Superior Signs in VA!
Fresh is Good for Superior Signs!
You know you wouldn’t buy spinach or lettuce or any other kind of fresh fruits or vegetables that were withered and brown. In fact, if the produce section was always displaying faded and wilted items, I’m sure you’d find another grocery store. The same goes for signs. Superior signs, just like superior produce items, make all the difference in the world to customers.
“Bright and eye-catching,” I thought as I passed the recently upgraded branding of the AutoZone retail auto parts store in my hometown of Waynesboro, Virginia, where I was heading to purchase a set of wiper blades for my Mazda 3 and a turn signal lamp for the Jeep Liberty. My friends, Scott and Brooks from church, were going to help me with the job of installing them, but first I had to make my way through the lines of customers at the cash registers. “Those new signs must be the reason for all this traffic,” I chuckled as I made my way through the line, calling my friend Scott on my cell phone to make sure he waited a while for me to get back home with the goods. As soon as I got those new blades on, I would be off to Richmond for a meeting.
Before today, I remembered the store’s previously dull, gray and faded colors that I’m sure I’d passed dozens of times without notice. But today was definitely different! This time the vivid new graphics had begged me to turn my head and look just before I turned into their parking lot, now jam-packed full of cars as I peered out the front window.
The AutoZone chain, a multi-location business with stores across the USA, uses a recognizable brand and they replicate it well across all their branch stores in the area where I live. I remember back when I was an active Virginia sign contractor and I was contracted to paint a few of their new buildings in Staunton and Waynesboro in the early 1990’s. It’s cool to see that the brand is exactly the same now as it was then. AutoZone uses its painted exterior building walls for its brand’s canvas, and then they top it off with skeleton neon lighting so at night they continue to get lots of eyeballs. Often I talk about “brick and mortar branding” with banks, credit unions, and other retailers who have prime road frontage, about the value of their signs in their overall marketing plans. AutoZone’s brand is literally “block and mortar”, as their branding logos and colors are hand painted directly onto the road-facing walls of their cinder block stores in my area.
Sprucing up a brand is a good idea when a competitor is getting ready to roll in a few doors down and open up shop with fresh, new, bright and eye-catching signage. A good image works in capturing attention and bringing in the customers, so I don’t think my friends at AutoZone have to worry about that when it happens in the next month or two as O’Reilly’s opens. I just got my wiper blades and I’m heading out now.