This episode runs 31 min.

David Lecours and Josh Miles discuss how to plan your week in advance for maximum impact. Josh discusses with David a few tips that he picked up at a recent event.

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Mentioned in This Episode 144: Plan Your Week in Advance

The five commitments
Reduce distractions
Prioritize
Weekly to-dos

 

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David Lecours: Hey, Josh. I heard you went to a great event last week.

Josh Miles: Yeah, so, it turns out I was actually in town. I’ve been traveling a ton lately but my former business coach was presenting on many things productivity related but especially on planning your week in advance and, like we talked about in episode 142, the power of moments. This was one of those things that kind of stuck with me and took away some good nuggets. Thought maybe we could share that with our audience today.

Josh Miles: But maybe, first, you can give us an important announcement.

David Lecours: Yeah. That is that PSM Show is underwritten by SMPS whose vision is business transformed through marketing leadership.

David Lecours: If you’re not a member, gosh darn it, you’re missing out. Go over to SMPS.org and you can learn more about this great organization.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: All right, so tell me more about this talk. Who put it on? Where was it? Set the stage for our conversation today.

Josh Miles: Yeah, so, this was actually the SMPS Indiana chapter. I was not planning on this but when I got downtown, they asked me to introduce the speaker who is my former business coach. His name is CJ [crosstalk 00:01:40] and he actually sits on the foundation board, so it was a great little, all my worlds woven together at the same time (laughs). So that was pretty cool, but CJ’s a great speaker, he’s a business coach like I mentioned, he does a lot of speaking on the speaking circuit, especially inA the SMPS world, and as I mentioned he was talking sort of all-around productivity, and all these other things but the core concept that he reminded me of was there’s this famous thing called the five commitments, which maybe one of our listeners remembers who wrote this, but that part did not stick with me, but what the five commitments are is what stuck around.

David Lecours: Yeah, that sounds awesome, and I think Josh and I agree that this topic would be super relevant because we all have to plan our week, and we all have so many different kind of plates that we’re spinning throughout the week, in terms of different proposals, and projects, and initiatives, and making sure that we’re serving all our different bosses and masters as well as all the kinds of personal things we need to plan, so we just thought that this would be a real helpful topic for AEC marketers because we’re having to juggle a lot of things.

Josh Miles: Yeah absolutely. And the crazy thing is, CJ was joking about how we all are like, “Maybe we’ll just work a little bit later tonight, and get caught up, or maybe I’ll work a little bit on Saturday and get caught up,” and he was like, “I’ve got a spoiler alert for you, we’re never gonna be caught up.” Even if you think you are, five minutes later, you’re no longer caught up. So, just sort of accepting that, that there’s always more to do is part of the zen of this whole thing, is just being okay with living in a world where the list is never going to be complete.

David Lecours: Right, yeah that reminds me a little of the methodology I use to run my life, is this GTD or “Getting Things Done” by the book by David Allen. His premise is that the mind is a terrible storage device, so if you can put things into places and have systems, then you can get it out of your head and use your head to do that kind of deep work. And it’s that same sort of idea that if you’re just sort of worrying about what’s next, like the to-do list that’s never done, you never really have the efficiency of operating at full capacity. Because your mind is cluttered with this other stuff that shouldn’t be up in there.

Josh Miles: I know he’s written a lot of stuff and I know he’s well-known and I’ve heard people talk of his stuff, but I guess I’ve never really dug in and maybe it’s sort of in line with his philosophy that I have very little of these kind of details in my short-term memory. Things like people say, “What year is your car?” Or, “How many inches is that TV?” And I’m like, “I don’t have any idea,” maybe I could come up with it eventually but these are the kinds of things that, it’s not important for me to remember this.

David Lecours: Well yeah, and his point is, just write it down and put it somewhere because you shouldn’t be carrying around that kind of stuff. If it’s super important you can access it in some way, then it’s effective. Anyway, back to this talk! And these five commitments. So, tell me about the first one.

Josh Miles: So, again he kind of categorized this as five levels and again, this wasn’t CJ’s unique thing, but was quoting from a book, I think. So level one commitment, this is sort of the bottom of the barrel, is no. [crosstalk 00:05:42] (laughs) which sounds like the worst kind of commitment of all…

David Lecours: That’s an option? That is an option?!

Josh Miles: It is, it is. And in fact it’s one that we creative and marketing types sometimes have a hard time with because I know we want to try to do everything, and nobody likes to hear themselves say no, but on the receiving end, sometimes it’s nice just to know, “Oh, okay, let’s not pretend that we’re gonna do this, let’s just agree that it’s not going to happen.”

David Lecours: Yeah, don’t lead people on, right? “Oh, yeah, I’ll get to that,” and then they just never do.

Josh Miles: And all of these middle ones are that gray area that are just so difficult to deal with, so “no,” it turns out is an okay thing to say and at least lets people know where you stand because these next couple are the wishy-washy ones.

David Lecours: But then, real quick, but the “no,” did he talk about ways to say that? It seems like there might be, it’s just hard to say “no” period, and then silence. You know, like, and maybe that’s the key, is just sitting with that discomfort, but it seems like you have to rationalize or explain why “no.”

Josh Miles: Yeah, well you know, I would maybe disagree with one of the things that he said about this, one of his points was don’t say that I don’t have enough time because we all have the same amount of time and I think what I’ve heard said sort of in the opposite category is, how you choose to use your time is actually the best reason to say no. To say, “No, I don’t have time for that.” “I don’t have enough time to do that.”

David Lecours: “I can’t do that effectively.”

Josh Miles: “I could do that, but I have not made time,” “I have to say no to other things if I say yes to your thing, and because of the things that I’ve already said yes to, I don’t any longer have time to do your thing.”

David Lecours: Right, yeah.

Josh Miles: So, it’s a fair thing to say, I mean how would you do it differently?

David Lecours: I didn’t realize how I do it, but I often say, “No, I don’t have the bandwidth for that right now,” saying that I’m previously committed to certain things, and I’m not willing to substitute your thing for this other thing. And it may sound harsh, but yeah, it’s the same sort of thing like, hey, at least people know where they stand and then they can choose to still like me or not.

Josh Miles: Right. Well you know, and it kind of made me realize there are a couple of things that I have been non-committal to that I also have not said no to, that I probably need to get back around to those people or those opportunities and say, “No.” And I think, again, the way you choose to soften it is up to you, but don’t leave it unclear. Saying, “I don’t have the bandwidth,” or, Maybe we could talk again next year, but for now it’s a no,” or those are all versions of the same thing, but it still at least says clearly that this can’t happen right now. Not gonna do it.

David Lecours: I like how you phrased that.

Josh Miles: So level two commitment is where we start to get into this gray, squishy area and it’s the, “I wish I could,” or “I want to,” or, “I would like to,” but it’s definitely not a yes, and it’s not a no. So that’s where probably 90% of my list lives right now. It’s the things that I know are not a priority today, but they’re things I don’t want to forget about. So, “I think I want to do this, I wish I could do this.” The one that we’ve talked about before is me recording the audio book version of “Bold Brands.”

David Lecours: I know, that’s one of your goals!

Josh Miles: I have not recorded another minute of that since we talked about it last because this is the, “I want to do it, I wish I had time for it,” and then it just has not made the priority list, yet, although, it’s still a goal. We’re gonna revisit this again, so I know I have to get to it.

David Lecours: And so just to kind of come back to this “Getting Things Done,” he has these different buckets you put things in, and he calls this “maybe someday.” I happen to use Evernote and I have a list, very long, of “maybe someday” things. And then, the good thing is, if I ever have extra time, I can go to that and maybe something gets promoted from the “maybe someday” list to my what I call “next actions” list. And it’s a nice way to archive it, or park it in a place that I don’t have to think about it, and it’s not an urgent commitment, but at least it’s written down in some form.

Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s another one of those ideas, this mental loop thing, when something is in your mind and you’re thinking about it all the time, but you know you’re not going to get to it. Having a place to literally just park those ideas for the time and maybe you never come back to it, but looking at it with fresh eyes is sometimes enough inspiration to go, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that idea! I really am excited about that now!”

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely. All right, cool. What’s next?

Josh Miles: So the next one on the list is, “I’ll try.”

David Lecours: (laughs) Right.

Josh Miles: So I’m sure all of us have had friends, who you tell them to come over to your house for a thing, or “We’re all gonna go out,” or “We’re all gonna go to this event,” and they don’t say yes, and they don’t say no, but they’ll say, “Yeah, I’ll try to make it.”

David Lecours: All right, I usually take that as a no.

Josh Miles: (laughs) “I’ll try” is definitely a soft “no.” Is there anything that you feel like you deliver the “I’ll try” on?

David Lecours: I guess I lump that in with the other one and I guess I would put that in my same bucket of the “someday maybe” but I guess if it’s some sort of personal request, I would say, “Look, I can’t commit now,” but I usually try to give myself some sort of deadline for committing “yes” or “no.” But yeah, the “I’ll try” thing doesn’t seem super useful. I mean like, what’s that Yoda quote? “Do or do not, there is no try?”

Josh Miles: Exactly. Yeah. I’m with you on this one. “I’ll try” is definitely up there with just “no.” Let’s stop pretending and let’s just agree that you’re not going to do this. “I’ll catch you next time, maybe.”

David Lecours: For sure.

Josh Miles: So that may be a good segue into this level four commitment. So number one was “no,” number two was “I wish I could” or “I want to,” or “I’d like to,” or “someday maybe,” number three is “I’ll try,” which we agreed is pretty much a “no,” and number four is “I’m committed unless…” So this is like, “Unless I get a better offer,” “Unless I get a better opportunity,” “Unless someone else asks me,” “Sure I’ll go to the dance with you…”

David Lecours: (laughs)

Josh Miles: “Until it’s the person I really want.”

David Lecours: Ouch! Yeah, that can be messy. Yeah so I guess, just to clarify if I’m understanding, these are things maybe you would say to yourself, like you wouldn’t say this to somebody else?

Josh Miles: Right, no.

David Lecours: Okay, okay.

Josh Miles: Yeah, mostly self-talk and maybe it’s perceived externally but when you tell somebody, “Maybe,” or any version of I guess these level two to level four commitments, they’re going to read in all these other things.

David Lecours: Right.

Josh Miles: Committed in the less is the short version of this one.

David Lecours: Yeah so for me, if I say, “I’m committed,” it goes into my calendar and I’m assuming I’m doing it, and then yeah, of course, things can always come up that were some sort of emergency, or where you just need to renegotiate the contract you made with yourself and that person, whoever you’ve committed to because yeah, stuff comes up, and I think people understand that. You should have a good excuse for why you’re changing the agreement, but it’s pretty understood.

Josh Miles: Yeah and maybe doing your own marketing if you’re a firm owner, or you’re a team lead, maybe that falls into this category often. “Well I definitely want to write this blog post to go up at the end of the day today, unless a proposal shows up, or unless some other priority happens that is an emergency,” or unless somebody really needs something. It’s the kind of thing that it’s important to you, but it’s something that can get bumped if something else shows up.

David Lecours: And I would say that’s true for any plan, so let’s say it’s your marketing plan, right, so you’re committing to do these things for the next year, but there’s this implicit understanding that if it’s not quite working, or it’s just definitely not set in stone. I think a lot of times people are reluctant to create a plan because they feel like it’s going to lock them in. That’s never the case. Part of the beauty of creating a plan is the actual process of thinking things through, but also it’s just having something down as sort of the default, and then of course if some better opportunity comes up, or the company shifts into some sort of new vertical market, you’re gonna adapt that plan, and all of it in some way.

Josh Miles: Yeah. Absolutely. I think then the bottom line, or the final commitment is a level five, which is “whatever it takes.” So for you, could be a family commitment, or it could be a planned deadline, or it could be a mission-critical project that you’re all rallying around, but this is the thing that you know is the most important thing in the moment. It’s the thing that you know that you absolutely have to do.

