The importance of design and branding in franchising

In this piece, Joel Bissitt of Franchise UK looks at the importance of franchisors thinking carefully about their design and branding.

Consumers make specific decisions on where they want to spend their cash. They often look for franchise branding that promotes respect, value and trust.

Franchisors invest in getting the logo right; a well-designed, dynamic logo inspires confidence in the brand.

As well as a stylish design, the use of colour in a franchise brands logo is equally important. Often the use of certain colours can help represent the goods or service they supply to the end user.

For example, you will often find gardening franchises, providing lawn care and garden maintenance use shades of green, as it immediately conjures an image of nature, the great outdoors, you instantly have an image what the business provides, other colours may not promote the same affinity with gardening, green is the obvious choice.

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Many cleaning franchises opt for blue to promote a feeling of cool and cleansing.

Food retail represents a lot of the most successful franchise brands, the logos are instantly recognisable and of clear uncluttered design. Often the simplest logos are favoured by the biggest, most successful franchise brands. The logos are designed to be colourful and fresh.

Once a logo is designed and approved for a franchise brand, the franchisor will ensure that all the legal bases are covered to protect the logo. Copywriting the logo and associated slogans, otherwise known as the intellectual property, can be protected. This is very important to franchise businesses, as this prevents any unauthorised trader ‘passing off’ as their brand.

“Many large brands, whether they are a franchise or not,  attribute an accountable value to their logo and/or branding”

Ensuring that the franchise logo is legally protected, in turn offers protection to consumers, when they spot an outlet displaying a franchise logo on the high street, they can be confident that it is the genuine article.

Reassuring when you fancy a take-out coffee from your favourite franchised coffee shop whether in Aberdeen or Cornwall the product purchased will be consistent and the standards exclusive to that particular franchise brand will be upheld.

For major franchises a great logo and branding is not just about awareness or loyal either, many large brands whether they are a franchise or not actually attribute an accountable value to their logo and/or branding. This branding value directly effects their share prices, for example if a company gets some great media exposure for a new product, charitable work then this gets exposure and the share price can go up, bad brand exposure of course will have the reverse effect.

The same could apply to a logo/branding change, if the brand changes significantly it could have a positive or negative impact on both sales and/or share prices which both the tangible and non tangible effects both have a direct impact on the share prices and/or value of the franchising brand. Franchisor (the franchise brand owners) take this very seriously and have a huge amount of franchise brand protection built into franchise agreements with their local franchise operators to avoid misuse of their brand within their own franchise networks.

This article was provided by Joel Bissitt of Franchise UK

Ben Lobel

Ben Lobel

Ben Lobel was the editor of SmallBusiness.co.uk and GrowthBusiness.co.uk from 2010 to 2018. He specialises in writing for start-up and scale-up companies in the areas of finance, marketing and HR.

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