How to convey brand with your serviced office

If you’re choosing from our top city-centre locations for a serviced office address, you might wonder how best to brand your workspace. It’s all too easy for businesses operating out of serviced offices to neglect branding entirely, seeing as these office spaces come ready-fitted with all the infrastructure and facilities your business needs to operate.

There are, however, plenty of ways to get your walls talking, by leveraging your office or workspace to portray your business’s specific story or image. Here’s our advice on how to convey brand with your office.

Why is office branding important?

No matter how big or small your business’s marketing budget, brand building starts at home. With low-level branding opportunities in all our serviced offices, you can convey to potential customers and clients your business values and unique selling point before you’ve even delivered your pitch.

Your office or workspace conveys an image to both clients and customers that can engage people and create an emotional connection. Stock art hanging on the walls and run of the mill furnishings can seem alien and artificial, but adding a small personal touch or two can make all the difference in terms of helping visitors warm to you as a business. It makes you all the more memorable too.

Office branding is also important for your staff. Students at the University of Exeter studied a local corporation and found that personalising a workspace has a strong psychological impact. Employees that were given free rein to decorate their workspace said they felt more respected as individuals and therefore more invested in the company’s success.

How to convey brand with your office

Your company’s office is one of the most important aspects of your brand identity, but there are many different types of brand a business can adopt, depending on the kind of service it offers. Looking at the branded spaces of other businesses in your area is a great way to determine what works best for your specialism, but remember to always be true to yourself.

Ask yourself: What is your company culture? What inspires your employees and what makes them proud? Once you’ve established what it is that makes your company stand out, you can apply that same idea to your workspace and bring that idea to life with colour, layout and by practising what you preach.

Convey brand with colour

Certain colours can have certain meanings in customers’ minds. This colour guide looks at the meanings different colours have to consumers. Blue, for example, which is used by Facebook and Skype, suggests a company is smart and liberal, but can also be a little cold. Orange, which is used by Etsy and Amazon, tells customers a company is warm and friendly.

This is something you likely considered when designing your company logo, website and perhaps any stationery you use. The best practice, first of all, is to translate that into your office space, even if for no other reason than consistency. A consistent image makes a business seem more professional, cohesive and overall more memorable: you want to expose clients and customers to your defining logo and brand with every opportunity you can.

If your company logo is turquoise, say, you might use that specific shade for your desk mats, rugs and other soft furnishings. Why not get some custom printed mugs printed up, and update your computer screensavers to your company colours and logo too. It’s the small, subtle things that become ingrained in people’s subconscious, and they’re the tokens they’ll learn to associate with your brand.

Convey brand with layout

As strange stories emerging from Silicon Valley and other innovation hubs about in-office slides and mobile workstations prove, there’s certainly some rather creative interpretation of the workspace going on at the moment. It can be difficult to discern the fun from the fad, and it remains to be seen how the wackiest of these ideas actually support workplace productivity. It’s certain, however, that the layout of your office can have real psychological effects on both customers and staff alike.

If you’re a creative business, for example, you might choose an open plan space that encourages your staff to openly discuss their work and puts their creativity on display. Alternatively, if you handle sensitive data, like if you’re a legal or financial agency, you might prefer private offices that show visitors that their information is being dealt with confidentially, and is stored securely behind closed doors.

Of course, think about what this means for your employees too. Open-plan offices make it easier for staff to collaborate and also hold them more accountable. With no solid walls or doors, workers experience what is known as the ‘fishbowl effect’, and are more likely to behave responsibly and stay focused on the task at hand. Offices segmented into private rooms and booths will make for a quieter work environment where employees are less likely to become distracted, but can also be a good place for them to hide and even feel alienated from the rest of the team.

Convey brand by practising what you preach

Branding your office isn’t just about the things you have, but the things you do. There might be a more specific brand image you’re wishing to get across, particularly if, for example, your business works to promote green practices.

Our Leeds offices, for example, are located in the BREEAM Excellent ‘Green’ Building, recognised for best practice in sustainable building design and good environmental performance. Nearly all of our London serviced offices offer secure facilities to store bicycles, meaning you can encourage your employees to commute sustainably as well.

Depending on what you value in your company, the possibilities are quite endless. If you’re a publisher or literary agency, you might fill bookshelves with books and industry magazines. You might also choose an office is suitable for wheelchair users or those with visual impairments.

There’s no reason to assume choosing a serviced office limits your ability to brand your office in a way that is specific to you. Contact us today to discuss your options, and how we can help your serviced office feel like your business’s home.