10-14-2022Need helping with business branding? You’ve come to the right place!
Today’s post reviews research on the branding power of novelty and repetition in design, then demonstrates how our custom sign fabricators put this theory into practice for clients in Houston, TX.
Read on to learn more, or call (713)-244-8704 to schedule get a free quote with our custom sign fabrication team in Houston, TX.
When trying to create a memorable brand image, what matters most: novelty or repetition?
Admittedly, this is a trick question—though they might seem mutually exclusive, design novelty and repetition both play a key part in effective business branding. This is born out by several studies.
For example, in a meta-analysis of marketing research conducted by the Journal of Advertising, Schmidt & Eisend (2015) found that “multiple exposures to an advertisement increase consumer awareness of the advertising message and facilitate consumer processing of the included information (p. 415). In other words, repetition is the mother of learning—the more local audiences encounter your branding materials (e.g. brand colors, logo, and lettering), the more their brand awareness increases.
But while repetition is great for reinforcing your brand image, research by Frontiers in Psychology shows that novel designs are better at “breaking through the advertising clutter in a competitive media marketplace,” which is exactly how we’d describe the Houston signscape (Zhou et al., 2018, p. 471).
The best branding combines the best of both worlds, leveraging the dual powers of novelty and repetition to help your message stand out and sink in.
So how does one go about that? Read on to see how our custom sign fabricators put branding theory into practice, or call (713)-244-8704 to get a free quote with our team.
Now that we’ve reviewed some custom sign fabrication theory, let’s show you how we put it into practice.
As it just so happens, the Houston Graphic Signs team recently completed a community sign project for Historic Katy that combines the dual powers of novelty and repetition to create excellent visibility and better branding outcomes.
Our process started a few years ago as the community wanted to update all of their signs in order to create a more modern aesthetic that still conveyed their small-town charm.
Collaborating closely with the client, we kicked the project off with the following monument sign design:
Using a blend of modern and traditional components, including dimensional letters, a stone foundation, and the long-standing symbol of a wheat stalk, this one-of-a-kind monument sign simultaneously creates a novel, 3D viewing experience while also evoking Katy’s motto: Small Town Charm with Big City Convenience.
This year, the client reached out again to update their post-and-panel signage, shown below:
Once again, they wanted to update the look of their sign, while still honoring their country-town character. And once again, our custom sign fabrication team took the lead, delivering this beautiful custom dimensional sign on-time and on-budget:
Here, we see the dual powers of novelty and repetition at work, bringing the client the best of both worlds: novel viewing experiences to catch the eye, plus a bit of strategic repetition to reinforce the brand identity and improve recall.
In particular, the juxtaposition of rural flora and fauna (i.e. the wheat stalk and birds) with an industrial building perfectly encapsulates their mix of small-town charm and big-city convenience, while also creating a one-of-a-kind design to stand out from the surrounding signscape.
At the same time, this novel post and panel sign design leverages the power of repetition, using the same font and wheat stalk symbol that appears on the monument sign showcased earlier to tie them together and reinforce Historic Katy’s branding.
In the end, the customer got exactly what they wanted, and with our custom sign fabricators by your side, you can too!
To learn more about how we can help you combine the dual powers of novelty and repetition to fulfill your brand vision, you can:
References
Schmidt, S. & Eisend, M. (2015). Advertising repetition: A meta-analysis on effective frequency in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 44(4), 415-428.
Zhou, S., Yin, Y., Yu, T., Stupple, E., & Luo, J. (2018). Exploring the experience of novelty when viewing creative adverts: An ERP study. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 471.
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