Resources and links from David Lecours’ SMPS Build Business 2017 Program, Visual Content That Wins Business: The Untapped Power of Infographics.
Program Description
A/E/C firms are marketing in the era of big data, but small attention spans. It’s challenging to differentiate your firm from the competition when your prospective client doesn’t have time to listen.
This program unleashes the untapped power of infographics to help your firm stand out. Sure, writing and speaking are the typical ways to demonstrate thought leadership via content marketing. But who wants to be typical? With data visualization in the form of infographics, you can effectively demonstrate your expertise to win new business.
In terms of memorability and messaging, most A/E/C firms have terrible brand names. Firms named after founders can be problematic if difficult to say or spell, and challenging for ownership transition. Acronyms are even worse. Lost in alphabet soup, they are neither memorable or distinctive.
I chose to interview Leslie Young, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP, CDP because her firm recently renamed using a metaphorical name, STIR Architecture. Having a great brand name is an indicator of progressive marketing.
Tell me about your role at STIR
I am Associate Partner and Director of Strategic Development leading Marketing and Business Development. Known for both large-scale, complex mixed-use projects in the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as a boutique portfolio of adaptive reuse, institutional and transit work, STIR has offices in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Manila. I am one of two Associate Partners and 3 Partners who were ultimately the decision makers for the renaming of our firm.
Your firm has changed names a couple of times in its history. Why?
The firm was founded in 1984 by Ronald Altoon and James (Jim) Porter, so we started out as Altoon & Porter Architects. In 2012 when Jim left the firm, we updated our name to Altoon Partners. When Ronald left the firm in 2015, we saw an opportunity to rename the firm as something not directly tied to partner names. In 2016, we reintroduced ourselves as STIR Architecture.
Metaphorical naming typically isn’t done by AEC firms. Did you consider using partner names or adopting an acronym?
Since the firm’s founding, the intent was always to create a legacy firm with a formal ownership transition plan. The remaining partners have been at the firm for 30 years, on average. There was a little bit of “I’ve earned the right to have my name on the door” thinking, so we did initially consider the typical acronym of using the first letter of each partner’s name. But we discovered fairly quickly that DSA, ASD, DAS, ADS, SDA was not going to work for us. But mostly, we didn’t want to go through the naming process again if one of the partners leaves. We thought it was an opportunity to come up with a fresh name that better describes who we are.
Any other considerations for the new name?
Many of our newer staff had never worked with our founders, Altoon or Porter. While our values and practice hasn’t changed dramatically, we wanted to evolve the firm with a new name that everyone could embrace as their own.
Did you work with an outside consultant for the naming process? Why?
For about five seconds, we thought we could do it ourselves. But we quickly realized we needed an expert and a referee. We also had a strict deadline ““ attendance at our largest annual domestic tradeshow. We hired WOW Branding to keep us on schedule. Also, working in foreign markets, we needed their help with a name that translated well into other languages.
What Was the Naming Process?
We had conference calls with our consultant and the five decision makers. Some lasted as long as six hours. We reviewed our Mission, Core Values, and prioritized goals of the firm. The strategy has to come first. Next, our consultant presented a long list of about 50 names, which we edited down to 8-10, then ultimately 5. From these 5 finalists, they did availability research and some basic design treatment. We had two real favorites, one of which we ultimately decided could cause us intellectual property problems. Ultimately, we decided on STIR Architecture, which we are very excited about.
Why STIR? What Does it Mean?
We love that stir is a verb, as in “stirring things up.” We like to tackle new design challenges. Our work also “stirs” the emotions of users of our buildings. STIR refers to how we practice””complex projects with many stakeholders and multiple team members. The energy of our new name appeals to us, our staff and our clients. It is forward-focused. It reflects who we are, what we do and what people expect of us. Our name is our promise.
How Did You Communicate This New Name to the World?
We distributed press releases stating that as of April 11, 2016, our new name is STIR Architecture. These included sharing our strategy of developing the name and what the name means to us. We followed up with a direct mail promotional piece (see below) to 600 people on our mailing list. Since we didn’t have physical addresses for everyone, we supplemented the direct mailer with a 2500 person email announcement. We chose not to reference our previous name in a tagline or as a transitional device. We went all-in with STIR. We still own all our previous URLs, so if a user inputs an old website address, it will automatically redirect the user to our new site at stirarchitecture.com. We continue at every opportunity to reconfirm our brand through direct mail, social media, press releases, advertisements, etc. Consistent reinforcement of our brand at every turn has been a priority.
What Advice Would You Give To Other Firms That Are Considering a Name Change?
Give yourself time. On one hand, it was good that we had a strict deadline to get the name done by, but it caused a lot of stress. Keep in mind that getting the name done is really just the beginning. Then you have to develop a new logo, visual branding tools, marketing collateral, and website. Also, having a formal program in place to keep reinforcing the brand moving forward is key.
