Reading the signs

Now that I’ve spent a decent potion of my life working in a place where I hear about marketing campaigns, branding, web copy, etc. and where I know some of the people directly responsible for those things, I’ve started giving a lot more thought to the specific words that businesses use to attract customers. 

Along those lines, I noticed something yesterday that made me chuckle. I was riding my bike through an area of fairly cheap-looking suburban apartment complexes—the kind that cater to college students and people who started families way too young. One of these places had a sign that looked like this:

NEWPORT

an apartment community

If you had asked me beforehand, I would have said “apartment community” is an oxymoron. Apartment complexes are collections of transient strangers. Usually the feeling between apartment neighbors is one of mutual apathy—and sometimes antipathy.

And sure enough, this Newport place didn’t exhibit outward signs of being any more a community than the apartment complexes surrounding it. When I think of community, I think of people planting a garden together, or lots of kids roughhousing good-naturedly, or—I don’t know—music and dancing or something. Newport had drawn shades and a few cars parked in front.

So I thought the sign was maybe misleading. If this place is a community, I’d hate to see what a non-community looks like.

I had to wonder if any customers are actually influenced by the use of the word “community” here. Are there people who see it and find themselves (consciously or unconsciously) more inclined to consider living there? Do the existing residents drive by that sign and feel reassured in their choice to call Newport home? It seems hard to believe. 

So that leads to the corollary question: who do the proprietors of the complex imagine they’re reaching with this sign? The sign obviously cost some time and money, so I’m sure they gave a bit of thought to how they were going to brand the place. They probably drafted several other slogans, and the choice of “community” was most likely not careless.

They would do better to keep the sign purely factual (e.g., “Newport Apartments”) and spend their time instead just perfecting the design. That more than manipulative word-spinning, I think, is the way to make a sale. 

We all know from our experiences online how important design is in forming customer relationships. We’re unlikely to buy from poorly designed websites. They look like they might be scams. Bad design affects other decisions, too. Would you apply for a job at a company with a really cheap-looking website? I’d be hesitant.

Good design builds customer trust. I trusted Dropbox when I signed up for it six months ago not only because my friends told me about it, but also because the site just looks professional. And although Dropbox does have a slogan (“Simplify your life”), they don’t put it front-and-center on their homepage. The design is the more important part.

So the point is that this Newport place really should have just gone for broke on fonts, spacing, color schemes, and the like. It’s obvious from their use of “community” that they’re trying to set themselves apart from the other apartment complexes. Design would have been the better way to do that, especially since slogans and marketing copy, when so patently false, can backfire. I’m less likely to want to live there, because I find their sign insulting to my intelligence.

If the sign had just looked really, really nice, I might have given them a second thought.