28 VIEWS
VIEW POINT
James Potter from WG+P Architects takes a look at how the process of identifying your practice’s USP as part of marketing can reveal some interesting truths
’ll start with a plug for some excellent IT consultants, called DP-IT. They have nurtured our practice’s computer systems with care and diligence. DP-IT were founded by two people, one with the surname Seymour and the other Holland, their forenames being David and Patrick, hence ‘DP’. During our practice rebranding as Waind Gohil and Potter (WG+P), I was curious to enquire as to why they’d chosen to use their forename initials in their company brand. “…because SH-IT didn’t work for us...” was the immediate response. I hesitated to suggest HS-IT, as it was obvious that, for David and Patrick, the debate over how to arrive at their company name was a brief affair. Perhaps this says more about the differences between the services offered by architects versus those of IT consultants than it does the people involved, however it was interesting to observe that, despite their seeming irreverence to branding, their desire remains to have a brand and project something on the world outside.
I
So why this slightly lavatorial tale of corporate identity. It hints at two distinct approaches to branding (or re-branding) for companies and architects alike; do it yourself because you either a) don’t really care, or b) are a megalomaniacal skinflint (that could cover great swathes of the industry), or alternatively you pay a branding specialist to research what you are, what you strive to become and allow them free reign to throw back at you a brand that says of you everything the outside world needs to hear. A logo accompanies the process, and imbues all your aspirations. Of the two approaches we chose the
latter. Some may be familiar with the process: the branding consultant looks beyond the portfolio of photographs and rigorously interviews clients past and present, collaborators and staff, instigates high-level workshops to encourage ‘blue sky
WWW.ARCHITECTSDATAFILE.CO.UK
thinking’ and wraps it up with some penetrating analysis and conclusions. Let us, for a moment, ignore whether branding is pseudo-science. One thing hugely edifying is having someone sit you and your business partners in a room and ask; how are you different from everybody else? It’s an idiosyncratic question; we are different just by being the firm we are, but then we know the actual question is ‘tell us what you think is unique about you so we can project this, in short form, onto the outside world to artificially accelerate your growth’. Or, because life’s too short, what’s your USP? (Unique Selling Point, just in case you were unsure).
For a creative business with more than one partner in charge this is a tricky question, as each partner will have a slightly different view on what the answer is. Furthermore these individual views are often susceptible to change. So once the branding consultant has dared to ask the Ultimate Question, there is a reassuring silence across the room while we each weigh up whether we’re about to derail our shared aspirations by blurting out what we think the firm should become or worse still, discover one of us is secretly a fanatical post-modernist (NB, no one at WG+P is). So what makes it such a hard question to
answer, particularly for a relatively new practice such as ours? To be an architect is to continually take forwards experience gained but with an ever-stronger desire to learn and broaden horizons; it is one of the few professions that offers such scope, with no two combinations of site and client being the same. It follows that a natural aspiration of a design led firm is to work on anything and everything, so to speak. This premise doesn’t translate happily into something marketable, which tends towards the opposite end of the spectrum: highly specific niche expertise being far easier to shout about. This expansive
BRONZED
An extension to a home in Kent designed by WG+P was clad in bronze
outlook to architecture goes some way to explain why the most decorated architects and practices have a huge variety of cross-sector experience; they have mastered the application of their design to any given brief. Ironically, by the time you are good enough to find work in all and any sectors your USP becomes that very ability, evidenced by your completed portfolio of work. ‘We can do anything’ being somewhat more potent in the market than ‘We could do anything’. Of course, there is more to standing out than simply pushing a specialism but it weighs heavily on the minds of many. In a volatile industry like architecture to market oneself on a single sector specialism leaves you vulnerable to the ebbs and flows of that sector, within the wider economy. Eggs and baskets etc...
Leaving sectors and selling points behind, for many studios marketing a distinct
ADF MARCH 2019
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