In general, I recommend other firms dream big, be bold. As long as you are consistent in continuing what has been successful for the firm in the past, clients will continue to follow you.
Conclusion
In start-up mode, most firms, unfortunately, put little thought into the firm name. The sole focus is bringing in any project that pays the bills. Moving out of childhood and into adolescence, firms should start to think and act for themselves, developing a distinct point-of-view. If not done previously, this is the time to develop a distinct brand name that reflects where the firm is headed, not where you’ve been. Renaming isn’t easy””few things of value in life are easy. As Leslie and STIR Architecture have shown, with the right approach, a small focused team of decision makers, and an expert guide, success is attainable. Past clients will continue to work with you and future clients will gain a favorable first impression.
Lately, I hear a lot of A/E/C firms talking about culture. When competing for talent, firms often cite their culture as a differentiator to lure new hires.
I define culture as the shared behaviors and beliefs of your firm. So, how do you share your culture with a prospective hire or client? Don’t they have to experience it?
First, codify the shared behaviors and beliefs of your firm as written Core Values. Sadly, most firm leaders develop a set of banal Core Values at a weekend retreat, then send them out in an equally uninspired mass email to all employees. But, as you’ll see in this post, Core Values can be so much more. A creative manifestation of your Core Values is a powerful marketing tool and an essential artifact of your culture. An artifact that prospective hires or clients can experience to determine if there is a match.
Manifested Core Values Attract the Right Talent and Clients
Prospective hires and clients want to get a sense of what it’s like to work with your firm. They imagine themselves on a typical day at your office and judge whether they’ll fit in. Simultaneously, you want clients and talent that harmonize with your culture. For both parties, this requires a leap of faith. But you can minimize the risk by sharing a creative manifestation of your Core Values. The goal isn’t to create something safe that resonates with everyone. You only want people who fit with your culture. Communicate your point of view. Then let clients and talent self-select.
Here is an example of Manifested Core Values we recently created with our client, Murraysmith. First, we helped them with their positioning: geographical focus on the Northwest, obsession with detail/quality, fun, and the right size (120 people). Sounds like like a craft brewery, right? So, we decided to invent a faux craft beer for each of their seven Core Values. Each Value became manifested as a letterpressed (a craft printing technique) beer coaster. The Core Value is on the front, with a description about what it means on the back. To give each Value the gravitas it deserved, and to create a sense of anticipation, we recommended one new coaster be distributed to each employee for seven consecutive weeks.
Manifested Core Values Demonstrate How To Behave
Most firms have a particular way they like things done. Everything from how to bind a proposal, close out a project, or even write an email.
Some firms even develop a clever name or use The (Firm Name) Way to brand their culture.
I suppose you could create a 10-volume employee manual that imagines all scenarios employees will encounter. Or, you could manifest your Core Values as a guide to allow employees, who are adults, to use their best judgement. I recommend the latter.
Starbucks manifests their Core Values in their Green Apron Book. As you can probably infer, it’s pocket-sized to fit in a barista’s green apron. I like to think the pocket position (over the heart) helps baristas takes the expected behaviors to heart.
Manifested Core Values Demonstrate Quality
Stated or not as an official Core Value, all firms embrace quality. So, whatever form your manifested Core Values take, make sure it’s done well. Use quality materials, professional designers, writers and photographers to communicate the professionalism of your firm. While not specifically designed as a Core Values manifestation, the 20th Anniversary book we created for Schmidt Design Group helped them communicate their beliefs. There are 20 quotes or statements coupled with project photography to express their point of view. The firm received such positive feedback, we created similar books for their 25th and 30th anniversaries. To demonstrate quality, the books feature great photography, graphic design, paper, printing, and perfect binding. One client even told the owner of the firm, “I keep the book on my desk. If I’m having a bad day, I read through the book to find inspiration.”
No. 5 – A good designer is a good listener
Below are more ways to manifest your Core Values. You could design and print oversized graphic panels to cover boring blank walls within your office.
Clark Construction shares their values through a series of videos on their website. Each video summarizes one value with different employees sharing what that value means to them.
You could hire a designer to create an infographic or poster as shown below. They took an acrostic approach where R-I-S-E are the first letters in their four Core Values.
Conclusion
When you bring your Core Values to life, do so in a medium that reflects your culture. Many employees at Murraysmith go out after work and enjoy the burgeoning craft brewing culture of the Pacific Northwest. So, beer coasters were a great fit to communicate the firm’s Core Values. As Marshall McLuhan stated, “the medium is the message.” Choose a medium that fits your firm.
To effectively pass culture on to the next generation in your firm, it must be manifested. You can’t rely solely on oral tradition. Stories get lost, skewed by the teller, and forgotten by the listener. Share your Core Values and culture through a tangible artifact.
