How important is office branding?

It’s now three years since Airbnb first offered more rooms than the world’s top five hotel brands put togeth­er. This remark­able feat was achieved with­out the rental pio­neer buy­ing a sin­gle brick for users. More recent­ly, at the start of March, branch­less UK chal­lenger bank Mon­zo cel­e­brat­ed attract­ing its four-mil­lionth cus­tomer, an impres­sive mile­stone reached in a hand­ful of years.

Con­sid­er­ing the rapid and seis­mic par­a­digm shift in the glob­al busi­ness land­scape, wrought by tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment, how vital, then, is phys­i­cal office brand­ing in the dig­i­tal age?

“On its own, phys­i­cal office brand­ing is arguably less impor­tant today than ever before,” says Jed Back­house, a dig­i­tal brand con­sul­tant at Infi­nite Glob­al. “Instead, what is cru­cial is the align­ment of a phys­i­cal brand with dig­i­tal and expe­ri­en­tial dimen­sions.

“This means ensur­ing an organisation’s pur­pose and val­ues are con­sis­tent­ly demon­strat­ed, com­mu­ni­cat­ed and man­i­fest­ed across all brand touch­points. That includes the work­place envi­ron­ment, but also media, mar­ket­ing and oth­er inter­ac­tions. There­fore, the office can, in some ways, now be con­sid­ered part of the media mix for brands.”

Indeed, busi­ness lead­ers would be fool­ish to neglect invest­ment in office brand­ing and the work­ing envi­ron­ment, says Steve Sharp, direc­tor at Fat Cow Media, giv­en its enor­mous poten­tial to enhance com­pa­ny rep­u­ta­tion for employ­ees, cus­tomers and investors alike.

“While a tan­gi­ble brand iden­ti­ty remains the cor­ner­stone of any good mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, it’s not enough to rely on dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences,” he says. “Phys­i­cal expe­ri­ences leave a longer-last­ing impres­sion and offer a more per­son­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach con­sumers.”

Make impressions count to boost company reputation

Beth Hamp­son, com­mer­cial direc­tor at The Argyll Club, which has 38 lux­u­ry work­spaces across Lon­don, agrees. “Care­ful­ly select­ed colour palettes, logos and web­site designs are key in 2020, but organ­i­sa­tions may be miss­ing a huge trick by not con­sid­er­ing what the four walls around them say about their brand,” she says.

“While a lot of busi­ness is con­duct­ed via tech these days, the most impor­tant deci­sions often still hap­pen in per­son. Why, then, are busi­ness­es pump­ing mon­ey into their dig­i­tal brand, but over­look­ing the impres­sion giv­en to clients, investors or recruits after a sim­ple meet­ing at the office?

Phys­i­cal expe­ri­ences leave a longer-last­ing impres­sion and offer a more per­son­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to reach con­sumers

“Busi­ness­es shouldn’t for­get the pow­er of that first impres­sion when you walk through the door, espe­cial­ly in this dig­i­tal age. As life is increas­ing­ly dig­i­talised and auto­mat­ed, the phys­i­cal and tan­gi­ble may become more valu­able when attempt­ing to stand out from the crowd.”

Office brand­ing has been an essen­tial ele­ment of the work­place “for cen­turies and the birth of the depart­ment store accel­er­at­ed its evo­lu­tion”, says Dr Teea Palo, lec­tur­er in mar­ket­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh Busi­ness School. How­ev­er, office brand­ing has been dialled up in the last two decades, in Amer­i­ca, espe­cial­ly.

For Back­house, Apple leads the way. “Their build­ings designed by Lord Nor­man Fos­ter are incred­i­ble, phys­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal artic­u­la­tions of a brand’s pur­pose and val­ues,” he says. “Apple’s mis­sion state­ment includes ideas around sim­plic­i­ty, inno­va­tion and cross-pol­li­na­tion, which are all appar­ent in the design of their offices and shops, as they are in the phys­i­cal­i­ty of its prod­ucts.”

At Face­book, the poten­cy of phys­i­cal office brand­ing, or lack of it, is used in an unortho­dox and per­haps slight­ly threat­en­ing way. At the social media titan’s Cal­i­for­nia cam­pus, Facebook’s brand­ing is the focal point as vis­i­tors enter, but the tat­ty sig­nage of the pre­vi­ous occu­pi­er, Sun Microsys­tems, has been retained at the exit. A mis­take, sure­ly?

“No, it’s used as a con­stant reminder of the bal­ance between win­ners and losers in the indus­try, a rather direct reminder to employ­ees of the need to stay focused,” says Tom Car­roll, head of Europe, Mid­dle East and Africa cor­po­rate research at real estate ser­vices firm JLL.

Location and heritage are brand-boosting factors

Amer­i­can atti­tudes towards office brand­ing might be too in-your-face for some, though. In the UK, a more under­stat­ed approach is required, accord­ing to Peter Matthews, founder and chief exec­u­tive of dig­i­tal brand design­er Nucle­us.

“Inside-out brand­ing has always been impor­tant and being proud of the brand you work for is a nat­ur­al aspi­ra­tion for many,” he says. “But it can be over­done for British sen­si­bil­i­ties, when some brand con­sul­tants and CEOs demand employ­ees to ‘live the brand’.”

This chimes with Lee Pen­son, chief exec­u­tive of world-renowned archi­tec­ture and inte­ri­or design stu­dio PENSON. “Brand cel­e­bra­tion should be dis­played as sub­tle sug­ges­tions at the right moment,” he says. “Client-fac­ing envi­ron­ments must touch on brand­ing, but not over­do it.

“The recep­tion, for instance, is def­i­nite­ly not the best place to use brand­ing; it’s frankly an over­whelm­ing intro­duc­tion for peo­ple. Employ­ees and cus­tomers want to feel part of some­thing big­ger and some­where they are sup­port­ed to do their best work, not just a ‘brand­ed’ work­place.”

As an exam­ple, Pen­son nods to Sony PlayStation’s Euro­pean head­quar­ters in Lon­don, which his com­pa­ny recent­ly designed. “The space was planned around their brand logo and has clus­ters of clever and cool spaces,” he says. “It’s lit­tle touch­es like this that make our clients feel con­fi­dent in their space. They live and breathe their brand implic­it­ly. Images and ban­ners will not do this.”

Office loca­tion and the her­itage of a build­ing, espe­cial­ly in a city, can help boost com­pa­ny rep­u­ta­tion, too. “Trendy Lon­don star­tups may be more inclined to set up shop in the hip­ster hotspot of Shored­itch rather than Padding­ton, because the area aligns with their ambi­tions for brand­ing and com­pa­ny val­ues,” says Bradley Bak­er, direc­tor at office devel­op­er CO-RE.

Final­ly, for busi­ness lead­ers seek­ing advice about office brand­ing, Hamp­son from The Argyll Club offers a con­clu­sion. “Start small and grad­u­al­ly think big­ger,” she says. “Look at your work­space itself, then zoom out to your build­ing, your address, your neigh­bour­hood. What would a vis­i­tor think when hear­ing about or see­ing each for the first time?

“If you aren’t con­fi­dent a poten­tial investor, employ­ee or client would align each of these phys­i­cal images with your brand val­ues, it may be time to con­sid­er an office move.”