David Lecours: Yeah, because if it’s your kid’s birthday, or maybe a key anniversary in your personal life, but yeah, it’s the non-negotiables. That are going to happen no matter whatever it takes.

Josh Miles: Yeah so, CJ’s recommendation here and the thing that really stuck with me was, I want to talk more about planning your week in advance and that, but he said it’s so easy for us to show up to our work day and think, “What are all the things I need to do?” And then, “I’m just going to pick off some of these easy ones first.”

David Lecours: Right, right, right.

Josh Miles: So you just go after all the little to-dos and you’re busy with email, and you’re busy with whatever’s the loudest or the noisiest, or the most urgent in the second, and you’re not really paying attention necessarily to what’s the most important, so his big takeaway was to really focus on those level five commitments. To identify what they are and make sure those are the first things that you’re tackling every day.

David Lecours: Yeah. Have you ever done that exercise with putting the big rocks first?

Josh Miles: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-yeah, maybe describe that for people who haven’t seen that one.

David Lecours: This may have come from a Stephen Covey thing or someone else, but anyway, you have this exercise and you have some sort of container, let’s just say it’s a bucket. And you have a bunch of rocks that are large, and some medium ones and small ones, and then you have sand. And you literally are given this exercise where you have to try to fit all of the contents, all the rocks, into the bucket. But what you quickly find out, is that if you don’t do them in the right order, they literally won’t fit. You literally have to put the big rocks in first and then the medium rocks, and then the smaller ones, and then the sand will sort of fit through the cracks and work. But if you don’t go in that order, you won’t have room. And so of course this is a metaphor for planning your day, or your week and making sure you handle those big things first. Also, because those big things are going to give you that real sort of sense of satisfaction, rather than just sort of a quick dopamine hit of answering an email and like very temporarily thinking you’re a hero. At the end of the day, if you do a bunch of these little things, you just don’t have that satisfaction.

Josh Miles: Yeah I was using the illustration last night, we were talking about this talk afterwards. I’ve never ridden in a helicopter or certainly not flown one, but I understand it’s kind of like playing the drums, you’re using both arms and both legs. For me, managing your inbox all day feels like that. You’re using all your arms and legs and I got really good at that a long time ago, just being [inaudible 00:19:00] on the spot, responding to all the emails, and then I realized I was getting really good at the wrong thing.

David Lecours: (laughs) Gosh, that’s so important.

Josh Miles: You just don’t ever get caught up, it doesn’t matter that you’re really efficient at email. Get that idea of matching your email or only answering at one time or a couple times during the day, or you know really focusing on those big tasks first is something that took me a long time to figure out.

David Lecours: Right, nobody got promoted for being the best emailer ever.

Josh Miles: There’s no medal.

David Lecours: No merit badge if you listen to our last episode on the power of moments.

Josh Miles: (laughs) You don’t get to wear your email hat while you’re doing email. If anyone’s listening that has an email hat, I would love to see a photo of that.

David Lecours: (laughs) Yeah.

David Lecours: Well that makes sense, should we talk about planning your week? Or is there something else you wanted to discuss first?

Josh Miles: Yeah, let’s jump into that. What’s your ritual or process for planning or managing “to-dos” or let’s dive in here.

David Lecours: Yeah so just in the last year I’ve transitioned from having this ritual that’s like maybe an hour, hour and a half kind of thing that I used to do Monday mornings, but now I’m trying to do it, and I’ve been pretty good this whole year, of doing it Sunday nights so that I can can hit the ground running Monday morning. And it kind of gets my mind in the work mode that night. So I do some things. I go through, and this is sort of all related back to that “Getting Things Done” methodology, where I’ll go through my email and see if I have any unresolved emails and try to get down to inbox zero. I store everything in Evernote, so I have a list of inbox things from Evernote that I need to sort and put in other places. I have a physical file of analog things, like let’s say it’s a doctor’s bill, or things like that, I’ll look at that.

David Lecours: And then, so what I do is I put those into key lists, one of them is called “next actions,” which are things that I need to take to move a project forward. I have another list called “today,” and that’s literally my today to-do list. And so I’m constantly moving things from one list to the other. Once I’m done with all the “today” tasks, I’ll go and grab the next ones from “next actions,” and then prioritize what order I want to do those.

David Lecours: The other thing I have that has been incredibly useful is this bucket that I call “waiting for.” So let’s say, hypothetically, I send an email to somebody and I say, “Hey Josh, get back to me with five topics for our next podcast,” right? And I don’t want to have to carry around in my head that I asked Josh for this, I just want to park it somewhere, and the place I park it is “waiting for.” Through email I can blind-copy a special Evernote address and it goes directly into that bucket within Evernote. So just during my weekly review, I’ll review those “waiting fors” and see if there’s anything outstanding that I need to remind people about that’s coming up.

David Lecours: And the final sort of exercise is literally planning the week where I’m blocking out time, and maybe I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do for the three hours that I’m going to work on a specific project, but I’m allocating that time as blocked out. I’m pretty good about being strict with myself and with others about saying, “All right, if I block that out, I just can’t schedule meetings.”

David Lecours: I also started doing this thing where I don’t schedule meetings until afternoon. I find that I’m more productive for doing deep work in the mornings, and so I’ll schedule meetings any time after lunch, but I really try to carve out that eight to noon time for doing the creative.

David Lecours: So how about you? Do you have a methodology, or way that you do it?

Josh Miles: Yeah, similar. So I started using Asana about a year ago, which is as I understand it, great for teams as well, I’ve never really used it in a team context, but I love it just the to-do list management piece of it. So, I have everything color-coded and categorized and set by date as well so I can drag and drop all these things around and it’s kind of pretty easy for me to manage visually, even when I’m running to the grocery store I add all the items that I’m picking up at the store, goes straight into Asana and I can check those off. It has the bonus of every fifth thing that you check off, like a magical narwhal or unicorn flies across the screen.

David Lecours: (laughs) You get a reward.

Josh Miles: You get a dopamine bonus on top of the visual of checking it and seeing it cross out or disappear. It’s very satisfying. But that’s kind of my master list. I’m constantly moving those dates around and updating things, and dragging and dropping and categorizing. If it’s not in Asana there’s a really good chance it’s not going to get done.

Josh Miles: Even though our day-to-day work for SMPS is all through Basecamp, so all of our messaging, communicating, and to-dos are in there, so I sort of have a second place to check those things but it’s really helpful for me to have that master list where everything from work through personal all rolls up to the same spot, so similarly I try to pay attention to that Sunday night before I clock out, but it’s kind of a constant state of making sure that I’m re-prioritizing the things that are most important because you don’t always know on a Sunday night what the most important thing is going to be on Wednesday. I think that was part of CJ’s talk that was most insightful for me, was thinking, “Well, maybe I should know what these level five commitments are,” to be sure there’s some fours and threes that might show up that I’ll get done as well, but I should probably know what those fives are well in advance.

David Lecours: Yeah there’s something, like the digital part of it is really nice in that a lot of our lives are repeatable actions, so once you create a grocery list, having that as a template for the next time you go to the grocery store just gets you that much far ahead, so for example, I have a list of movies or books that I want to read and I can always go back to that and it’s fun to check those off and add new things, but having a template that you use over and over again is a nice way to be efficient.

Josh Miles: Yeah so practically speaking, doing that in Evernote is that kind of how you swing it, do you have multiple [inaudible 00:26:20]?

David Lecours: Yeah, so I divide things into “active projects” and then “archived projects,” and then I also have another area called “reference material,” which is just stuff that I might refer back to about topics that I’m interested in. But you brought up a really good point and I think it’s that whatever system you use, I think it needs to be integrated, and you mentioned integrated like personal and professional because our lives aren’t 100% 9-5, we don’t think or do anything that is related to personal and the idea that you have to go to a bunch of different places to find these things makes it less efficient. All these things are going to be weighing on us, sort of carrying our psychic energy, and occupying our brains, so just having a single place to keep all this straight, and in my case just keep it out of my head and having a place to go to refer back to things.

Josh Miles: Yeah and I think there’s not a real easy way to get out of all the other things that are clamoring for your attention during the day, let alone social media, and slack groups or in text chats, or email, or whatever else and you’re getting private messages on LinkedIn and you’re just inundated with all these different requests for time and requests for meetings so it’s just so helpful to have just one place to go to see what that actual list is and to manage those real commitments.

David Lecours: I have this other list I call “read/view” and so let’s say I get an email, like a thought leadership piece from somebody that I want to read, but I don’t want to stop my day and read it right then, otherwise I just get sucked in to the email treadmill, so I’ll forward it to this “read/view” folder and I’ve got hundreds of things that I’ve never and will never get to, but at least I have a place that if I’m trying to find something on a particular topic. So it’s “read,” because there’s a lot of readings there, but also “view,” if there’s some sort of video or something that I’d like to watch, I can go to that.

Josh Miles: Yeah. Yeah, love it. I’ve done similar things for reading things, and even for videos too, like, “Oh I think I’d want to watch this later, so I’ll put this on the “watch later” to-do,” just in the notes section and find those later.

David Lecours: All right, well hopefully this has been helpful, are there any kind of closing thoughts on how people can be more productive in planning their weeks?

Josh Miles: Well, yeah I’m curious to hear what tips have stuck out to listeners because the thing that was most important to me isn’t necessarily the thing that’s going to stand out to you, but I guess my challenge, since this level five concept was big for me is, listener, give this a try next week, maybe figure out what your one or two or three level five commitments are for next week at work and try focusing on those first in your workday and see if you don’t walk away from the workweek with a little bit more done.

David Lecours: Super, so yeah we want to hear from you, and if you want to do that, then go over to PSM.show and there’s a simple form you can get in touch with us, and we’d love for you to share this podcast with others in the AC industry that would find it useful, you can just send them over to PSM.show and that’s it for this show. From Josh Miles and myself, thank you to SMPS, our underwriter, and we will see you next time.

This episode runs 35 min.

Marketers facilitate meetings large and small, recurring and one-off. But few of us have received training in running a successful meeting. Ted Sive, of Ted Sive Consulting, shares his unique perspective on getting the most from your meetings.

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Questions Answered in This Episode 143: Ted Sive on Meetings

Why have a meeting vs. other forms of communications?
Why should marketers become better meeting facilitators?
Do marketers have advantages or disadvantages in running meetings?
What does the meeting facilitator control, and not control?
How much should the facilitator talk during the meeting?
What are your go-to tools to use during a meeting?
What are the biggest mistakes facilitators make?
Tips for introverts and meetings?
Best practices for brainstorming meetings?

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

We Want to Hear From You

 Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

Subscribe to our Podcast

 To subscribe to the PSM podcast in iTunes – click here

 

Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, The Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hello, I’m David Lecours, and I’m joined by a special guest, Ted Sive, to talk about meetings. Welcome to the show, Ted.

Ted Sive: Happy to be here, David.

David Lecours: We’re going to learn more about Ted, but first, I want to remind our listeners that we have a fantastic underwriter, and that is SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership. You can find out more about SMPS at smps.org.

Announcer: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Now, in thinking about today’s episode, I had this sort of realization that as marketing leaders, one of our many tasks is to facilitate meetings. I don’t know about you all, but I never received any sort of training on how to do this, and I think we all just sort of wing it. I’ve been fortunate to experience our guest, Ted lead a meeting and he’s really good at it, and so I asked him to share some best practices for meeting facilitation.

David Lecours: Ted, maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit about kind of what you do and how you go to where you are today?

