Abbey All Over

Grupo Santander, Spain’s largest financial group, and the world’s ninth-largest bank, formally took over Abbey bank in November 2004. Abbey is now part of an organisation that has operations in 40 countries and employs 126,000 staff serving more than 63 million customers through a network of 10,000 branches.

The acquisition meant that for the second time in just 18 months Abbey had a corporate make-over – a complete change of brand identity. This included a branch-by-branch rebranding involving the removal of the existing ‘abbey’ signage and replacing that with the Grupo Santander corporate identity.

The new design reflects the strongest brand elements of both Abbey and that of Grupo Santander. As befits an organisation that started life in 1849 (as the National Freehold Land and Building Society, merging with Abbey Road Building Society to form Abbey National in 1944), the Abbey name was retained to focus on the heritage and familiarity of the name in the UK.

The ‘A’ in Abbey was reinstated as a capital letter rather than lower case as it had been during the previous 18 months or so. Santander’s red corporate flame symbol embodied the strength, stability and leadership provided by the group.

With Abbey now being the sixth largest bank in the UK by assets (£170 billion) and the second largest provider of mortgages and savings, with 25,000 staff operating from over 714 branches, it was obviously going to be a tremendous task to undertake the physical rebranding programme.

Working in co-operation with their Project Management specialists, Artis Projects, Abbey set about finding the right architectural sign manufacturing partners to carry out the project. Essentially, the brief was to find partners capable of taking the concepts created by Abbey’s design consultants and move them into the built environment. From an initial list of around thirty companies, Abbey and Artis selected around eighteen that could meet the necessary pre-qualification bench-marks – size, experience, capabilities, track record and financial stability – and then instigated a reverse-auction process.

Following the tender process Sign 2000, of Paddock Wood, near Tonbridge in Kent, was one of five sign manufacturing companies appointed by Abbey on a regional basis.

The programme had huge logistical hurdles as Sign 2000’s part of the project involved a rebrand at 103 locations in the South-East region - essentially stretching from Kent to Cornwall – all in a three month period. This meant that surveys, approval of designs, manufacture and installation all had to be completed in a tight time-frame.

Murray Crompton, Sign 2000’s Managing Director, comments, “We were delighted to win the Abbey business as it gave us the opportunity to demonstrate our expertise and flexibility to the full. Nevertheless, we were under no illusions that it would be anything other than a very demanding challenge.”

The entire gamut of Sign 2000’s various skills, experience and expertise were required on this project as each site had different requirements ranging from internally illuminated fascias and non-illuminated fascias; curved fascias; individual non-illuminated letters; LEDs; illumination strips; built-up halo illuminated letters and hanging signs – illuminated and non-illuminated; trough-lit projecting signs; timber fascias and hanging signs and sign-written fascias.

The sites ranged from modern shopping centre locations to listed buildings and conservation areas.

Working closely with Artis, Sign 2000 quickly surveyed each of the sites and produced design drawings utilising CAD equipment that superimposed suggested designs on digital images of the existing properties. They confirmed quotations and provided assessments of any supporting works required. Once these had been validated by Artis, Abbey provided Sign 2000 with the official order to move ahead.

The Abbey project involved a high level of multiple manufacturing and amazingly fast turnarounds. Without a doubt this was an ambitious programme but it was one Santander had committed to and intended to achieve. Therefore, decision-making had to be fast and precise. Questions relating to branch security, local authority planning permission, out-of-hours working and additional construction requirements all had to be dealt with by Sign 2000 through Artis.

A significant amount of work was required over and above that usually expected from an installation programme, including the rewiring of feeds to fascias and specialist cleaning of stonework to remove the outlines of earlier lettering. Much work was carried out on listed buildings that obviously required extra-careful handling. Special care had to be taken to repair holes created by the removal of existing signage. In at least one instance specialist stonemasons had to be brought in to reinstate the stonework to its original condition.

As Mike Pearce, Joint Managing Director of Artis says, “This was a challenging project and one that required Sign 2000 to display great flexibility at short notice.”

Sign 2000 had to undertake a great deal of on-site liaison with fitters involving overnight work. Obviously, as far as possible, all this had to be done causing the minimum of disruption to Abbey’s business. In the main, branches were transformed within 24 hours or less, with the larger ones taking perhaps two or three days at most.

The entire project was completed within the three month deadline, other than a few sites that required specialist or extensive building works. Commenting on the working relationship between the parties during the project, Mike Pearce described it as a “highly task-minded experience. Given the timescales involved everyone had to retain a sense of perspective and show total professionalism.”

The results, however, have been worth all the effort. “The Abbey Project achieved its objectives in that Abbey has now been fully integrated into the Santander family and is now a powerful presence on the High Street. This has been a very successful operation,” confirms Mike Pearce.

Murray Crompton, Sign 2000 MD concurs, “The new Abbey identity was established across the country in a short period of time and this, in conjunction with Abbey’s television and press publicity campaigns, has resulted in a very recognisable corporate identity for them.”

The measure of Sign 2000’s successful handling of this prestigious but complex project can be gauged by the fact that they have been retained to handle on-going new branch signage projects and maintenance support.


IMAGES: Abbey Brighton branch frontage before and after Sign 2000 installed the new corporate style and a typical fascia and projection sign.