Whether your company is planning to go national or is already well-established across NZ, strong signage is an important part of your national brand. NZ-wide branding is a delicate mix of a strong unifying core culture blended with local flavours. With offices in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, the experienced signage crew at Signwise know a thing or two about getting national branding through signage just right.
1. Regional Research
As you prepare to roll out your company nationwide, you’ll find that there are demographical differences in regions across NZ. Whether you have a retail shop in Timaru or a corporate head office in Auckland, you may have to adapt your signwriting to fit the local culture.
The key to getting this right is to do your research and not make any assumptions. Through talking to locals, getting to know other businesses and competitors, and even more formal forms of market research, you will find out the wants, needs and opinions of each particular community – and reflect this newfound knowledge in your regional signs.
2. Cohesive Signage Style
While regional personality is important, it needs to be balanced very carefully with a strong and cohesive brand. You want clients and customers to be able to identify you wherever they are in the country, so make sure that your attempt to build signs that suit local populations doesn’t dilute your underlying brand.
You can achieve this by using cohesive exterior signage across NZ, while adding local trends and mirroring regional traits with your indoor signs. This means that while the building sign should look the same whether you are in Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch, you have more room to play with window frosting, internal walls and point-of-sale signs.
3. Vehicle Signage
One of the best ways to get recognised in a new location is to wrap your fleet of company cars in professional signwriting. Vehicle signage works like a mobile billboard, showing off your company name and logo wherever your car, van or ute goes. High quality vehicle signage by professional signwriters is sure to stand out – and the more times people view your company, the more your brand becomes cemented in their mind.
4. Help People Find You
If your original location is already well-established in the community, it might not need any signage beyond the building sign. This isn’t the case in a new location in a new city – you’ll have to help people find you. Branch out and make use of other forms of signage like banner signs and flags, footpath signs and plinths to help you stand out and get noticed.
5. Strong Project Management
There’s more to a company’s national roll-out than signs – the best thing to do is delegate all signage to an experienced project manager. This way, you can focus on everything else that needs doing safe in the knowledge that your national signage strategy – including design, installation and resource consents – is in safe hands.
Expanding beyond your first location beyond Auckland, Wellington or Christchurch takes a multifaceted signage approach. Talk with our friendly and efficient signage company to help build your brand nationwide.