Ted Sive: Okay. David, I’ve listened to some of your podcasts, and one of the things that it reminds me of and it’s sort of a conversation or a theme or I guess a meme I should say. Which is, how do people end up in this industry? I think I want to start off by saying I am proudly someone who chose this industry and this job path of marketer and communicator and strategist in the A/E/C industry intentionally, which I find surprisingly rare even nowadays. I’m basically of the age when I got out of college, professional marketer roles in architecture firms, well, frankly were legal, and in A/E/C firms, were becoming regular.

Ted Sive: I was a guy in college, I had taken a lot of classes in the school of architecture, thought a lot about becoming an architect. As a kid, I was one of those guy who’s doodling house plans in middle school, and I have an absolute love for the world of designing construction, but I’m really in essence a word guy, an ideas guy, a communications guy. When I was in school, I was an English major with the writing focus, and I thought about going into PR and sort of the traditional path. A number of people said, “Well, Ted, there are marketing jobs and firms.” I’m like, “Well, that’s freaking awesome [crosstalk 00:02:57]-

David Lecours: Yeah, it fits.

Ted Sive: Because that’s combining the two things. That’s kind of where I started. I worked for many years at an architectural firm. Had a really interesting job with a variety of roles, as a marketer, as a technical writer, and as a project manager. I left that firm to go work for a very different type of company, a construction company, a big company in the private sector and not public. I was a partner there and Director of Marketing, and then for the last 15 years, I’ve been out on my own as a consultant.

Ted Sive: My work with my clients… well, first of all, my clients are really pretty evenly across the spectrum of architects, engineers, contractors and owners. I love that diversity. There’s also a lot of diversity with of size and type and sort of culture of firm in that mix, and with those companies my work is really in three realms. The first is the strategy. We’re really kind of classic operational and marketing strategy. Who are we? What do we want to be? What’s out there in the world? Who’s the competition? What’s the map? What are the things we’re doing? What are the things we’re not doing?

Ted Sive: A lot of work in the communication realms, both brand strategy at sort of the highest level. I’m on a graphic designer, I’m not a brand designer. I’ve very much a brand strategist in terms of, “Okay, we’ve decided who we are. How do we communicate that to the outside world? What are our expectations? What do we want people to be thinking about the firm?”

Ted Sive: Lastly, and really relevant I think to today’s conversation, and it’s a result of being a facilitator and someone who really enjoys being a facilitator and someone who’s always been interested in working on, reading about and writing about the topic of delivery, that is, how do architects, engineers, contractors and owners just… how do they work better and smarter and have more fun and make more money? As a result of having that skill and being focused on that topic, I do a lot of collaborative delivery. To working with teams on large projects that are actually doing real gnarly work together and working then to sort of assess the team and the desires, the communication risks on the job, and setting up decision-making protocol and patient process.

Ted Sive: The last thing I’ll say as an intro, is I’m a fellow in SMPS, which is something I’m very proud of, and I’m really happy that SMPS kind of writes this. So thank you SMPS.

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely, we are too.

David Lecours: So I heard once that a boss told you that you weren’t actually a very good meeting facilitator.

Ted Sive: Yes, he did tell me that. You know, that was kind of a turning point for me. On the positive side I realized that I wasn’t really approaching the meetings I was running. I was the director of marketing and I would have these weekly, sort of classic meeting that marketers had, that weekly or bi-weekly meeting and you’ve got single management there and project managers and it’s got a whole bunch of people and you’ve got to talk about marketing and dt. I was not really approaching those meetings as positively or as intently as I could.

Ted Sive: That was a bit of a wake up call from my boss. Another part of the story is the boss didn’t like my facilitation because he and I didn’t necessarily agree all the time. But that’s another discussion David, for another day.

David Lecours: All right, fair enough. Obviously, you know meetings is a big topic and I think you and I agreed beforehand we’re going to sort of narrow the context to a couple things. One is, and you mentioned it earlier, a recurring meeting versus a one off meeting. Then also there’s a difference between a small meeting and we’re going to define small as eight or fewer attendees versus a large meeting, greater than eight. So we’ll kind of keep that in mind as we go through the questions. Just going to kind of give our listeners an outline of where we’re headed. You know, one of the things we really wanted to talk about is, what can and/or should happen at a meeting? Then also what marketers can do to become better facilitators, whether it’s written into our job description, it’s something we definitely do and I think we, and you would agree, we can be better at it.

Ted Sive: Absolutely, and I really think the story you had me start there, I think there’s a connection there for many marketers. Which is, meetings for marketers are really important because it’s your interaction time with your clients, who are internal. So your principles, your project managers, your architects, your engineers, whatever they are. Then the other reason the meetings are really critical is something hopefully is happening at the meeting that wouldn’t happen otherwise. It’s that basic thing, that one plus one equals three, not two. That because you’ve got this assembly of people something is born out of it that would not have happened unless those people where there to together, in person or virtually at the same time.

Ted Sive: I think that the first level that’s a really great guide for meetings is, can this happen otherwise? If it can you probably shouldn’t have a meeting, do an email, do a report.

Ted Sive: Thinking about this, the other thing that occurred to me is that, I think two things are the bane of the marketer’s existence in AEC firms. One is SRM, everyone struggles with it, then two our marketing meetings. Because often a lot of us have marketing meetings which are great, and this is really in that regular meeting category that we’re talking about. Well a lot of them are really a drain, and I think frankly there’s a lot of bad behavior in marketing meetings, all around. What’s interesting is the architect in your meeting whose maybe reading his iPhone or rustling papers instead of really participating, he might or might not hopefully won’t and probably wouldn’t be doing that same thing if he or she was in a meeting with a client.

Ted Sive: So marketers also sort of get the worst of behavior because it’s an internal meeting so people can kind of let down their guard with behavior. Whereas for the marketer, it’s our clients at the table, our internal clients.

David Lecours: Yeah, so what does a facilitator do to help boost engagement? Like get that person who’s looking at his iPhone to participate.

Ted Sive: Wow, how long do I have here? The first thing I want to go back to is that question. Which is, are we talking about stuff that will benefit from the group assembled and/or are there things here that can happen otherwise? What you’re looking for in a meeting is that all these people together as a result of that you’re going to get something more.

Ted Sive: So I think the first thing for marketers is to do that. There’s a lot of kind of basic things that we need, that people sometimes miss. One is having a really well thought out agenda. The agenda’s not just sort of a list of topics, it’s the facilitator thinking about, what’s the flow of meeting? Yeah, I do have to have a certain amount of reporting, when do I want have it reported? Is there going to be some brainstorming or creative activity? When do I want schedules? Who’s going to be at the meeting and how do I best use their time?

Ted Sive: I think we get in the rut of just sort of going to meetings and not thinking them and just sort of going on the fly. So offloading those topics that won’t benefit from the meeting, really thinking about and preparing an agenda beforehand. I’ve go a whole bunch of other things so maybe you-

David Lecours: Yeah, so I was thinking about that agenda part. It reminds of an invitation to a party sets the tone for the event. So would you say that agenda should be sent out in advance?

Ted Sive: You know, I really think it should. Even for regular meetings I think it’s really great to have two or three bullets at the top of the agenda which are, these are the objectives of this meeting. We are going to decide go, no go, on something or we’re going to create proposal strategies for this project. Or we’re going to talk about PR plans for the year, whatever it is. Make it as specific as possible, as sort of, yes we did that or we did not do that. Set that expectation.

David Lecours: Yeah, I love those rails of keeping everybody on track because so quickly and easily things can go off track. But if you have that sort of key purpose at the top, and it’s literally written down you can just keep going back to it, to help keep people focused.

Ted Sive: That is absolutely true. And I think that’s the other thing that’s really hard sometimes for marketers to do, or for any facilitator to do. Because the whole purpose of the meeting is to have something happen that’s unplanned, right? The one plus one equals three? You don’t really know where it’s going to go so, on the one hand you want that to happen. And it maybe that you planned on talking on topic A and you’re ending up talking on topic B and that’s good. But maybe it’s not good.

Ted Sive: I think one of the challenges a lot of facilitators run, is they’re not tracking the conversation in their brain real time. And sort of identifying, “Hey, we’re on a new topic do we want to talk about that or go back to the original topic?”

David Lecours: Right, it could be more important, more relevant. So yeah that flexibility.

Ted Sive: Exactly, or you know, maybe let’s set another time and we’ll get back to that, but lets get back to the original topic.

David Lecours: So do you think marketers have inherent strengths or advantages in facilitating meetings? And I guess conversely maybe there’s some apparent weaknesses that we should be aware of too.

Ted Sive: Well, I do think that marketers have strengths. I think, meetings are about communication, marketers, most of us are, or should be, or supposedly are professional communicators. So I’m always using that mantra, think about the audience. So I do think marketers have a skill of, okay who are the people coming to the meeting and what are their topics? What are their agendas? What is their personality, what’s important to them?

Ted Sive: I mean the exact same process that marketers go through with teams preparing for an interview with a client. SO you’ve got that, hopefully communication skill to sort of assess the audience. The marketers another advantage, I guess kind of in the realm of professional advancement maybe, is a lot of regular meetings the marketer has the opportunity to be speaking with the highest levels of leadership or ownership within an organization. That’s kind of a great opportunity.

David Lecours: Yeah, right it’s this stage to really sort of say, “Hey, I can lead teams and I should be considered for that next promotion.” Kind of thing.

Ted Sive: Exactly, and/or I have good ideas or I can draw the ideas out. That’s absolutely true.

David Lecours: I love that, yeah. So if you just approach this meeting like, hum drum, “Alright, we’ve got to do this.” You’re really kind of communicating that you don’t think originally or that you’re afraid of injecting life in situations where it could definitely be used.

David Lecours: So I think of myself as, it’s not my greatest strength, as somewhat of a control freak. And I’m wondering as a facilitator is that going to help me or hurt me?

Ted Sive: Wow, well both, right? I think the answer to that question goes back a little bit to your previous question about, what other things people should do. One of the things I think a lot of people don’t use is, I go back to a whiteboard and a flip chart. And a lot of people aren’t using those tools as strongly as they might. And it gets to the control, to me the purpose of a whiteboard or flip chart to capture the ideas and the topics being talked about in the meeting. Yes, it’s absolutely to record Jane and Billy-bob’s and Esmeralda’s ideas or input. But it’s also the opportunity for the facilitator to shape what that person is saying in a way that helps move the meeting along, so everyone understands it. And/or frankly they shape it in a direction that, that facilitator thinks it needs to go.

David Lecours: Mm-hmm (affirmative) So you’re not just a stenographer capturing a transcript, you’re kind of summarizing and shaping, I didn’t think about that. But that’s a really interesting topic.

Ted Sive: Absolutely, I think that’s one of the reasons, I don’t know if it’s why I really enjoy facilitating meetings, or it’s my training as a writer, that I’m bringing to the meetings. But I’m very conscious of that and that sounds a bit more machiavellian than I probably am in actuality. But one of the things that happens in meetings is people are talking about different things, they’re talking about apples and orangutans and not apples and oranges. And that facilitation that, that note taking process, that capturing ideas is a way to keep the discussion both organized and understood and also focused and directed.

David Lecours: Yeah, I know, that totally makes sense.

Ted Sive: One of the pieces of that is, I think in a meeting you’re typically running two or three flip charts at once. One might be a list of factors for consideration and another one might be a list of facts or you know, it’s sort of different angles into the discussion. And so as a facilitator when you’re thinking about those discussions think about what those angles might be and come into that discussion prepared. That will help that note taking.

David Lecours: Yeah, so you’ve mentioned a couple tools, a whiteboard, a flip chart. Any other favorites that you like to incorporate to make the meetings better?

Ted Sive: I wouldn’t be worth my salt, or weight, or whatever that expression is if I didn’t use dots. Avery dots and I like the little ones, I think they’re much prettier than the big ones.

David Lecours: So not post-its but actual stickers, the actual dots?

