In this episode of the Speak PR Podcast, host Jim James warns business owners that outdated signage—both physical and digital—has become invisible to customers due to the psychological effect of habituation. He explains habituation as the brain’s compression mechanism that stops paying attention to information that remains unchanged, using a COVID‑era road sign as a concrete example. Drawing on a University of Cincinnati study, James shows that refreshing on‑premise signage can boost revenue (average 10% increase for 60% of firms), improve hiring, and raise occupancy when digital pricing displays are used. He illustrates the point with several case studies: a national lodging chain’s digital price board, a car dealership’s video signboard, and a local whole‑food shop (Scoop) whose signage needed to correct misconceptions about cost. James ties these insights to his PR methodology, which targets three audience groups (customers, partners, staff) and treats all touch‑points—including signs, logos, and website straplines—as PR assets. He offers practical guidance on evaluating and updating signage: ensure legibility, align visual marketing with the desired demographic, keep signs clean and in good repair, make logos and vehicle markings clearly reflect the business, and use optimistic “VE Day” messaging to signal a post‑COVID new normal. He concludes by urging leaders to let actions outpace advertising, using fresh, relevant signage as a visible sign of commitment and optimism.
Chapters
Hello and welcome to the Speak PR Podcast. My name is Jim James, and this is a show for business owners who believe that they've got great value to unlock in their businesses if they could just find ways to communicate that. My name is Jim James, and I've been running my own businesses for over 25 years, including an international public relations agency called East West Public Relations. Each show has thoughts and tools and technologies for business owners to deploy to maximize the value in their own businesses without the expense of using an agency. Now, I had an idea today that I'd love to share with you, if I may, and that's that I've been reading signs about the government approach to COVID, and the one near my house, which I drive past every day, and says Drive safely and save the NHS. Now what I realized is that that sign has been up for nearly four months now, but I don't remember it changing, and I don't really remember when it first came online. So what I realized is that there are some signs out there that were put out at the very beginning of COVID that are not being changed. And as companies, what I realise as well is that we need to really revisit and refresh our own signage. What I've done, in fact, is I've gone to my own website and just deleted a strapline that I had put on the website now 3 months ago that said, we can help you communicate during COVID times, because I realised that COVID times for sure, but actually we've got to move on. We've all got to be thinking about not COVID times, but just the new normal. We can, as this theory of habituation states, become basically immune to the the the things that we see every day, and it's it's actually a function of how the brain manages to store so many things. It's a form of compression. In in compression technology, what happens is that the computer only remembers what changes; it doesn't remember. What stays the same. So everything that stays the same, it doesn't need to store, but everything that changes, it needs to store. And our brain is doing just the same thing. It's saying, if this piece of information or this noise or this color stays the same, we don't need to remember it. We just remember as it was. It'll be a memory, but it won't be something that we need to take on board Every day to refresh our view on it. So the point of this story today is the need for us to kind of refresh what we are saying about our companies, or in the case of the government and the local government, the signage about how we behave around COVID and wearing masks, for example. So there was a study done by the University of Cincinnati on the economic value of on-premises. Signage. And what it suggested is that on-premise signs and regulations that limit them can significantly impact the performance of some types of business. Well, I think we probably would take that for granted, but actually what it was suggesting in its outcomes is quite important because the on-premise signage directly does influence the vitality of that business in terms of giving some real uplift to the way that the business carries on, both in terms of transactions and in terms of recruitment. So, for example, 60% of businesses which upgraded their signage reported increases averaging about 10%. The legibility is the most important characteristic of signage. That also goes without saying. But they also found that sign changes on a building and around the building and leading to a company could increase hiring. That nearly a quarter of the companies that they surveyed actually, once they'd refreshed and improved their signage, hired more people, presumably because their business was going on better. So business logos and the size and the location of the signs, according to this survey by the University of Cincinnati, were more important for companies with more establishments. So presumably branding therefore is more important. However, what they did find, for example, is that the national lodging chain, which was a case study, found that the use of digital electronic signage to display pricing was associated with an increased average occupancy rate. In other words, that when because the display was in the same location, but the contents were different, the message, presumably the pricing was different, it actually impacted occupancy rates. So actually, I guess because it was a digital sign and it was an active sign rather than a printed sign, people paid attention to it. There was a case where a specialty small business chain demonstrated the need for signage to reaffirm the value Of the company offered by the niche retailer, and this resonated for me because today I was driving my daughter and her friend to to town, and we mentioned a new whole food shop here in Bath called Scoop. Now Mimi, my elder daughter's friend, commented that whole food and bulk meant that it was expensive and shishi. Because their experience in London was that whole food stores meant that it was expensive, and if it was bulk, it meant it wasn't packaged, and they got you to buy more. Now, actually, that's the very opposite in terms of the mission of Scoop and these whole food stores. Their goal is to reduce waste and to focus on the basics. And actually, what we found with the case of Scoop is that because we're not buying the packaging and we can choose how much we want It's actually more cost-effective. But the signage that is in these stores like Scoop needs to be reassuring young people like Mimi who have heard their parents kind of discounting the value of this, of this merchant model. There's also a case in the Cincinnati University report where a car dealership found that the addition of a video signboard was associated with a large increase both in the service department revenue and the number of customers. They also found apparently that there was a goodwill and reputational gain associated with posting community-related public services messages on the video board. In other words, using their signage in their dealerships for communicating what was going on in and around the community and not just for direct sales. So marketing messages and public relations messages, in my definition, are not confined just to the press. I like to think of public relations as really talking about all the touch points