Your best billboard is your work, where should you plant it?
All things considered, an A/E firm thrives or dies based on its ability to satisfy client needs and solve problems efficiently. Your work portfolio is your billboard. Marketing’s job is to figure out what message to plaster on the sign and where to place it to capture the highest percentage of the right eyes.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, Burma Shave built its brushless shaving cream brand into the second-highest seller in the industry. They did this by very creatively re-thinking billboard advertising. Burma Shave spread the marketing message over hundreds of miles of highways, including the legendary Route 66, with readers looking forward to the next message as their beards relentlessly grew. A couple of my favorites are:
OUR FORTUNE IS YOUR
SHAVEN FACE
IT’S OUR BEST
ADVERTISING SPACE
BURMA SHAVE
PAST SCHOOLHOUSES
TAKE IT SLOW
LET THE LITTLE
SHAVERS GROW
BURMA SHAVE
There are two key marketing concepts at work here: satisfied customers are the best advertising, and indoctrinate your future customers with your brand early and often.
Fast forward to today, and we have a Tower of Babel-esque mosh pit of channels for your marketing message. As we see with our 2010 Marketing Excellence winners covered in this issue, creativity lives on! Be it on web sites, social media, print media, direct mail, or with advertisements, eye-catching and well-conceived campaigns are generating buzz and garnering attention.
The rate at which A/E firms’ prospective clients’ figurative “beards” are growing has slowed significantly in the past couple of years. It will be a while before demand returns to pre-recession levels, if it ever does in this “new normal” era. That means two things for marketers: First, pragmatic, proven providers will be sought out; and second, the number of competitors’ hooks in the fishing pond of potential clients will increase, so differentiation is critical. The challenge: Your “bait” needs to attract more fish than your competition.
A firm’s work portfolio is the best demonstration of proven capability. The spaces, solutions, and built environment you create are your best billboard message. What message does your work transmit? Is it aesthetics, functionality, green and environmental stewardship, industry and technical leadership, cost management, operational efficiency, or market segment focus?
Are you a Cadillac, a Honda, a bicycle, or a pair of Nikes? All will get you from Point A to Point B, but each comes with a different level of style and sophistication. Figure that out, connect it to your marketing message, and adapt it to specific channel requirements as needed.
Burma Shave’s billboards provided pearls of wisdom, interest, and relief during long stretches of windshield time for families. They perfectly matched the brand message to the medium. An A/E firm’s work needs to be a similar reminder to prospective customers. How and where marketing folks “plant” their firm’s message is paramount.
With the proliferation of channels, one approach is to just put everything everywhere, a spray-and-pray marketing strategy. Our 2010 Marketing Excellence winners show the value and impact of crafting each message to the medium. A tweet is like a billboard— short enough to tease, sweet enough to please. The emerging social media marketing channels expect a bit more edge. Brochures, on the other hand, can handle a lot more detail and specification. Each channel has an intended audience with a predictable attention span and depth of content expectation.
One way to link a firm’s work with its marketing is by ensuring that messages about projects won, started, and completed are delivered to the local market, so prospects can see the work. Eye-catching signage at work sites can provide more amplification of your broader marketing message. After all, folks will see it, and with the right collateral to the right local prospects, more of the right eyes will stop by. If you have multiple work sites in proximity, you may just be able to create your own version of the Burma Shave effect, with similar results.
The key is to use the most powerful arrow in your “why you, Mr. or Ms. Client, should consider us” quiver effectively. That most powerful arrow is your work— won, completed, and in progress.