Ted Sive: Yeah, well post-its are great for when you’re getting a bunch of ideas and then rearranging them and sort of categorizing. I’m referring to sort of Avery label dots, which are voting dots. This is more applicable to that large group meeting. This is more applicable to a retreat or a workshop or a two-three hour meeting where you’re going through several series of things. You know, as a facilitator you’re always trying to et everyone to participate equally, that’s sort of the holy grail. You don’t get there, you know there’s some people like me who talk too much. And there’s other people, maybe like you David, who need to talk more.

Ted Sive: And so your job as a facilitator is to draw them out. Well a great way to get people, well one it’s just great to get people out of their chairs and moving, physical thing is terrific. But to get people participating is to have them vote, and I’ll do it in a bunch of different ways. Like I’ll give people green votes and red votes, green is yes and red is no. Sometimes I’ll say you can put all your dots on one idea if you want, or sometimes I’d say no. You know, you sort of figure it out as you go along.

David Lecours: Right, so you give people a budget of dots, say they get ten, and they can decide if they feel so passionate about one issue they are going to go all in and put all ten on that one thing, and try to sway. Yeah, I like that idea.

Ted Sive: But you can also use a negative dot. Some groups are like, “what? A red dot? I can do no?” And I’m like, yeah. And your red dot cancels out someone else’s green dot. Yeah, I don’t always want to do that but it’s an option.

David Lecours: Sure, well I like this from kind of an infographic, kind of way. Real quickly you can see, especially if you’re considering several different things, like where the group stands, by literally looking at the number of dots.

Ted Sive: Absolutely, and back to my comment on notes on the board. Just physically seeing it up there is really helpful. You know, so once again taking this discussion of dots or flip charts into the realm of weekly marketing meetings, it may not be applicable to all parts of it. But maybe you have 20 minute section of that meeting and once again back to my comment earlier when you’re thinking about the flow and the energy and the participation. Maybe you want to create a topic where you’re having a 20 minute feel during your meeting of a retreat, where people brainstorm and vote and do things.

Ted Sive: It’s a great way to shake things up and get people’s blood moving. In what can be otherwise dull meetings.

David Lecours: I think what I’m hearing you say is you’ve just got to vary the routine and think about the pacing and literally getting people out of their seats, does get their blood running and disrupts the status quo. That seems to be the enemy of the recurring meeting. People already know what’s going to happen, it’s the same thing. But if you can shake somebody’s expectations then it seems like it’s going to engage them a little bit more. Keep them on their toes a little bit.

Ted Sive: Another tool to use is to rotate the facilitator ship of the meeting either the whole meeting or portions of the meeting, to break up the routine. The other thing about rotating or changing the facilitator ship is. Let’s say you’re running the meeting and you’re the director of marketing and you are going into a topic that you’re really opinionated about. Maybe you shouldn’t be running that meeting, because you want to be pounding your fist into the table.

David Lecours: Or that part of the meeting.

Ted Sive: Exactly, and say that, up front.

David Lecours: I need to recuse myself, because I’m biased, on this. I’m going to have-

Ted Sive: Well, you know I’m going to ask so and so to facilitate the meeting because I have really strong feelings and I don’t think I’m going to be able to both facilitate and mention the pros and cons.

Ted Sive: I think we’re talking a lot about-

David Lecours: It inspires another question about how much the facilitator should be talking during the meeting. Is there any sort of rule of thumb or how do you manage that part?

Ted Sive: I love that question, I think in general less, rather than more. The facilitator, and this is really as your asking it is a follow on to that other topic. If you’re talking about something that you have a huge stake in and a strong opinion and there’s going to be an in depth or potentially even a heated discussion, you probably shouldn’t be facilitating that. Or you have to put it in some sort of mutual place where you can be having that discussion and somehow the meeting moves along. If your role is as facilitator I think generally for larger meetings, for a market retreat or whatever it might be. You want other people to talk, the best thing that can happen in a meeting is the other people leave the meeting feel their time was worthwhile. That’s why more likely to happen if they’re talking.

David Lecours: Absolutely, I feel more engaged. Like you participated.

Ted Sive: Exactly, the other thing, is you know we are talking a lot about facilitation but in my work, where I’m facilitating a retreat or workshop, I talk with my clients that I wear three hats. I’m a facilitator, as a facilitator I’m in charge of being on topic to talking about specific topics and getting to actionable ends and having even participation of productive conversation.

Ted Sive: I also have the hat of coach and opinion aid, the opinion aider one is like the subject matter. If my clients are talking about whether to get into the K12 market or not, well that’s something I have a lot of perspective on, from my own work to my clients work. So I’ll say hey, I’m putting on my opinion aider hat and I’m going to share some thoughts. That’s a really different role than facilitator. Then the other role is coach, which is both the, “Wow, you’re awesome.” Whether that’s to a group of people or to an individual or also pointing out improvement areas. The coach really comes into the marketers job in the interview presentation. But I think even in regular meetings if the person going to that meeting is thinking about facilitation, coaching and opinion aiding, that will help guide their participation and when they talk.

David Lecours: It seems like it should be clear which hat you’re wearing. I’m thinking a way to make the meeting kind of fun would be, if you’re the facilitator, meeting leader, maybe you literally have three different hats. And you could kind of-

Ted Sive: Oh, I’ve done that. The other thing I do in meetings is when I’m talking too much I put a pen in my mouth. So if I start talking the pen will fall out or I’ll look like a fool.

David Lecours: You know going back to what you were talking about earlier about how much the meeting leader should be speaking. Somebody told me once, “Think of it sort of like a charm bracelet, right? As the facilitator you’re the actual bracelet, which would be sort of understated that links all the charms together. The charms of course being the meeting participants.” But the charms should be, these more dynamic and should be kind of the star of the show. And you should just be the support, the structural integrity, the way for them to come together. I thought that, I like visual metaphors so that spoke to me.

Ted Sive: I like that, I’m going to use that David. No, I think that’s a terrific one. Yeah, gold star, I like that.

David Lecours: Okay, so this question is purely personal, I am an introvert and as a result I prefer to work on deep thinking by myself in a quiet space. So as a result I really hate this idea of group brainstorming, I would much rather be assigned the homework of generating ideas and then come to the meeting with those ideas and hopefully use the group to evaluate the meeting. So how do you navigate the different personality types and specifically this wort of group idea generation? Is it good to generate ideas in groups? Am I crazy? Talk to me about it.

Ted Sive: No, you’re not crazy at all. All of us have probably been exposed at some level to understanding there’s different learning types and there’s different personality and style types. People process information differently people make decisions based on different values. And people are different when they are happy and then when they are under stress. You put all that into a pot and a different topic can and should be addressed different ways by different individuals.

Ted Sive: So I think the practical answer to that is you really have to do both. You have to allow different people to process and do things in their own way. At the same time, the meeting has a purpose. Which is the assembly of the individuals, the whole is greater than just the assembly of individuals. So this gets to that large meeting, workshop, retreat. I generally do assign homework beforehand and it’s in all sorts of different formats and different levels of seriousness or fun. If you’re having a meeting where there’s some brainstorming or some idea generation expected, I do think it’s really beneficial to give people an assignment beforehand. A whole heck of a lot of people are not going to prepare much and that’s okay. People like you will really like it. And you can sometimes put some, “Hey, you’re going to be presenting for 90 seconds, an answer to the question.” Well for those people who don’t prepare their more likely to prepare and if they don’t, you know-

David Lecours: Yeah, and if they have a role.

Ted Sive: Yeah, so both, is my answer to your question.

David Lecours: Yeah, that makes sense. So how does somebody, let’s say, well not prepare but handling these different size groups, so dynamics obviously are very different in a small group, which we defined as eight or less versus large. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how to approach each one to get the most out of the meeting.

Ted Sive: Well, one of the things I do in my work, you know I actually train facilitation and if anyone’s listening to me and has heard me speak previously at SPMS or AIA or elsewhere, will know I always like numbers and steps. I think of preparing for meetings in five steps and those steps are analyzing the specifics, who’s there, what’s their personalities, what’s the setting? That’s the same, no matter the size of the group. Create the agenda, we talked about agenda before here. Anticipate discussion, what might be bad news, what’s the information that’s needed, who might be good people to facilitate different portions? What’s the flow want to be? Once again, I think instinctively, with a smaller group, well these things are probably more important, all these things are more important with a larger group, because you have more chance for people to sort of fade out and lose the connection.

Ted Sive: But you’re going to have differences between those smaller groups and larger groups when you’re thinking about the discussion. [crosstalk 00:32:07]

David Lecours: It seems like good to break the group, a group bigger than eight and you’re encouraging discussion to break them up into smaller groups, and then report back.

Ted Sive: Well absolutely, that’s a great technique. Certainly if you’re meeting for more than two or three hours, I really suggest that, absolutely. So anticipate the discussion and then the quantity of discussion and how to get people involved. My fourth step is lead with confidence and we talk a lot here about, what’s your role? Confident in your role, take command. That whole piece about note taking and how you’re taking notes, that’s a piece of confidence. Then, really from the mental, engage in dialog. This gets back to, what’s the topic being talked about and looking for that moment of excitement and interest. A lot of that gets to the physical piece. Again here there’s an analogy, if that’s what it is, back to preparing for interviews. When we’re working with teams on interview prep a lot of markers are thinking about physical language and physical communication, on watching physical communication.

Ted Sive: This exact thing is happening in meetings, and I sat in meetings where I’ve watched the facilitator miss the physical ques. Miss that time when someone’s engaged or excited or wanting to say more, they’re being quiet but you can tell they’ve got something to say. So engaging in that dialog, where all those people are, that’s really what you want in the meeting is that dialog.

David Lecours: Yeah, those are great tips. Well Ted, we’re about out of time but I want to make sure our audience has a chance to connect with you offline if they want to and learn more about you, and what you do. Is there a good place for them to go? Either online-

Ted Sive: I’ve used the term all the time, my website is like the cobblers children. The cobblers children are the people who have the worst shoes. And I’m sometimes embarrassed by my website, but certainly people can go to my website it’s tedsive.com and read the format on my LinkedIn profile.

David Lecours: All right, super, well that’s it for this episode of PSM show. Where today we focused on meeting facilitation, and I feel like I learned a ton, so thank you so much Ted. And thank you also for our sponsor SPMS. So audience if you have questions or comments, suggestions for future guests, please write to us. Go over to PSM.show, and you can scroll down to the contact form and send us a quick note.

David Lecours: From Ted Sive and myself David Lecours, best wishes leading your next meeting.

 

This episode runs 29 min.

Inspired by the book, The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, David Lecours and Josh Miles discuss how key moments affect the A/E/C client and employee experience.

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Mentioned in This Episode 142: The Power of Moments

 

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact book by Dan and Chip Heath
Moments and employee and client experience, CX and EX
How to identify elements common in defining moments
How to create defining moments
Moments at times of transition: first day, last day, promotion, retirement, project wins, milestones
Defining moments must be memorable and meaningful
Defining moments must be E-P-I-C
Elevation – moments than rise above the everyday
Pride – moments of achievement
Insight – moments to rewire our understanding
Connection – moments strengthened because they are shared 

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

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Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast, it’s insight, applied.

Josh Miles: Hey David, I hear you read a good book that you want to talk about today.

David Lecours: I did, in fact, read a good book, and it’s called, The Power of Moments, by Dan and Chip Heath. I read a bunch of their books, one of which is, Made To Stick, which is one of my favorites. I look forward to talking about that book. But first, this sponsor moment.

Josh Miles: PSM show is underwritten by SMPS, whose vision is, business transformed through marketing leadership. Visit smps.org to learn more.

Announcer: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hey Josh, before we get started on this topic, I wanted to circle back to a topic we talked about in Episode 139 on firm naming. I understand you just got a new dog, a new puppy, and I’m guessing you went through some sort of naming exercise or had to come up with a name. How did that go, and what name did you come up with?

