Storage King
Unpacking a New Brand and Visual Strategy for Sustained Market Leadership
If an organisation can grow to be the largest in Australasia in a little over a decade with a disorganised, incoherent and inconsistent brand, imagine what they could do with some clever rebranding and simple marketing materials? Storage King was already a success story to be proud of, but as with many franchise organisations that grow rapidly, they had lost control of individual stores and a lack of easily accessible marketing materials was beginning to dilute their strong visual brand presence.
With so many competitors flooding the market, it was important for Storage King to improve the consistency of their brand with detailed brand guidelines, whilst maintaining enough flexibility for individual stores to meet the needs of their unique market environments. “It was obvious to us that Atol was a passionate designer and would be an ideal partner to give our brand a facelift. We were impressed with his deep understanding of graphic design, his attention to detail and his practical sense of how this would translate to the modern retail marketplace”, said Michael Tate, CEO of Storage King.
Leveraging the existing brand assets, including the iconic Blue and Yellow colour palette that is so recognisable around Australasia, I cleverly turned the focus to ensuring Storage King had a clear customer-centric brand identity and language that would see the test of time in this rapidly growing modern world. Along with some core messaging to accompany trade show displays and billboard advertising, Michael Tate is now proud to say that my suggestions and input has helped Storage King to enhance their range of marketing materials across all touch-points and position themselves with a visually appropriate brand to accompany their leading market position. To this day, Storage King maintains their crisp brand and demanding market leading position.
Need a self-storage brand that will reconnect with customers or conquer new markets? Contact Atol today to bring your brand to life: +61 434 670 351.
A NEW VISUAL STYLE: We leveraged existing brand assets such as the refined logo and Storage King’s main colour palette – which had built a certain amount of equity within the marketplace around their identity – yet we completely evolved the brand language. The new brand identity is highly customer centric, while projecting a much more sophisticated and contemporary image.
RIGHT MESSAGES: We worked closely with the core Storage King’s team to develop a series of colourful billboards that capture the dynamic nature of the self-storage industry – combining a blend of authenticity, meaningfulness and humanity. The result suggests some of the most appealing attributes of Storage King key areas of focus; the simplicity of their offering and the solutions to a customer’s needs and/or problems.
CORPORATE RETAIL 3D YELLOW BANDING: The Storage King Retail Yellow Banding has evolved over time from a flat banding to a modern 3D Yellow Banding to give it that fresh modern retail look.
Disclaimer: This particular 3D yellow banding wasn't designed by Atol Dupuche. Only featured to indicate direction of design implemented by other stores around Australia.
DISPLAY BOXES: These display boxes work with the sales consultants to reinforce the Storage King brand and demonstrate the features and benefits of the boxes in a bigger, bolder way than before. The design and information contained on the display boxes are there to provide relevant, customer friendly and timely information that a customer is requiring. The display has been designed both with visual cues and text, providing a healthy balance of information. It is built according to scale of the actual boxes.
PICTOGRAMS: A series of pictograms that are unique to the Storage King brand and are carefully used in the Wayfinding system to drive response throughout Storage King stores.
WAYFINDING SYSTEM: The wayfinding system signs are laser cut signs, using Acrylic sandwiched sheets where the Yellow layer is on top of the Blue layer thus creating a 3D effect.
WAYFINDING SYSTEM: The wayfinding system signs are laser cut signs, using Acrylic sandwiched sheets where the Yellow layer is on top of the Blue layer thus creating a 3D effect.
MARQUEE DESIGN: The new marquee is designed to be complementary to their local engagement activities. The external panels are composed of visual branding pieces with the key messages and relevant images. When people walk inside, the staff can interact with them. The inside of the marquee is designed to be a functional storyboard, so even if the tent were empty, this can be used as an exhibition piece. Each of the elements has been designed to be interactive.
PYLON SIGNAGE: Monolith Sign
PYLON SIGNAGE: Alucobond Sign
STYLE GUIDE DEVELOPMENT: The relationship continues through the creation of a brand identity guidelines. In order to ensure that the new brand identity would be executed consistently by the various freelancers and printers, we developed a comprehensive style guideline of 195 page-long so the 400+ stores could implement the new graphic design standard to maintain brand integrity.
