Marketing and architecture: branded space.

• Author: Gheorghe, Samina

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Do you remember going to a doctor's office for the first time? What did you observe and experience? Did you immediately get the feeling that you were in good, competent hands? Most likely, you unconsciously scanned the space, looked at the style of the furniture, the overall cleanliness of the office, noted how dark or light it was, felt the materials and experienced the colors and layout of the space. You experienced a specific spatial atmosphere that generated a brand identity that it communicated. In addition to how long you had to wait, the friendliness of the doctor and his or her staff and the design of the office had great influence on your perception about the quality of service you were likely to receive. This, in turn, strengthened the way you perceived the doctor's office brand and affirmed or rejected the choice you made.

The same story can be told about the experiences clients have when visiting your law firm. The built environment becomes a significant part of the physical evidence chain that will help communicate your firm's brand identity to let your clients not only read or listen, but experience what your firm is about. Of course, legal services are intangible. Clients cannot feel, see or touch the services prior to consumption, to speak in marketing terms. When hiring a new firm, clients don't know what they will get, so they depend on the evidence they perceive in order to judge. Law firms need to be aware of this fact and make sure that their branding strategy includes the design of the office to reinforce the law firm's brand message to their clients. Law firms need to think of themselves as brands that clients can experience fully. Firms should use the office space, the built environment, as a strategic tool that helps build emotions toward the firm and creates a bond between the clients and lawyers.

In addition to two-dimensional corporate design such as logos, letterheads, color-codes, Web design and so forth, the three-dimensional layers of a brand identity are architecture and interior design. If you had to wrap your service, how would it look and feel so that the client knows in an instant what you are all about? What kind of experience would you like your clients to have so that it mirrors your firm's values and its meaning? Brand experience is defined by how the client reacts to a brand at any contact or literal touch point and is the basis of the client dialogue with the firm's brand...