Josh Miles: It was quite the naming process. We had a good ole family fight. We came up with all of these good ideas. Actually was, we’ve been talking about getting a French bulldog for years. It all escalated quite quickly while we were out of town a few weeks ago. He’s actually arriving on Saturday. When this episode airs, this dog will already be chewing and peeing on things in our house. Very excited to welcome Bruce Wayne Miles to the family. Of course, with the bat-like ears on the French bulldog is, it was the inspiration. We had lots of other close runners-up in the naming category. One was, the breeder had named him, the sort of the penciled in name was, Sully. Which we liked, as you know kind of the Monster’s Inc.

David Lecours: Oh, yeah.

Josh Miles: Also, the pilot Sully, [crosstalk 00:02:14] who rescued the plane, he was a Purdue grad, which April and I are grads. That was a strong runner-up, even though it was just random that she named him Sully. Then, our daughter wanted to call him Marquis De Lafayette, who is from Hamilton and French. Also, the Lafayette connections at Perdue University, coincidentally so.

David Lecours: Yeah, some deep thinking. I like it.

Josh Miles: Yeah, so Bruce it is. Bruce it is. I was like, since dada has strucken the check, dada gets the overrule, overriding vote. Bruce it is.

David Lecours: Well that’s exciting.

David Lecours: All right, so on with the show.

Josh Miles: Yeah.

Josh Miles: So about this book, this is related to customer experience through CX

David Lecours: Yeah, that’s why I thought it would probably be relative for our audience, because gosh, so many people are talking about customer or client experience CX. I should explain that the tag, or the subtitle of the book is, Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. This book, and the concepts are relevant for client experience. They’re definitely relevant for employee experience. I would argue they’re relevant for just any sort of personal experience, right? We always want to have these impactful moments with our friends, our family, our clients, our coworkers. That’s why I thought it would be cool to talk about this.

David Lecours: What I found is that the book sort of identifies, kind of two different themes. One is, they identified elements that are common in what they call defining moments. We’ll talk a little bit more about defining moments in a minute. Then the second part is, that you can create these defining moments using some kind of key elements or a framework, that we’ll also get into. It’s encouraging that it’s not just totally random, and that we can actually have some control over creating these powerful and defining moments.

Josh Miles: What’s some, maybe good in theory, but do you think it’s realistic to be able to create memorable experiences in kind of your everyday?

David Lecours: Yeah, I don’t think that everyday is going to be this over the top kind of thing. I mean, as a bit of an adrenaline junkie, that’s hard for me to say, because I like creating amazing experiences. My wife has to remind me sometimes these projects are a bit of a grind and work can, is not going to be the super, sexy, exciting thing. We just have to get through the slow times. But I do think that defining moments can be created and we just have to be somewhat selective, right? It’s sort of the idea, if everything is at 11, then we all sort of reset and that becomes the new normal or the new baseline. Then you have to ratchet it up to 11 again, which is just highly impossible.

Josh Miles: Right.

David Lecours: What I found out from this book was that a lot of times these defining moments can happen at times of transition. I want our audience to think of, kind of key transition times. Let’s say, for the employee experience, key transition times would be things like, their first day of work, their last day of work. Which is something that often goes totally unnoticed. It’s sort of like, okay don’t let the door hit you on the rear on the way out. The reality of it is that someone may boomerang back and that person may be an eventual client someday, you never know. It really [bahoofs 00:06:01] us to have great last day moments as well. I don’t know, what are some other ones you can think of that relate to employees, Josh?

Josh Miles: Yeah, well just to echo that, I think that’s something that our organization is trying to do a much bigger, better job on, is that initial onboarding. You know, because we don’t hire, in smaller organizations you don’t hire somebody so regularly. There’s often big gaps in between onboarding. Even just keeping track of what you did the last time, and photographing the stuff on the new employee’s desk, so that you can go back and go, “Did we give them a tshirt and an ink pen, or just a coffee mug, or …”

David Lecours: Yeah, because otherwise people would be jealous. How come I didn’t get …

Josh Miles: Just to be, yeah, just to be consistent because everybody wants the full experience. I guess along the same lines as first day and last day would be, if someone makes some place to retirement age, or has a big anniversary. Those are always exciting too.

David Lecours: Yeah, and then also a transition, you wouldn’t typically think of it, but a project win is a transition. In other words, you’re sort of transitioning into this new project, or if there’s a significant marketing goal that was achieved and it’s going to move you from out of one state into the next. That would be something that you could make a great moment out of. That’s kind of more on the employee side. Then the second track of this is more on the client side. After you’ve won that project, having some kind of significant kickoff with the client.

David Lecours: One thing that I’ve started to do with my clients is to do a check-in when we start a new project, and it’s a new client, and say “Hey, what’s your sort of past baggage working with a creative agency?” Because, as we start this new relationship I don’t want any of that past baggage to cloud our new relationship. You know, if they’ve been burned in some way, then I can make a note to myself. Don’t turn things in late, or whatever it is, don’t show up to meetings thirty minutes late kind of stuff.

David Lecours: Also, within that is key meetings. There’s going to be certain project milestones that are essential. Of course, project completion is a transition. Like, topping out, when a building reaches the sort of highest point of the structural build. I think that’s something worthwhile.

David Lecours: I think you could have an anniversaries with clients too. Let’s say, you’ve worked with somebody for five years, it might be worthwhile to make a big deal out of that. It certainly would be unexpected.

David Lecours: Then the other part, most of our projects involve occupancy, in some form or another, making that a moment that’s worth celebrating. When the client actually moves into the building or a public park opens, and the public starts to occupy it.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I think related to the marketing thing or the occupancy, kind of the related thing to that from an agency or marketing perspective, would be like a big brand launch or big website launch. I think those are certainly potential for a big memorable moment.

David Lecours: Yeah, yeah.

David Lecours: Josh, when you think of defining moments what kind of comes up for you?

Josh Miles: I think about things in the past and previous roles where it’s that day, that event or that project that sticks with you. That when you look back and smile on your time there, what are those things that you look back at? The things that stick in your memory and really … For me, my pet word, has always been impact.

David Lecours: Right

Josh Miles: Those moments where I felt impact first and foremost. I think, those are the ones that stick out to me. How about you?

David Lecours: Yeah, definitely the memorable part, one of the things that the book made a real point of was, something can be memorable, but it could be memorable and not such a great experience, right? [inaudible 00:10:09] made this distinction of these two M’s, the memorable and the meaningful. Meaningful, in of course in a positive way. It has, yeah, it’s not just sort of hollow memorable, like just something that sort of shiny but is something that is meaningful tends to have an impact. Then just knowing, we can create these moments, which kind of transitions us into the next sort of part of what I wanted to talk about and how they organized the book, is they came up with this acronym of how we can create defining moments. I love the acronym, because it relevant, and it’s EPIC. You can think of epic moments.

Josh Miles: Of course, as an adrenaline junkie, you would like the EPIC acronym.

David Lecours: Yes, yes! And the southern Californian, who probably, in his youth, used the word epic a little too much. Dude! That’s epic!

David Lecours: EPIC stands for, elevation, pride, insight and connection. We’ll go through each one of those and talk about what those could mean, as a way to create a defining moment. The first one, elev-

Josh Miles: [inaudible 00:11:26] impacts the elevation thing a little bit for us. What’s that about?

David Lecours: Elevation, are moments that rise above the everyday experience. In other words, exceeding expectations. They gave this great opening example, about this hotel, in Hollywood, that had a pool and there’s this button by the pool, and if you go and push the button it triggers a waiter to come and serve you a popsicle of your choice. It’s a popsicle button. Imagine sitting by the pool, it’s hot out, and you have kids that like sweet things. I mean, I’m an adult and I like sweet things. Anyway, I can go and push this button and some guy is going to come out with a silver tray and offer me a array of popsicles. For free! Well, nothing’s free, you’re paying for the room. Anyway, I think it’s a pretty cool concept. So anyway,

Josh Miles: Is this like an unmarked button? It’s just like a blind button and you hit the thing and it closes?

David Lecours: Yeah, yeah I don’t think it’s, right, I don’t think it’s sort of like, I mean when you check in they tell you about it. But, I don’t think they make a big signage, kind of thing.

Josh Miles: It’s so random but amazing also.

David Lecours: Yeah, exactly. It just so unexpected and I think that’s the key. We’re just so inundated with so many different experiences. The idea of being able to surprise people in a good way, is really good.

David Lecours: The other part of elevation is the idea that somehow boosting sensory pleasures, if you think of the five senses. Let’s talk about the first one, which is touch. They made a note that a lot of times these defining moments happen when were wearing different clothes. If you think about, a graduation, you wear this ceremonial robe. That puts you in this mindset that this is something special. It seems like the greatest adult holiday these days, is Halloween. I think that people like it because they get to don these other costumes and they get to maybe take on an alter ego. That’s sort of a touch idea of alternate clothing, is a way to, even if it was just something sort of fun, like an everyday meeting. Yeah, maybe you wouldn’t put on an entire costume, but you could do something fun, like with funny hats or things that would, maybe people would have to take on certain roles in the meeting. As the meeting facilitator, you could come up with props that would relate to that role that you had to take on in the meeting.

David Lecours: That’s the touch part, the other way, of course is taste. If you can involve food in some way, food or drink. This is why things like holiday traditions can be real meaningful. As a lot of times, there will be ceremonial food that you only eat at that particular time like, Thanksgiving turkey or Easter … whatever you eat at Easter, chocolate bunnies.

Josh Miles: Cadbury Eggs.

David Lecours: Then sound, if you could incorporate music or some sort of sonic event.

David Lecours: Sight, would be maybe moving the location. I think sometimes, we just get so put on autopilot, when we have meetings in the same spot every time. Why not mix it up? Do an offsite meeting, rent out a table at a restaurant, or some other place that gets people thinking in a slightly new way and boosting these sensory pleasures.

Josh Miles: Yeah I was just thinking about at all of our fraternity parties or dances, we would always play Piano Man, as the last song.

David Lecours: Oh sweet!

Josh Miles: That’s a traditional thing. Now any time we hear Piano Man, it brings back all these memories or feelings.

David Lecours: Totally, yeah.

David Lecours: It’s about creating these rituals, and people like those. That’s why if you go to a sporting event and they sing the same song, or chant, or seventh inning stretch, everyone gets to chant, sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame, kind of thing. That impacts our brains and helps make things memorable.

Josh Miles: What’s next on the list? This is the P, right?

David Lecours: Right, there’s a couple other things I want to touch base real quickly, within elevation. There’s this idea of somehow raising the stakes, helps things become more memorable and defining. If there is some sort of way to gamify whatever you’re doing, and make it some sort of fun competition. Something where you level up, to make it to the next level, so you have these series of to do’s that enable you to move to the next level. I think this one, often we don’t have to do, it’s already sort of inherent, but the idea of having some sort of deadline, or pressure can help make the stakes seem higher and help your senses become more aware. That makes for a more defining moment.

Josh Miles: There’s probably a lot of marketing teams out there that could relate to that, when they had to get the proposal out or deliver things.

David Lecours: Yeah, right totally. There’s this sort of bonding thing that happens. We have gone into battle together and we got this thing done and now we can hopefully celebrate that we’re still alive.

David Lecours: To summarize, anything that breaks the norm, that’s sort of strategic surprise. For example, Southwest used to be the only airline that would do these funny regulation announcements, where they’d talk about the places to where you could exit the airplane, put on your oxygen mask first. That’s not so much of a surprise anymore, now everybody’s funny. When they did it, it really did break the norm. Anyway you can break the script helps elevate things.

