What it takes to make the grade

By Donna May

This oddly shaped little check mark, with or without words, is recognized world wide as Nike. Remember the Twilight Zone theme song? Anytime something strange happens there’s still a chance you will hear someone whisper that little melody. This, in it’s purest form, is branding. It is a sight or sound that instantly identifies a product and an attitude about a product. You see it everywhere, from the McDonalds golden arches to the sentimental Coca Cola commercials. It is instant recognition. The moment you hear it or see it you identify not only a product, but an attitude about the product. In building a brand, you build an identity.

Sometimes your business readily lends itself to a branding campaign. With Noah’s Ark Self Storage the ark is a natural. Storage Spot features a trail of orange spots in their advertising. Storage USA is red, white and blue. Sometimes you have to look a little farther, with a little more creativity, to create an identity. Public Storage is a fairly non-descript name. But if you see a row of orange doors, you automatically think “Public Storage”. And you automatically have a reaction to that name. What image have they branded in your mind?

Each store has an identity and a market to appeal to, be it large or small. Branding helps you to establish your identity within your marketplace. You need to choose the look, words or phrases that will advance the features that are most important about your location. Do you want safety or friendliness? Security Self Storage or Uncle Bob’s?

Your first decision is to choose the identity that you want the public to associate with you, then create an “image” to represent that identity. If you can, choose an image that relates to your facility, like the Ark for Noah’s Ark, but if you can’t, remember that the Nike checkmark doesn’t actually bring to mind shoes. It is only associated to Nike shoes through branding.

Once you have created your theme image, the key is consistency. It is the most important component to branding. Once your decision has been made resist the temptation to make changes. Including keeping your colors and type fonts the same. Kodak film is yellow and black, Fugi film is green and black.

Repetition imprints thoughts and images in the mind. Your image needs to be repeated as often as possible, in as many venues as possible, so that people develop a recognition of your store as soon as they see it. Put it on the signage for your facility(s) and on your web site. Make sure that it is incorporated into all of your advertising and that it appears on your letterhead and business cards, Use it on your hand outs to customers, your brochures, and on your post cards to tenants. Put it on your marketing materials such as key chains, pens and coffee cups. Develop a consistent integrated message to the public – This is who we are.

The managers at you facility have to understand and emphasize the features that are promoted by your branding campaign. If you promote friendliness and the manager answers the telephone with a snarl the benefit of your branding efforts will be short lived. If, on the other hand, they reflect the warmth of Southern hospitality everything that you have promoted in your branding campaign will be reinforced. They are the embodiment of the image that you are portraying to the community and they need to understand that role for your branding campaign to achieve it’s full potential.

There are lots of companies that can help you create an image. Look on the web for businesses like amazingspaces.com to get some ideas. You can spend a lot or a little to accomplish your goal. Noah’s Ark started with just the small ark in the “O” of Noah’s , then, as the chain grew, they adopted the full color rendition of the ark that is used today, still retaining the original ark in the “O” symbol.

Branding can be fun and very memorable. Can you remember the product that used ”plop, plop, fizz, fizz oh what a relief it is?” Or what coffee Juan Valdez represents? How about “Built Ford Tough” for portraying an image? It’s not that hard to figure out a branding campaign. “Just do it.”

Donna May is president of Cross Metal Buildings, a member of The Parham Group., which provides high-quality commercial, agricultural and self-storage buildings throughout the South and specializes in assisting first-time builders. May is the former president of Joshua Management Co. and a commercial real estate broker. She has been a partner in 11 startup storage projects totaling more than 703,500 square feet. For information, call 210.477.1260; visit www.crossmetalbuildings.com