seem to violate. It is important that a sign have only one dominant logo to identify the business, but frequently signs include the logos of many of the brands they carry, creating some confusion. There may be an exception to the rule if a store is not interested in promoting their name brand but wants to stand out for the brands that it carries. An electronic store that sells Panasonic, Toshiba and Motorola, may wish to highlight these brands even more that than they do the name of the store.

Another rule is not to use one name on the sign and another inside the store and on ads. This is also true for the logo, which is often designed by the sign maker without regard to the corporate identity of the company. A marketing magazine included a letter by a store in a strip mall that changed its corporate colors to match the signage of all of the stores in the mall. While the rule might dictate sticking to the corporate colors, here there was reason to deviate from the rule.

The magazine also covered the case of where a store shared space with another store and was forced to use the same color on their shared sign. In cases like these, marketing experts say that it is important to keep the exceptions to a minimum. In other words, “alright you had no choice with the sign but don’t take that as a license to toy with variations in every other aspect of your marketing.”

A sign maker may not be the best marketing counselor but many people rely on their advice. The best case scenario is where the sign is designed based on an integrated marketing strategy with the sign maker only executing the broader strategic goals.

Ironically, many people do not put too much thought into their signs other than it should have the basics, such as the name, and perhaps slogan, address, and phone number. They may not understand the relevance of the sign in marketing. Perhaps they are waiting for a sign!

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.