David Lecours: The next up is pride, the P part of EPIC. These would be any sort of moments of achievement where any sort of recognition, gratitude. I think, as marketers we could do a better job of probably expressing gratitude to, not only our coworkers for helping us out, getting us the information we needed for the proposal. Writing hand thank you notes to clients for hiring us, and for being a great client. It’s so easy, in the digital age, to just zip off a text or an email, and that’s better than nothing for sure. But, if you take that extra step of something analog it has a meaningful, and could be a defining moment.

David Lecours: Their example in this was, it’s a defining moment when a kid, who’s in cub scouts, or boy scouts and they get a merit badge. If you’re a karate person you get a belt for achieving a certain level.

David Lecours: Maybe as you’re setting up your marketing plan, you could have things in there that, where there are little ceremonies of fun little things that could say, “Hey, you get your yellow belt, brown belt, or black belt,” or something like that.

Josh Miles: Even the digital badge thing, a certification. I’m a speaker at an event, or those kind of things.

David Lecours: Oh yeah! Oh right, exactly.

Josh Miles: It’s interesting how the badges and belts kind of correlate to the wearing different clothes. You’re not only wearing different clothes but you have a thing, you get to add to your ensemble.

David Lecours: Right, right, right

Josh Miles: To show the pride.

David Lecours: Yeah so right, at the conference you can apply those little adhesive backed ribbons to your badge to indicate that you’re a speaker, or what chapter you’re from. It suggests this idea of achievement, and I think that can be beneficial.

Josh Miles: Sometimes, those things get a little [inaudible 00:19:28]

David Lecours: It may get a little ridiculous, I know, I know. Yeah.

Josh Miles: You know who you are listeners.

David Lecours: Yeah, that’s right.

David Lecours: If you’ve got five or more ribbons attached to your conference badge, you need to just check in with yourself.

Josh Miles: If your lanyard is getting in your own way.

David Lecours: It’s dragging your head down to the floor because it’s so heavy. Right, it shouldn’t be sending you to the chiropractor.

David Lecours: All right, E-P-, now we’re on to I, insight. If you can create a moment where people, somehow they get rewired of either themselves or the world, I know the world is a large ask here. Giving somebody the ability to learn something significant, it’s some sort of education event or something where people have some sort of aha moment. Then it’s going to be, the chances of it being a defining moment are significantly greater. Any defining or aha moment’s recently, Josh?

Josh Miles: Yeah actually, I think this is worth talking about entirely separately, but I was just at a really great program yesterday, that our local chapter put on and I think we should talk about that the next time we get together. I think it [crosstalk 00:20:52]

David Lecours: All right let’s do that for the next episode. All right so we’ll tease it, that when we do our next episode together we’ll talk about that.

Josh Miles: Sounds like a deal.

David Lecours: The other thing I learned in the book about insight. In order for you to really learn, you kind of got to stretch yourself. In order to do that, sometimes you have to risk failure. The cool thing is that whether you succeed or fail, you kind of never regain that original shape. By pushing yourself, by stretching you are almost guaranteed to grown in some way. Putting yourself out there or creating a experience where people somehow go beyond their comfort zone, be vulnerable, maybe it’s some sort of fun improv game or exercise that people do, that in doing so really opens people up. You get to learn a little about them, maybe something in their personal life, but it makes them much more human and much more approachable. Also, we learn about each others and about ourselves. That can be super powerful.

Josh Miles: Maybe letting a little bit of a different of my nerdiness show, but jumping into this last season of Game of Thrones, you see that all the characters are scarred and missing fingers and they’ve been through a really rough timeline, but I think that’s what kind of looks cool. We’re not just talking physical, but when you kind of have those learnings and develop those new things that’s the really the character that forms.

David Lecours: Yeah, those lines on your face tell stories, right?

David Lecours: Okay, the final one, C. Now, that’s it for insight. We’ve talked about elevation, pride, insight, and the last one is C, connection. We’ve eluded to this earlier, but this idea that moments are definitely strengthened because we share them together. I don’t know about you Josh, but if you’ve ever had experience of seeing a movie at home, versus seeing it in the theater, and it really elevates the experience. Both, in terms of if it’s a funny movie or a suspenseful movie, there’s just something about having that collected experience that makes it that much better.

Josh Miles: Yeah, absolutely.

Josh Miles: I think, you know I’m starting to think about too, when you add the connection piece there are things that you combine together, as there that moment of elevation where there’s experience with others. Maybe, I’m stealing a point here.

David Lecours: No, no, no absolutely. There’s definitely a crossover between all of these things. When they are working together then it’s going to be even more impactful.

David Lecours: One of my takeaways in reading this book about this idea of connection is that it’s really difficult, or I should say, you really can’t deliver a great client experience without first creating a great employee experience. I’ve heard it said in that way, and even in other ways before, but that really sort of rang true to me as I was, that wasn’t something that came directly from the book but it was kind of a takeaway. It’s like you got to create this comradery and group cohesion before you can deliver a great client experience, because that’s also going to require a lot of the same skills to get along and be effective within your group to move a client through a project, because there’s just so many things that happen along the way.

Josh Miles: I think that, if listeners are interested in hearing more about that, our chat with Nicole La, earlier in the show is a good one to check out.

David Lecours: Absolutely, that was episode 109. That was a really good one.

David Lecours: This idea to create some sort of social bond that ties the group together. One of the things they said in the book was that laughter was 30 times more common in social settings than in private ones. Which makes sense because if you’re all alone and you’re just laughing out loud it’s a little awkward. Maybe there’s a way to incorporate humor in some way, whether it’s [inaudible 00:25:00] or take an improv class and learning some exercises or, I don’t know, bringing in a comedian or something that’s fun and funny, as a way to lighten things up.

Josh Miles: If you’re sitting in your room, laughing by yourself and not listening to us, because we’re hilarious.

David Lecours: They made this point that purpose isn’t just discovered, it’s cultivated. In other words, you might not know exactly why the project is significant. You just can’t sort of find it. Sometimes, you have to cultivate that and really think through and invent a little bit about why the project you’re working on has value and why it’s meaningful. Whether that’s thinking how it’s going to benefit the end user, who’s going to occupy that building, or how it may be sustainable and that’s going to help benefit the planet. It may not always be apparent, sometimes the purpose must be cultivated.

David Lecours: Then, I guess, the final thing I’ll share about this idea of connection, is something I eluded to earlier. This idea of sharing vulnerability, I’m a fan of Brene Brown and her work, and she talks about this idea of intimacy escalates with this idea of turn taking. If I open up and share something about myself, or maybe I just don’t have all the answers for something, but being candid about that up front and saying “Hey, I could use some help here,” “I think this may be the way to go but let me know and I want your opinion.” There’s this thing in our brains called mirror neurons, and what happens is basically defined as monkey see, monkey do. If I see you do something like that, I tend to want to reciprocate and then open up and share something. Turn taking creates sort of this nice upward spiral of creating this connection. Which is the final C in the EPIC.

Josh Miles: You know for fans of the Tim Ferriss show, this is a tactic that he uses all the time. It used to frustrate me that he keeps telling the same stories about himself to people he’s interviewing and often it’s something really dumb that he’s done before, and he just repeats it all the time. It totally helps that guest let their guard down. It’s kind of his go to handful of stories, that they in turn and kind respond with more personal and deep stories, that maybe you haven’t heard from someone else’s show.

David Lecours: Yeah, well you’ve heard that story before, the guest most likely hasn’t, so it’s totally effective.

Josh Miles: Which totally makes his podcast epic.

David Lecours: The good thing is there’s that 15 second advance thing, now don’t use that on our podcast, but if we’re starting to repeat ourselves you can always use that button to move forward.

Josh Miles: That’s right.

David Lecours: Yeah that’s it, it was really a powerful book and it’s timely for today. I think there’s a lot of lessons in there that we can use to try to create these defining moments. Because, really that’s what builds the brand, right? That’s what builds a career, it’s these series or string of moments strung together. I think it’s really important.

Josh Miles: Great, I’m going to have to check that out and again the book is, Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. Is that right?

David Lecours: We’ll include a link to that in our show. No, it’s at psm.show.

Josh Miles: Well I guess that brings us about to the end of the show. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for future shows or guests, you can write to us at psm.show, scroll down to contact us and drop us a line. That’s it for this episode of PSM show, from David Lecours and myself, Josh Miles, we’ll see you next time.

 

Josh Miles interviews Ida Cheinman, Principal of Substance 151, about Generation Z Marketing. 

About This Episode

Just as you thought you had the multi-generational workplace issues and marketing preferences of the millennial generation figured out, there’s a new generation on its way to the workplace: Gen Z.  

This episode runs 35 minutes.

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About Ida Cheinman

 

 Ida Cheinman has 20 years of branding, marketing and management experience with a primary focus on brand strategy and design across print and digital. With clients including U.S. Green Building Council Maryland, Barton Malow, Langan, Habitat for Humanities Chesapeake, TerraLogos eco architecture, St. Mary’s County Public Schools and many others, her work has earned multiple design awards and industry recognition, and she frequently speaks and writes on the subjects of branding and marketing.

 When founding Substance151, Ida made a commitment to advance sustainable values through the firm’s design practice, education and community involvement. Under her leadership, Substance151 has not only built a strong reputation for its brand strategy and design work, but is also recognized as an advocate for environmentally and socially responsible business practices. Ida has been named an Eco CEO by Baltimore SmartCEO. 

 

 substance151.com

 

 Article by Ida Cheinman About Gen Z Marketing

 

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Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the professional services marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: Hello and welcome to PSM show, the podcast for AEC marketers. I’m Josh Miles and I’m joined today by the crazy smart Ida Cheinman, principal and creative director for Substance151. Today we’re talking about Gen Z, but before we get into that, I want to say thank you to our underwriting sponsor SMPS. Head over to smps.org/buildbusiness to see all about Build Business 2019 in Washington DC from July 31st to August 2nd, 2019.

Announcer: This is PSM. Its insight applied

Josh Miles: Ida, welcome to PSM show.

Ida Cheinman: Thank you Josh. And I don’t think anybody ever called me crazy smart. I really like that. Thank you.

Josh Miles: Well, you’re very welcome and I think it’s well deserved. So, we’re going to get to show off some of your smarts today, but most of our listeners might know that I’m a giant branding nerds too. Initially when I reached out to you, I was begging you to come on the show.

Josh Miles: And selfishly, I really just wanted to talk about branding and maybe a little bit about firm culture until I found your research you had done on Gen Z, which reminded me back when I was running an agency, there was this thing that the market usually said about Millennials, which was, they’re the worst. But you recently wrote about Gen Z. So I guess first off, tell us about Gen Z. Who is this Gen Z?

Ida Cheinman: So, this is the next generation that will be a part of our workforce. They’re starting to enter the workforce right now. A lot of them are still in college. It’s your interns. And recent grads. That’s the generation that was born between 1995 to 2012 and they’re very different from Millennials. And it’s funny. I, as a business owner, had to address the Millennial challenges like the rest of us.

Ida Cheinman: But it took me the longest time to believe that this whole generational thing was real. And I think a part of it was that most of Gen X generation, we resent the fact that when we entered the workforce, nobody celebrated or wrote articles about it. And so I just kept thinking that all of this hype the media is creating will pass. But I’m older and wiser now.

Ida Cheinman: I recognize that the generations and the differences between them are real and they certainly affect both the culture of our workplace and the way we do business. So since I missed most of the buzz on the … or the bandwagon on the Millennial generation, I was really interested in researching this article.

Ida Cheinman: And I also teach. So the students I teach are Gen Zers and I definitely saw some differences, and it intrigued me. I think it’s going to be a huge marketing challenge. So, all of those reasons forced me to do a little bit more research and write this article.

Josh Miles: I saw this tweet recently and it said, this has got to be the most Gen X thing ever and it was a graphic from a newscast. And it said something about the silent generation and about the boomers and about the Millennials. And it totally left the Gen Xers off of the graphic.

