How branding can reassure on COVID-19 hygiene procedures
Opinion
The past few months have seen those businesses that have remained open scrabbling to find the right words to reassure customers that they’re doing everything possible to keep them safe. There have been emails from CEOs, myriad signs in retail stores and corporate videos posted on social media channels.
Matching the right words with the right tone of voice is a powerful combination in times of crisis. But there are other, more visual ways of providing much needed reassurance to customers.
Take Premier Inn’s ‘CleanProtect’, for example, which it describes as a ‘new enhanced hygiene promise… developed with global cleaning and hygiene product supplier Diversey, specifically in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.’
The hotel group has gone one step further and turned the promise into a distinctive brand – by joining the two words, using a dual colour palette and adding a ‘TM’ to claim it as a trademark. An explanatory video shows CleanProtect being used as a stamp of reassurance on a bedroom door hanger to let guests know the room has been serviced in line with the CleanProtect hygiene specifications. Essentially, it’s type of visual shorthand for communicating that COVID-19 cleaning procedures are in place.
As restaurants and public places begin to reopen, Premier Inn’s CleanProtect initiative offers some useful food for thought. After all, having stringent hygiene procedures in place is only half the battle: clearly communicating them to customers is equally important. Branding your own bespoke hygiene standards is one way of doing that.
