Uniform behaviour

Projecting a corporate identity and a air of professionalism is becoming increasingly important and company uniforms are one way of bringing it all together

At chicken franchise Lenard’s, management is looking to bring in a uniform that looks like something out of MasterChef. The prospective uniform is the brain child of advertising agency IdeaWorks which is helping Lenard’s refresh its brand. Glen Barry, IdeaWorks creative director and head of brand experience, says the new uniform will create brand equity for the chook business.

“It not only needs to be practical,’’ Barry says. “It also needs to reflect a freshness and a contemporary nature to staff that are selling fresh chickens. It’s a contemporary take on a chef’s uniform and that becomes a value that Lenard’s can project. It’s saying ‘We understand chicken and here are innovative ways of cooking it’.”

The agency has helped many companies, including book franchise Dymocks and Coates Hire, create brand awareness through uniform.

Barry says the market for uniforms is growing in a crowded environment where companies are desperately competing for attention and brand recognition. “About 90 per cent of companies have a uniform but when you have a generic uniform you are not differentiating your brand,” he says. “So if the Commonwealth Bank ads are about think different, [the bank] probably needs to have a different uniform as well.”

As well as an opportunity to reflect the brand of the company, uniforms are also about egalitarianism. Earlier this year, there was the extraordinary case of Debrahlee Lorenzana, a banker who got fired from her job at Citibank in Manhattan. Her supervisors said she got the sack because of her work performance but Lorenzana sued the bank, claiming she was fired because she was too attractive and her figure too distracting. She claims she was ordered to stop wearing turtlenecks, pencil skirts, three-inch heels, or fitted business suits because her bosses told her they could not concentrate
on their work.

Linda Curtis, design and development manager at NNT Uniforms, says that would not happen with a uniform, simply because of the way it is made. “We definitely design the collection so that different garments will suit different body shapes but they are never meant to be worn in a tight way,’’ Curtis says.

NNT makes uniforms for many companies. Its biggest client is the Commonwealth Bank and it also provides uniforms for Westpac, ANZ and Suncorp.

Just as different companies have different needs, so do employees have their own requirements. This means there needs to be enough variety. One uniform for a company might have different styles to suit each individual person. For example, the pants might have different types of cut, the legs might be wider or narrower depending on the wearer’s choice and body shape. It’s a uniform in name only.

“It’s more than a uniform, it’s a wardrobe,’’ Curtis says. “It is crucial for someone when they put a garment on their body that they actually feel like they are still them, that the clothes don’t take over.”

Flight Centre employees have worn uniforms from the day the business opened in 1981.

Rhonda McSweeney, the company’s general manager, property and procurement, says the uniform is an important part of Flight Centre’s brand. Last year, branding consultants Interbrand ranked Flight Centre 14th in Australia’s top brands.

“It [the uniform] is an integral part of our brand,” she says. “Our brand is our image, the uniform is part of that, as is the shop as are the window boards.”

Everything about Flight Centre, right down to decor of every retail outlet, is uniform. One shop looks exactly like the other.

“The style plays an integral part.” McSweeny says. “If you walk into a Flight Centre in Pitt Street in Sydney, if you walk into one in the Square Mile in London, you would be presented with the same shop fronts, the same consultants in the same uniform as well as the consistency of service.”

It’s for these reasons that roofing specialists Steeline, for example, adopted one five years ago as part of a deliberate strategy to bring its stakeholders together. The company comprises 26 family-owned businesses, so the uniform was a way of putting them under one banner.

Steeline’s marketing manager, Emily Jones, says the uniform attracts more business.

“The key driver behind the uniform was to assist in our branding campaign and pull everything together,’’ Jones says. “It steps up the perception of professionalism that we portray to our clients and the public.

All this means one thing: in an era where the mass market is viewed as a battle for attention, uniforms could well become the one growth sector for the embattled clothing and textiles industry.

BRW

Comments (0)