I have this thing about sports teams that move to another city and keep the same nickname even if it doesn’t work well and, even worse, collegiate conference names are a joke. I may have mentioned it before in this space, but I think it’s worth repeating given the ascension of lighting in the custom integration channel.
Some examples include my favorite basketball team, the Los Angeles Lakers, sticking with Minnesota’s Land of 10,000 Lakes after moving from Minneapolis. In other misfires, the Utah (formerly New Orleans) Jazz and Memphis (formerly Vancouver) Grizzlies come to mind. On the other hand, kudos to the Buffalo Braves for switching to the Clippers when they moved to the port city of San Diego.
Meanwhile, in the NCAAs the Big Ten has 18 schools, the Big 12 has 16 teams, the Atlantic 10 has 15, and the Atlantic Coast Conference includes two universities in California and one in Texas. Only the now-defunct Pac-12 kept up with the times growing from the Pac-8 and Pac-10 beforehand.
OK, why the heck am I using these examples? Jason Knott and I have been putting together the CE Pro 100 for a quarter-century now and keeping in mind that I know zero about running a business my thinking is many companies on the list could use a branding refresh.
The custom integration industry has thrived on attracting clients for years with a combination of Audio, Sound, Stereo, Video, Vision, AV, Theater, Controls, Electronics, Technologies, Innovations, etc. as the foundation of their names.
Lighting is nowhere to be found among the CE Pro 100 company monikers, and that doesn’t give me too much confidence about its presence in the rest of the industry’s names. Is it time to change your ‘story’ or messaging off the bat? Should you consider adding a reference to shades too?
A couple of years ago I profiled a Texas-based integrator Elite AV, which was undergoing a transition to Elite AV&L — Elite AV & Lighting. The company has excelled in the lighting controls and fixtures market and it made sense to reflect that.
After researching our Lighting Controls & Fixtures Deep Dive (keep an eye out for that coming later this month), it occurred to me that other integrators might wish to tweak their brands. Obviously, for those that have been around for a long time, brand equity is a big deal and there might be no need to make the change. And larger companies probably don’t have a decision to make.
Just for an example, and you’ll read more about this in our June issue, Barrett’s in Chicago has been making excellent inroads into the lighting market, but you wouldn’t know it if you were unfamiliar with the company.
At a recent manufacturer event, Brian Perrault of Barrett’s explained to me the conundrum the company has sometimes with prospective clients. They often don’t know that Barrett’s designs and builds lighting systems or maybe they are familiar with the longtime Chicago integrator from when it was their bread-and-butter was audio/visual.
“Now we’re probably 60% lighting and 40% AV. But I knew we finally made it in the lighting business when we had a customer ask us if we also do AV,” Perrault told me.
Do your prospective customers know up front that your company not only provides, but has expertise in lighting systems?
Keep Reading:
Find out more about Elite AVL’s ascension to the lighting category
Watch as colorful landscape lighting illuminates this Hilton Head home
Or hear about how some other top integrators got their start in lighting
