Design Deliverables

Outsourcing is necessary for many branch and headquarters facilities projects. This work is expensive, so the product and value received from these services should be maximized.

Some consultants deliver just enough to get plan approvals and complete construction documents and this satisfies most clients; however, when a credit union is developing a new branch business model and elevating its branded member and staff experience, the expectations of the deliverables should be elevated to match the credit union’s huge investment in time, resources, money, and market potential for great success. Yet few credit unions take full advantage of the deliverables provided by design consultants to enhance their brand evolution.

Brand evolutions often include new branch business models and prototypes as the physical expression of brand characteristics and delivering the promise in tangible ways. The impact can be substantially enhanced by linking the new or evolved brand with the branch delivery concept.

Capturing Employees’ Hearts & Minds

One of marketers’ greatest challenges is to viscerally install their brand’s attributes in the hearts and minds of staff, so they can truly live the brand and project its characteristics to members and the community in meaningful and memorable ways. A new branch concept makes the brand real in terms of how staff live and conduct their work life through interactions with people, space, technology and the brand environment. Explaining a brand in the abstract can certainly be sold, but making it stick is the trick. A new branch environment helps make it real, and visual tools can make the new concept more easily understood and embraced.

Design consultants can provide four tools to help communicate your new brand to staff and to your target market as well. These communications vehicles include a presentation that includes story telling about the goals, process and results; a prototype book, including renderings; a brand video; and three-dimensional “fly-throughs.” Let’s look at each.

Your prototype process should be recorded in the form of a presentation showing each step of the process, how management and staff were engaged, what exercises were done to create rationale for decision-making, brand references, and initial results from a new branch. Often a PowerPoint deck, the presentation can be used to explain the process to the board and key staff, such as trainers, marketers and team leaders, who will be advocates for the branded branch experience

The prototype process should produce an evolved design documented in a prototype book. This book explains the brand translation and design process by compiling plans, elevations, sketches, color palates and preliminary specifications, while continuing to provide brand rationale for all design decisions.

The prototype book can be shared in any presentation with the board and staff. It can also become an important tool to help HR understand the impact of the new business model on staff, answering such questions as “What are the new performance expectations?” “How will staff support be increased?” “What new tools will be provided?” and “How will the new environment increase their ability to be successful, live the brand, and enjoy work?”

The prototype book includes the interior and exterior renderings of the new branch that tell the visual story in three dimensions. A good example can be seen in a presentation developed for $2.1 billion Municipal Credit Union, New York City.

In addition to the prototype book, the consulting team may produce a brand video to help introduce the brand-driven foundation of the new branch concept and experience. If well-conceived, produced, and delivered, it can become the element that gets the hearts of your staff and members pounding in beat with the brand.

Weber Marketing Group (a CUES Supplier member based in Seattle) developed a powerful brand video for Municipal CU.

Sometimes even three dimensional renderings are too abstract and not sufficient to fully communicate the new brand concept to your target audience. A very effective method of elevating the communications is presenting the final design in the form of a fly-through. If the project is interior only, the fly-through can start at the front door and flow along the member experience to show how they will interact with people, space and technology. If the project includes exterior design, the presentation can be made very dramatic by driving up to the building and then entering. Such a fly-through was developed for the new branch of $1.4 billion Numerica Credit Union, Spokane Valley, Wash.

To get the most out of your evolved or new branch concept, think about the added value you can extract from the process. Consider how the design process can be used to help explain your new brand to staff and members and train staff in new ways of engaging members.

You are spending a good deal of money, time, and resources developing your new brand and branch experience, and you are betting a lot on the success of your efforts. Ultimately, the success you experience will depend on how effectively your staff lives your brand and how well your target members understand your brand in the branch and across every delivery channel. Before you start the branch branding and prototyping process, ensure that your expectations of the design firm’s deliverables include visual elements that can be used to communicate your brand, engage with your community, and motivate staff to promote your brand attributes to your target membership.

Paul Seibert, CMC, is principal/financial and retail design, for CUES Supplier member EHS, a NELSON Company, Seattle.