Five good reasons to decorate corporate lobbies over the festive season
Last month, we wrote about corporate lobby decoration and lighting, and the value of decorating your lobby for the festive season. We offered a number of benefits from a European perspective, and as promised, we’re now going to look at lobby decoration from an American perspective.
We spoke with lighting and decoration experts from American Christmas, MK Illumination’s American office, and we were pleased that they agreed with the European perspective. We were even more pleased to find that they were able to contribute a few additional benefits that American businesses and brands consider over the festive season.
The result is five good reasons to decorate corporate lobbies over the holiday season.
Five reasons to decorate your corporate lobby over the festive season
Brand building and customer recognition
Using festive lighting and decoration in lobbies is a way to reinforce brand values and make customers aware of what businesses stand for and what they represent.
Is your business solid, dependable and conservative? You can use traditional, culturally appropriate lighting and decoration to make your visitors feel safe. Is your brand all about innovation and doing things differently? Use lighting and design in your corporate lobby to express the funky, creative and innovative side of your business. If your brand represents luxury, then opulent, custom-designed lighting and decoration will communicate this just as clearly as your high-class brochures and elegant business cards.
Not only can the right lighting, decoration and design reinforce your brand to existing customers, but it immediately communicates your brand values to prospective visitors, too, particularly if your lobby or reception area is their first “touchpoint” with your business.
Welcoming visitors
Aside from presenting a consistent image to visitors, lighting and decoration in lobbies also serves to welcome people and make them feel comfortable, wanted and “at home”. Why is this important? Well, it’s all about making a positive impression, and it doesn’t matter if the visitors to your lobby are customers or prospective customers, suppliers, service providers or staff. You never know who people know: a supplier might tell the story of their warm welcome to a colleague or friend who might just be the dream customer you’ve been hoping for.
Celebrating the season
For many people, the holiday season is a special time of the year. People go out of their way to dress up for holiday parties and end-of-year gatherings, and your lobby also deserves a special look that sets you apart. If you spend a little time getting your lobby lighting and decoration right, you can create a seasonal look that incorporates local and cultural traditions, your brand and values, and that makes the festive season… well, a little more festive!
Prime location, prime visibility
If you’ve invested money in a property or in a prime location, it’s important that you are recognised throughout the year. If you choose not to decorate your lobby or building for the season, whilst all your neighbouring buildings install festive lighting and decoration, you risk being remembered for all the wrong reasons. Or worse – not being remembered at all!
Destination-making
In the US, holiday lighting and decoration in lobbies isn’t simply about welcoming visitors or reinforcing a brand. In many cities, tourism bodies actively promote self-guided city walks that take visitors on a tour of the city’s lights. And we’re not simply talking about the lights that the city installs for the holiday season. We’re talking about the lights and decorations installed by businesses and brands and hotels and buildings across the city.
This means that investing in lighting and decoration over the holiday season can literally put your business, brand or building “on the map”. Without having to do any extra marketing, locals as well as visitors who visit the city specifically to see the lights make an active decision to visit your place of business. They appreciate the lights, take photos that they post online and on social media accounts, remember your name and talk about This contributes heavily to city tourism in the US, and this phenomenon is starting to appear in cities across Europe and further afield, too. Literally, if your lobby or building or business isn’t decorated for the season, it won’t be on the map. And that’s a missed opportunity.
The one-sentence summary
Decorating corporate lobbies and buildings for the festive season makes good sense. It not only welcomes visitors, strengthens your brand, celebrates the season and makes the most of the prime location of your business, but it also makes your building or brand a destination worth visiting, deserving of a place on your city’s holightingliday lighting map.
If you need a little help imagining the possibilities of festive lighting and decoration for your lobby, building or business, do get in touch – we’d love to speak!