Branding

For Sale signs have been sprouting for about a year now in my neighborhood. Most go down after a few months, but several stubbornly persist. One sign in particular has been up for the better part of a year. It’s a sign from one of those sell-it-yourself kits you can get at Home Depot. It’s not fancy, but it is better than what the owner started out with. Originally he had a cheaper sign with handwriting, advertising “4 beadrooms”. Now they have a better sign with no “beadrooms” mentioned.

Beadrooms or not, the house has gone unsold. I’m sure it hasn’t helped that the owner is selling it himself. I think the old saying about having a fool for a client applies to more areas than just law.

I realized today that this guy’s For Sale sign is a brand. It’s not working for him, but it is definitely a brand. After all, what is a brand? It’s a tool that gets potential customers to stop thinking. Seriously. If you’re Coke, with an insanely huge brand and market presence, all that your brand does is get people to not think about alternatives. Smaller brands are a variation on this theme.

So here’s this guy with his For Sale brand. It’s there every day, rain or shine. And people have stopped thinking about it because it doesn’t change. It’s a brand. It’s sort of sadly fascinating that this guy has accidentally created something many companies pay a lot of money trying to achieve.

Worse, I think the handwritten “beadrooms” sign had more draw.