that a company has with their potential customers or partners or their staff, what I call the 3 audience groups within the Speak PR methodology that we have here at East West PR. So when we start to think about habituation and look at our own companies, how much signage do we have on the building or on the website or on the internet or in-store or in our restaurant or in our factory or wherever you have your signage that is pre-COVID that may now talk to, for example, the sanitary needs, may talk to sterilisation. But are we actually addressing any of the other aspects of our business that might have changed as a result of the new world we're living in? As we've talked about in earlier podcasts, and I did a webinar on what I call PR in COVID times, and I defined COVID PR as compassionate, optimistic, values-based, informative, and digital. Now, when we look at the signage that is supporting our own businesses, be it a logo, for example, on a building or on a billboard or on a TV, how has that moved on? Because if our, if our signage and the messaging on the signage hasn't moved on, our 3 audience groups may be suffering from habituation. They may not recognise that we've come back as different businesses. Certainly going downtown right now in Bath, it's a pretty disappointing and pretty sad show really. There is a sense, as you can see in the shops, of really sort of almost resignation and depression. And I would say that as business owners, now is the time that we've got to almost think about VE Day, you know, Virus in Europe Day, taking on from the old Victory in Europe Day from the Second World War. We've got to start thinking about, we're getting our businesses back, we're getting our customers back, we're getting our staff back. Is our signage representing the positive outlook that we've got for the upcoming future quarters and months ahead. And as leaders of organizations, I think that's what we've really got to do. We've got to be the inspiration. We've got to be the people that can look even just one day ahead for our teams and for our customers, because as business leaders, ultimately that is what we do. We, we lead, which means we must see things at least one day ahead of anybody else. And our signage, whether it's our business cards, whether it's our store signage, whether it's our on-website or billboards, needs to reflect this new optimism, this new sense that we understand what we're going to do with our business to make it profitable, to make it add value, to make it sustainable, and to communicate that because Habituation means that people like me that have seen the same sign asking us to drive safely and save the NHS, or to wear a mask to save the NHS, or whichever local government you have supporting this message— these messages quite quickly are taken for granted by the human brain, which is just trying to look for the most important thing to look for next. Remember, our brains forget what they see frequently. Part of it as a logo and a brand may create a good baseline of information and feeling in the— in our brains and in our hearts and in our minds, but that's different to getting people to take action, and that's what signage can create. So with the Cincinnati University study in mind, where we can see that there was a direct correlation between upgrading signage and refreshing signage with business performance. Maybe just— I've been looking at how I can do that for my own business, and maybe this is useful for you. Maybe 3 different ways to look at this. One is, does the visual marketing target the demographic that you want to reach out to? Does this coordinate with your brand? You know, are you building signage? Do you have flashing signs, static signs, neon signs, running signs, ticker tape signs? Are they coordinating with the messages that you are sharing with your team and with your customers, your partners? The second aspect is, will they make or break your reputation? There are many shops at the moment and factories and buildings where the signs are looking outdated or in disrepair. Maybe they're dirty. Maybe they have paint flaking off them. One of the jobs that I did when I first came out of university was as a marketing manager for a company that was owned by Siemens, and they merged 2 British companies together. And my job was to install new signage. And one of the places that I put new signage was in all the car parks. And all the fencing of the car parks, because I felt as though this was the first time customers, potential customers, and staff would, would enter the premises. So the signage and the reputation of our business starts really as soon as someone approaches the building and really should follow throughout on signage, for example, indicating directions within the building, Signage to give people instructions, tell people where emergency exits are, and so on. So how do we make sure that our signage reflects the optimism that we have? Now, even if the sign is in poor repair, it shouldn't be dirty. And I think that's one thing that in, in times I've always invested, for example, in Beijing when I was running the Morgan car business. Every spring, I would have people come to wash the signage because the winter in Beijing threw out a lot of dust that came from Mongolia. So we had to make sure that we would wash the signage. The the third part of signage is that it illustrates your relevance. So is your sign really showing that your business is somehow? Attached to that business. I say that because, for example, I've, I've seen an electronics components, uh, supplier driving a van around, but there is no indication from their logo or the signage on the van that they're involved in the electronics business. It could be a delivery for any kind of company. It could be fresh food, could be flowers. So no matter what your business is, the logo should reflect that, but also the signage that you then have on your building, on the uniforms, on your business card should all really reflect the nature of your business. And if it doesn't, then what kind of impression is that giving to your potential customers, to your partners, and to your staff? So if your marketing messages are older and not yielding the same kind of results that they did before, it may be because you're still promoting the, the signage in the same places and in the same way, but the people that are seeing that are suffering from habituation. It doesn't mean necessarily we have to change the logo, but we could refresh it. Doesn't mean to say we need to abandon the signage we've got, but maybe we need to put new content on the signs. So keeping our messaging and our signage fresh and relevant and optimistic, I think, is a key part of the public relations program that we need to deploy. Paul Houraghan of Remark Asia Pacific said that we need to make sure that our actions are greater than the advertising. And I think that's also so true that our actions need to be greater than our signage. But if the signage is poor, is old, is dirty, the ink has faded, and it's not relevant to the business that we're running now, then we're letting the potential customers and the staff and potential partners To believe that we don't really care about the business, that we're not really investing our energy. It's called a sign for a reason. It's called signage for a reason. It's a sign of how we want to address the business, how we're running the business. So let's make signage a big part of our public relations. So with that, I wish you the best of health. A profitable business, and they just look once again at the signage that you've got and just think about the psychological law of habituation. Are people taking you and your business for granted? And if they are, think about how signs could change that.