Ida Cheinman: Right, we don’t even count.

Josh Miles: They don’t even know we are there, oh no,

Ida Cheinman: I know, I know.

Josh Miles: So the Gen Z, you said they’re wildly different than the Millennials. Tell us more.

Ida Cheinman: They certainly are. In general, as a part of my research about generations, I’ve seen it a number of times that Millennials are closer to Baby Boomers than Gen Xers, so it skips a generation.

Ida Cheinman: So one interesting fact that I saw is president of FutureCast, Jeff Fromm, described them as “old souls in young bodies.” And he elaborated on that point saying that they are digital, social and mobile to the core, but their values are more strongly aligned with the previous generations than Millennials.

Josh Miles: Interesting.

Ida Cheinman: I think one of the reasons for that, is they grew up with their parents going through the last recession. And they saw some of their parents who are professionals and always had good jobs, lose those jobs. They saw the financial struggle. They saw all the ugliness of mortgages. And they were very young at that time.

Ida Cheinman: There is a difference in how people draw those boundaries, but the most typical one is to say that they were born between 1995 and 2012, so they were relatively young when all of that was happening, but old enough to understand the turmoil we went through. So they’re much more skeptical, they’re not as privileged or entitled as people often describe the Millennial generation. They’re definitely much more pragmatic.

Ida Cheinman: But there are also their values. They’re very inclusive. They’re very purpose driven. They’re very compassionate. So there’s that almost like left brain, right brain or brain and heart, however you want to draw that divide, that exists within them, and this will make it very difficult for the rest of us to market to them.

Ida Cheinman: And there are already numerous articles about how difficult they are as consumers, but even in our B2B professional services environment, Millennials are already not just a large part of the workforce, but they’ve moved into positions that make executive and purchasing decisions.

Ida Cheinman: So it’s not going to be that long before this generation is deciding which architecture, engineering or construction firm they’re going to go with. Again, their values and their backgrounds, and the high-tech, mobile natives that they are, will affect what’s important to them and how they both research, select and ultimately build relationships with the firms.

Josh Miles: It’s interesting both of my children are sort of on the young end of that range born in 2007 and 2012, so right at the very tail end, but our daughter, the older of the two in particular is often described by our friends as being such an old soul and so compassionate.

Josh Miles: So it’s interesting that this general research really hits home when I think about who she is as a person, as a consumer, as a future employee. But this kind of leads me to wonder, each generation tends to have things that they’re more comfortable with or that they’re better at. What are some of the strong suits of the Gen Z?

Ida Cheinman: So I think we’ve all come to value tech-savvy in the workplace because you don’t have to be a technology company to appreciate and use the technology. So I think that tech savviness of them is definitely going to be an asset to any firm or any company in general that will hire them.

Ida Cheinman: I think the values-driven, the passionate nature of them is also important because purpose has become a big part of brands and business. It will resonate really well with other Gen Zers but also with the Millennial generation and even Gen Xers. So I think there are parts of them that will fit very well.

Ida Cheinman: There are parts of them that perhaps will be a little less useful. The attention span. To say that it equals zero is an understatement. There is no attention span. I think it could be okay, but it also is very difficult and it might be that consumer products will figure it out.

Ida Cheinman: I think it’s going to be very difficult for professional services where a lot of what we do is long-term and it’s for the long haul and it’s about building relationships. There’s no immediacy. You have to be knowledgeable technically. And it requires the depth of knowledge and expertise.

Ida Cheinman: So I think teaching them is going to be a challenge because they can hold only so much onto your thoughts. I think for them to develop the depth of expertise is going to be challenging because that’s not how they operate. That’s not what they like, and yet it’s going to be required for them to make it in the world, in the professional world.

Ida Cheinman: So I think those are going to be definitely huge challenges. I think some of the values of transparency and experience and authenticity that are very important to them. Transparency, more and more companies are trying in general to be transparent with their financial and business strategies, and managers being transparent with those who work for them in terms of career goals and how to do better, how to succeed.

Ida Cheinman: So I think there’s a general movement toward transparency in the workplace. But I think this generation will make us all kick it up a few notches, in order to attract them and retain them and work with them and have them trust us because again lack of trust, that skepticism, is very prevalent.

Ida Cheinman: Everything is about the experience. So it’s both experiential learning and … But I think also that’s what the firms need. To have somebody who is all about the experience, in order to instill a sense of urgency for developing better employee and customer experiences.

Ida Cheinman: So I think that could work for and against both the firm and Gen Zers as employees. For companies, it’s not just transparency, but it’s authenticity, it’s speaking with an authentic voice. It’s do what you say you will do.

Ida Cheinman: And that goes for both how companies conduct business and what they promise during the recruitment process and this generation will hold them responsible. And I think all of those inherent values in this generation will change the way we do business, and definitely will change the way we think about, and do marketing.

Josh Miles: So this thing connected to the whole transparency issue, I think sort of related to that is really just the communication of who you are as a company and as a firm and as you said, the things that they’re promised in the interview or, I think most principals are probably thinking in their head well, man, we told them 18 months ago what our five year plan was or what our strategic goals were, what this new initiative was about.

Josh Miles: But they’re not repeating it and they’re not coming from many small businesses. I know this is just something that constantly plagues us just as principals, we’re not good at that communication piece. So how might firm’s address that differently with Gen Z?

Ida Cheinman: I think, and actually, your question I feel is two fold; the transparency and communication, but also it’s the repetition because again, there is no attention span.

Josh Miles: Yeah, exactly.

Ida Cheinman: So if you said something five months ago,

Josh Miles: It’s like you never said it.

Ida Cheinman: It’s not going to be resonating at the performance review which is 12 months from now. I think there are a lot of ways that firms can address that. It’s definitely train the trainer. So it has to come from the top. It has to be embedded into the company culture, that general movement toward transparency.

Ida Cheinman: And it depends, you could be an 800 or an 8000 or 20000 people firm, you could be a 35 people firm. So the ways, the mechanics of addressing it could be different. But whether it’s the principal who does interviews, performance reviews, and just general assessment of how everybody’s doing. Whether it’s five managers far removed who are doing that, everybody will need to understand that in order to get the most out of this generation of employees, as well as to offer them the environment where they can grow and thrive and make the company successful, right?

Ida Cheinman: Because if you help somebody to become successful as an individual, to grow professionally and personally and do their best work, then ultimately they will help your firm to become more successful. So I think it’s everything from training, from how you communicate the career path, from how you chunk it up into pieces, from just learning that every performance review maybe it needs to start with recapping the goals and repeating the information.

Ida Cheinman: But I also think that’s a little bit of that resentment taht’s is coming up again. It has to be a two way street. I mean they have to have jobs, they have to understand how to be in the professional environment. So I think there’s going to be a huge learning curve coming into something like a professional services firm, and understanding that not having any attention span is really not an asset.

Ida Cheinman: On the other hand, being able to very quickly grasp something new is an asset. So this generation itself will need to adapt to how we do business. But even in order for us to get them into our firms, we’re going to have to be very smart about how we message out the purpose and the brand and… Again, it can’t be just messaging and has to be authentically how we build diversity and inclusion into everything we do.

Ida Cheinman: And obviously that’s a big challenge for the AEC industry and there are huge strides being made right now. But still, the example I always use when I talk about culture, and I think diversity and inclusion is a huge part of it, is that you can talk about diversity and opportunity all day long. But if I’m a young female engineer and I go to your website and your entire leadership page looks the same, oh, and nobody looks like me, will I believe you?

Ida Cheinman: You can do the programs, you can implement, you can make strides, but your leadership team must mirror the workforce you want to have. And one of the things about Gen Z that was interesting to me is that already they’ve been … It’s been mentioned that they’re the most diverse generation.

Ida Cheinman: And I think we always lump diversity and inclusion together but they’re very different because inclusion is about how people feel. Do they feel included? There is a dialogue, there’s a two-way conversation about it. Do they feel included? What does it take to make them feel included?

Ida Cheinman: Again, the generation is just entering the workforce, and obviously a lot of people in the workforce have children of that generation, so they kind of understand how they work. But we still have a lot to learn and a lot to overcome. The processes from business strategy to brand, to marketing, to operations, to everything across the board will need to be re-thought and adjusted for this generation.

Josh Miles: So maybe in addition to thoughts around purpose and diversity and inclusion, social issues. What are maybe our firms doing wrong today that are just set up the wrong way for being ready to welcome Gen Z into the workplace. What else do we need to do maybe from a branding standpoint?

Ida Cheinman: So I think I already mentioned and we talked about it a little bit, a great sense of purpose and values. The firm’s brand needs to be guided by purpose and it’s all industries, across all types of firms. AEC has gotten on board. There are more and more firms that understand that they need to talk about things outside of delivering on time and on budget.

Ida Cheinman: But there’s still a lot of confusion about purpose. A lot of times people think about it as sustainability or CSR. But it doesn’t have to be, but it has to be very clear, whatever it is. And it has to come across in all communications and especially on career pages of firms’ websites and social media, and other public-facing communications.

Ida Cheinman: But there’s a difference between the Millennial generation that was the first generation that was truly purpose driven. The difference here is that skeptical, mistrusting nature of Gen Z. So you need to do much more than just say you’re great, you need to show and you need to walk the talk. Because if they catch any discrepancies between what you say and what you do, chances are you will not be able to recover because trust is a really big issue for them.

Ida Cheinman: So, there’s that. Then because of the attention span, not only all messages and communications need to connect immediately, they have to be relevant because if it’s just generic noise that has no relevance, that’s not tailored to that specific individual, they will just move on and not even notice that somebody is talking. So personalization is going to be absolutely critical.

Ida Cheinman: And I think a lot of those emerging trends, they’re really emerging for maybe the professional services industries, but they’ve been around in B2C for a very long time. And I think a big challenge for professional services, AEC, B2B marketers in general, will be understanding that this generation will need much more B2C-like experiences.

Ida Cheinman: The good news is that consumer industries have been doing a lot to personalize their experience, to pay attention to the experience, to tailor, to customize. And there are technologies that have been around for a long time. So at least we can all look for lessons learned and best practices.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I mean my running joke in the AEC marketing for years has been, if you want to know what AEC marketers are going to be doing in a few years, just look at what retailers have been doing for the last six months because that’s what we are going to catch up to.

Ida Cheinman: Absolutely. And we’ll need to get over our fear of asking for information. We need to get better at capturing information and learning more about the individual behaviors and preferences of that new generation because we have to make tailored, data-driven decisions to improve the effectiveness of our communications. To get their attention, to keep their attention, which is close to impossible. And so, yes. I totally agree and I always say the same thing.

Ida Cheinman: So think about all the real-time personalized experiences we get as customers every day, especially when interacting with retailers. It’s “you may also like” on Amazon and content and product suggestions as you move through your shopping experience, and there’s absolutely no reason why B2B professional services websites couldn’t use that technology.

Ida Cheinman: And really be sensitive to how a prospect moves through your website, and make sure that dynamic content we serve, it’s not just the latest five blog headlines or five case studies, or what we think is relevant to this market, but have the ability to serve that customized, personalized content in real time.

Ida Cheinman: Including calls to actions, including thought leadership, including relevant case studies, including industry trends and anything else that will make that path more relevant to the prospects and ultimately get them to the point of, wherever they are in their journey, either to contact you or send an RFP your way.

Josh Miles: What other tactics or approaches might retailers use that will work well for Gen Z?

Ida Cheinman: So, all the … Let me back up a little. So one of their pet peeves is talking on the phone, having a conversation with a real person. They don’t want that. Actually, this is one point that I can relate to. So to the degree that you can help them accomplish their tasks online, which means again, the forms need to be tailored and customized.