When the right prospective client or employee experiences your Manifested Core Values, a fierce loyalty will develop.
How does your firm creatively manifest Core Values? Please leave a reply.
This post is the first in a series highlighting progressive marketing from A/E/C firms and leaders. How do I define progressive? Firms that are marketing proactively, not simply reacting to RFPs. It’s leaders developing, sharing, and archiving their knowledge as experts. Progressive firms believe that relationships can, and do, begin online, so they are fluent in digital marketing. Progressive firms embrace human-centered marketing with emotional intelligence, and the vulnerability of creative risk-taking.
I chose to interview Nicole La, Experience Director at TEECOM, because of their progressive marketing to clients and talent through experience design.
Tell me about your firm.
TEECOM provides “the tech in architecture.™” We provide integrated telecom, audiovisual, acoustics, security, network and wireless technology design for clients including building owners, tenants, architects, engineers, and contractors. We work in many sectors with a common theme of improving the experience of people using our clients’ buildings. Of course we want our clients to be happy, but really we are advocates for the people that live, work, learn, heal, and perform in the buildings that our clients design and build. We are 90 people, with offices in Oakland, Dallas, Portland, and Brighton, United Kingdom.
Tell me about your title, Experience Director.
I set strategy for our firm’s hiring, marketing, and internal continuing education efforts. I focus on the employee and client experience enabling TEECOM to continue to evolve toward true innovation.
So, not just marketing to win new clients, but also marketing to win and retain talent?
Yes, it’s crazy how most firms leave recruiting and retention to only Human Resources when the Marketing department typically knows the brand best, and how to persuasively tell the firm’s story.
How did your role evolve?
A year ago, our CEO asked me to take over talent recruiting. At first I was resistant because it was unfamiliar territory. But the more I thought about it, recruiting is simply marketing for people. I didn’t want to give up marketing to clients, so our CEO and I brainstormed about how we could make it work. Part of our solution was to hire a Marketing Manager for proposals to free me up to embrace my new responsibilities.
How did your firm begin with experience design?
Leaders in the firm read The Experience Economy by Pine and Gilmore, and it changed the culture of our firm. The book promotes a new way of thinking about connecting with clients and talent (employees) to win their loyalty. Simply selling services is no longer enough. Leading firms stage experiences that enhance the value of their services.
How did TEECOM start implementing experience design?
Good question, because in our first year, before we rolled this out to the client experience, we focused on the employee experience. We did an experience mapping exercise starting with job candidates learning about TEECOM, to the interview experience, through the hiring process. New hires receive a playful “Welcome to TEECOM” handbook that is customized for that person. It is not a full-on employee handbook, but rather a customized welcome to the team, complete with maps, Yelp reviews of local services, and all-important local restaurant reviews.
What are some things you are doing to enhance the employee experience?
New employees are greeted at their desks by a gift of branded materials that they have personally chosen through our online store. We recognize employee accomplishments such as obtaining certifications or anniversaries on our general Slack channel and in our monthly all-hands meetings. We post employee kudos on digital signage throughout the office. Each employee receives a FitBit and we host wellness programs for the mind and body, branded as TEECOMfit. All employees have a mentor with whom they meet regularly to set specific career goals and, if they want, personal goals. We are currently launching TEECOMuniversity, an internal continuing education program open to all employees, which gives a formal structure to our ongoing knowledge shares.
As a technology company, how do you use technology to measure internal experience?
We don’t use email for internal company communication. Instead, we use Slack, a cloud-based team collaboration tool. Within Slack, employees receive a weekly pulse survey via Officevibe with five simple questions about how things are going at work. Feedback is delivered anonymously to management in an engagement report with suggestions for improvement. We also use a platform called Small Improvements to conduct quarterly 360 Reviews for continual feedback and improvement.
We had already been helping our clients to map the experience of their building users, so it made sense that we would map the experience of our own clients from beginning to end. We developed a set of guidelines for the business development and proposal experience outlining everything we need to do to win great clients. We elevate ourselves as pursuit team members by responding quickly and providing materials that go above and beyond the basic request. We help clients along their decision-making process by creating articles and videos to educate and inform them about how technology’s evolution will impact their projects. Our guidelines for project management describe behaviors shaped by our firm values: demonstrating that we care, maintaining trust, and finding ways to add value. We typically measure the client experience through direct feedback at dinners and events with clients.
Conclusion
Nicole and TEECOM are a great reminder that A/E/C firms aren’t simply selling services, we are selling a complete experience. The sum of these experiences equal our reputation, aka brand. This reminds me of the famous Maya Angelou quote, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Make people feel great throughout the journey of your firm, and you’ll develop fierce loyalty.
As TEECOM’s website declares, “our clients demand innovation.” It’s great to see the firm practicing what they preach by embodying innovation in their marketing approach. If your firm is ripe for this approach, start small with a single client or employee experience that you can master. Then, build on that momentum for a more comprehensive approach that will hopefully become integrated into your culture. To learn more, below are some resources.
A great AEC firm website doesn’t just happen. It needs a defined process with each phase informing the next. LecoursDesign was honored with winning the Best Website Award at the SMPS Awards Gala for Randall Lamb’s site. We repeated the win, at the next Gala, for Bergelectric’s site. Creating award-winning websites requires visionary clients and a process of specific phases to ensure smooth project delivery. To help you with your next website project, I summarize each phase below.
Planning (2″“4 weeks)
First, we establish goals and tactics for your new site. Every new client and employee will pass through your website. So we consider how your new site will be a hub for your firm’s offline and online marketing initiatives. We review your current site’s analytics to see where users go on your site, how long they stay, and how they find your site (keyword search and referring sites). We review sites you admire, including your competitors to evaluate their online presence.
Architects call this phase programming. In website development, we call it planning. In both cases, it’s about gaining clarity on the why, what, and when of your new site. Even more important, it’s about who; the user and their needs. We develop three “personas” for the targeted user archetypes who will be visiting the new site. These “personas” are a compilation of demographic information and user profiling at the three buying stages: researcher, evaluator, and purchaser. It may sound silly, but I recommend giving each persona a name and a photo so they seem as real as possible.
This phase focuses on information architecture: what sections/pages to include in the new site and how will the user find her way to the information she seeks. This results in a Site Map: an outline of all the proposed pages organized by navigation buttons and page titles.
Deliverable: Findings & Recommendations, Strategic Brief (2″“3 page document outlining why, what, when, who, goals and scope of the new site), Personas, Keyword/SEO Research, Site Map
Prototyping (2″“4 weeks)
After approving the Site Map, we create greyscreen prototypes of the key page templates. Greyscreens, also called wireframes, are sketches of content on each key page template. They are grey because color at this point is distracting. The goal in this phase is to focus on content, not design. We used to present printed greyscreens, but now prefer digital. To really understand how a user experiences navigating from one page to the next, these greyscreens need to be on screen and clickable within a browser environment.
Knowing all page titles, you must begin wrangling content. This means gathering case stories, blog content, project descriptions and photos, people stories and photos, and about the firm information. A determination must now be made for a writer and photographer or illustrator to create content you’ll need for the new site. We can help you with all this.
Deliverable: Greyscreens
Design Exploration (2 weeks)
We bring the greyscreen key templates to life with design by introducing color, typography, photography, illustration, backgrounds, graphic elements, buttons, etc. We present two design explorations of the Home, About, Project Gallery and Project page templates. If the new copy and photography isn’t ready, we use placeholder photos and copy.
Deliverable: Static Screenshots presented on screen.
Design Refinement (4″“8 weeks)
We refine the design by adding actual copywriting and imagery to the initial key templates. Upon approval, we apply the chosen design to all the remaining page templates. Interactive elements like rollovers or motion are shown as storyboards. If the site features responsive design (optimized for desktop, tablet and mobile), and it should, then we fine tune the design for different sized screens. Design refinement continues through the coding phase, and even after launch. A great website is never “done.” There are always opportunities for improving the user experience.
Deliverable: Static .jpg Screenshots presented on a laptop and smart phone
Coding (4″“8 weeks)
Except for the greyscreens, pages so far are static. Coding brings the pages to life by making them interactive, and fully functioning within modern web browsers. We code sites by creating a Content Management System (CMS) framework to allow clients to take over maintenance of key sections of their sites.
Deliverable: Coded site viewable within a web browser
Content Management System (CMS) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Training (1 day)
After coding the first key templates, we hold a training session with you on how to use your shiny new CMS. We share best practices for adding and updating content so your site stays fresh without having to hire an outside coder every time you want to make changes. We can also hold a training session for you to optimize each page of your site for search (SEO).
Content Population (4″“6 weeks)
Newly trained on your CMS, you can now populate your entire site with all the copy and imagery you have gathered since the Prototyping phase. This helps you learn the CMS in a “real environment” with a safety net of the site not being live yet. Plus, you’ve got an available expert (us) should you run into roadblocks.
Browser Testing & Launch (1 week)
We test your site on major browsers (both desktop and mobile) and operating systems (Mac, PC, iOs, and Android). Once ready, we prefer to go live with the new site as a soft launch where you don’t make a big announcement for at least a week. This let’s us all fine tune any quirks (there will be some). Then you announce that you are live and launch a promotion to drive visitors to your new site.
Obviously I’m biased, but I recommend you hire a web consultant focused on Architecture, Engineering and Construction (A/E/C) firms to help you with your next website. With the guide above, you’ll be an informed partner in the process. Who knows, it may lead to your next site being awarded “Best Website.”
photo in website: ©Emily Hagopian