Ida Cheinman: Yes, you have to have meaningful chatbots. You have to be able to provide them with the information they’re looking for and take them pretty far down whether it’s a recruitment path and they’re looking to apply for a job at your firm or they’re looking to hire your firm.

Ida Cheinman: Provide those opportunities for them to get the information that they seek without having to pick up the phone, without having to get off the website, go into email and try to do something. So, they love texting, use in-app messaging, real-time support. All of those things are going to be very important.

Ida Cheinman: We are all finally getting into this content marketing thing, right? So finally getting it, finally know what to do with it. Finally, understand that it’s important. Well, for Gen Z content marketing is still going to be important, but it needs to be entertaining. I use in the article “content needs to edutain.”

Ida Cheinman: Again, the attention span is zero. They’re very into visual media. So videos, graphics, stuff that stimulates them visually, but also communicates. It’s not just pure entertainment. It does have to provide relevant information. Help them understand something or help them understand why your firm is the right choice.

Ida Cheinman: Starting to utilize those channels that haven’t been traditionally top of mind for AEC and professional services in general. And it will, that’s another interesting practical thing about Gen Z, social media. So we again in professional services, a little bit slower to adapt, but finally everybody gets it.

Ida Cheinman: LinkedIn is a big deal. And interestingly enough, Gen Z actually uses LinkedIn. They get the opening doors and making connections and building relationships. But it’s not their platform of choice. So, right now, it might be Snapchat and Vimeo and Instagram, but their preferences change constantly.

Ida Cheinman: So what we all will need to learn, not only adapt to their choices of social media but do it fast and also constantly evolve as their preferences evolve. They are not as loyal to a particular channel. So they hop. They go channel hopping and we need to go channel hopping with them if we want to stay on their radar.

Josh Miles: So that makes me think of how the Millennials taught us or at least they would like to think that they taught us all about social media and digital things in general. But it sounds like what you’re talking about with Gen Z is maybe not so much a seismic shift, but like a constant state of flux and a constant state of chasing the next new thing.

Ida Cheinman: Yeah, I think the biggest changes will come not from new media, new channels and new technologies and of course that will continue to evolve and emerge as it’s doing all the time. But it’s really getting used to the pace of change, even more so than it is with Millennials or just the business environment in general.

Ida Cheinman: And I think that’s where social listening tools are going to be important because, really paying attention to what they’re doing and where they’re going and how they’re using different channels, and what works is going to be instrumental in catering to them and getting on their radar and trying to get their attention. Again, keep it for the few moments that we can.

Josh Miles: Yeah, this is fascinating. I’m sure we can talk about this for a long time, but maybe before we let you go, if you could leave our AEC firms with just one tip of something they should start thinking about right now to prepare their workplace for Gen Z, what would that be?

Ida Cheinman: Yeah, the “one” is a tough one. There is a lot going on. I think looking at some of the things that might already be on our radars, but marked as “Yeah, we can think about it later.” To really put those more advanced channels and technology at the forefront.

Ida Cheinman: Again, think about how you can be relevant. How you can lead with purpose and be authentic and earn trust. I think creative in marketing is going to count, which as a designer, I just love that. At the core, we’re a design firm, so we’re very excited about that. But it’s just that visual garbage that’s being generated every single day.

Ida Cheinman: I think we’re going to start taking the value of visual design and creative very seriously because it’s a path to the heart of Gen Z that’s how you get them engaged and keep them engaged. And getting ready for a very fast movement.

Ida Cheinman: So maybe thinking about it from the operational standpoint, start thinking about Agile and Design Thinking and other practices that help marketers and marketing react quickly, pivot fast, and start bringing it. It can’t be that you would develop a marketing plan and you work on it for six months and then maybe by the next year, you will begin to implement, by then it’s all old and meaningless. So fast, fast, fast. Find ways to structure your operations and your marketing function that it can react quickly and adapt to changes.

Josh Miles: Awesome. Well that’s a lot of great stuff and of course most of our conversation today was inspired by that article on the Substance151 website. We’ll make sure and link to that in the show notes before we let you go, tell our listeners where they can find you on the Interwebs and learn more about Gen Z and connect with you personally.

Ida Cheinman: Yeah, of course. So, Substance151.com is our website and we have a blog that has the article and many other articles. I’m on LinkedIn, I’m on Twitter. I’m in a number of other social media networks and I’m always happy to connect and I can talk about this forever. So if anybody has any questions, I’m happy to have this conversation. Again, I had a lot of fun researching and writing this article, so this is an interesting topic for me right now.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I can definitely tell. And perhaps we’ll have you back sometime in the new feature just to talk about branding.

Ida Cheinman: Excellent.

Josh Miles: Well guys, that’s about brings us to the end of another PSM show. Thanks again to our underwriting sponsor, SMPS and head over to smps.org/buildbusiness to see all about Build Business 2019 in Washington DC, July 31st through August 2nd, 2019. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future shows or guests, please write to us at psm.show. You can scroll all the way down to that contact link at the bottom and drop us a line.

Josh Miles: That’s all for this episode of PSM show from Ida Cheinman, my cohost, David Lecours and myself, Josh Miles. We’ll see you next time.

 

David Lecours interviews Elke Giba of Giba Group about Positioning.

 

About This Episode

 Too many professional service firms suffer from generic descriptors about service offerings. Many offer the same category of service as competitors.

But despite seemingly endless similarities, there are practical and technical distinctions in your business practice that can help define how your firm stands out in the middle of a mundane marketplace. Stating exactly WHAT expert service your firm delivers, WHOM you serve best, and WHY your company is unique among the competition is how you position your firm.

This episode runs 36 minutes.

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About Elke Giba

Equal parts researcher, marketer and business advisor, Elke Giba helps courageous A/E/C firms plan to win more often through a foundational marketing strategy. She works with firms to shed the “full-service” moniker and transform into specialists, spotlighting the focused expertise that generates more business opportunities that grow the bottom line. An author and presenter, she speaks to business audiences on how to market their business more effectively and publishes marketing insights in industry publications and online. Equally at home in Dallas and Nashville, she still cannot two-step to save her life.

GibaGroup.com

Mentioned in This Episode on Positioning

• Define what positioning is, and what it isn’t

• How firms benefit from solid positioning

• What stops A/E/C firms from positioning their practice

• Simple ways to start positioning your firm’s practice areas

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

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Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

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Transcript

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, The Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hello, I’m David Lecours, and I’m joined by a special guest, Elke Giba, and Elke is here to talk to us today about positioning. So, welcome to the show Elke.

Elke Giba: Thanks for having me.

David Lecours: Before we learn more about Elke I would just wanna remind our listeners that we are sponsored by SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership, and if you wanna find out more about SMPS, got to smps.org.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Alright, so this is the second time we’ve talked about positioning, and I don’t think we could positioning enough. Frankly, I think we could almost have every episode talk about positioning because I think it’s so important. But before we get into the topic Elke, maybe just give our listeners a little background on how you got here. The short story.

Elke Giba: Yeah, thanks. I am in my 8th year now as being an independent consultant specifically to marketers and AEC trades. And I started my professional career as a graphic designer and then, moved into web design and did a lot of work outside of the industry. But as I was looking at moving into starting my own firm, I really wanted to position myself in a group of people that I thought as though would benefit from having my experience and skill sets.

Elke Giba: I specifically chose this industry, and it’s a little unique in that, simply because I’m fascinated by the trade craft and, I think you’ll appreciate this David, that we as designers, graphic people, we spend a lot of time creating material that doesn’t have a lot of- It doesn’t stay around very long, right? Especially if it’s a website or digital platform, it can be gone easily and in just a few seconds.

Elke Giba: But within this industry, I’m just really amazed and awestruck by the craftsmanship that it takes to create these facilities that people use on a daily basis. And so, I intentionally wanted to be a part of that. So that’s what got me to this role. And I agree with you that I think that, we couldn’t talk about positioning enough. We need to talk about it often. Specifically within this particular industry. There’s a lot of room for improvement within positioning.

David Lecours: And you said something that really sort of struck out of me, is that you made this conscious decision to position yourself in the industry. So maybe mention the difference between the act of positioning versus the- So the verb versus the noun, which is like a perhaps a positioning statement.

Elke Giba: Yeah. This is a traditional marketing aspect. It’s a part of our marketing theory, is knowing who you’re serving, knowing what they need, what they care about, and really being intentional about your message whenever you’re choosing that topic. For me and choosing AEC it was a way to say, this group, this industry has a very unique problem. Especially when it comes to marketing. It’s a relatively new field, where people are really trying to figure out what it means, we have leadership who aren’t really sure how marketing could fit into their firm and their practice and how to really take advantage of it, and use it to their best benefit and in growing the company.

Elke Giba: So, I think there’s a huge opportunity to focus on your target market, your niche, figure out what their problems are, and then use your language to tell them how you can solve the kinds of problems that they’re facing. And that’s true. If you’re a doctor or If you’re a surgeon, you will specialize in a specific area. Or if you’re a graphics firm, a marketing firm, you’ll target a specific audience. Or if you’re an architecture firm, you’ll choose a very specific niche that you can focus on and really be intentional about who you’re serving so that you can position, right. That’s the first part I have. Is that language to let those kinds of people, those kinds of clients know what you can do for them and how you do it.

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely. So I’m guessing you have a formal definition that you like to use when you define positioning. What is that?

Elke Giba: I would say that it’s- We talk about positioning statement, and generally speaking that’s how we- If we’ve heard the term positioning, that’s where it comes from. We have a positioning statement.And I’ve heard you talk about it, sometimes there’s a formula that you can use to create your positioning statements. But I would also think that positioning is in fact, the act of choosing your market and being very intentional about the kind of work that you can do for them, how you can solve their problems. So that’s not necessarily a formal definition, but it is maybe a more granular level of how I would define positioning in terms of just a statement. It’s actually a practice. It’s part of you’re intentional messaging that you might do around your firm and what you actually practice.

David Lecours: Yeah. And I think it’s a way of differentiating, right? It’s taking a conscious choice to position yourself as unique in the marketplace. Because we as marketing practitioners, the last thing we want is to be known as just a generalist, a one of many. Because then of course the only way we can compete is on price. And we don’t want to compete on price because we don’t want to be a commodity. So we have to differentiate ourselves. But not just be different, ’cause being different is easy, but being different in a meaningful way is something that really means something to the client.

Elke Giba: Yeah. There’s oftentimes we’d hear the whole notion, well, we’re a full service architecture firm, we’re a full service engineering firm and you and I both have this perspective that we need to get more intentional about that language and get really focused on the kind of work that they can do and the kind of problems they solve. And that’s where that uniqueness, that’s where that positioning actually comes up to the service and makes that differentiation really stand out.

David Lecours: So I think we’ve kind of defined it, but maybe we could say what it isn’t too. I think you have some thoughts around that.

Elke Giba: Yeah, I do. Because we see this often. Because it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to grab a hold of at the very beginning will resort to the things that are easy. For instance, we’ll talk about, where are the only firm that’s located in central Texas that does xyz. Well, your close, if you’re gonna get really specialized in saying what you do, that you’re the only firm in central Texas, but more often than not, where you’re located doesn’t really help you with positioning. That’s not necessarily going to be something that is unique enough to make you a differentiator.

David Lecours: So not a literal geographic position.

Elke Giba: Right. Not where I’m located, or even how long I’ve been in business. For me that doesn’t necessarily tell me anything about the firm. It’s simply says, you’re doing it successfully because you’ve been able to be in business that long, but really 35 years in business doesn’t tell a perspective client anything more about what you do and, just how long you’ve done it.

Elke Giba: So the other thing that I would say that positioning is not, it is not how long you’ve been in business. I would also say that I’ve seen a couple of times where firms will talk about, well, we’re the only- we’re a woman owned business. That’s great, but probably not unique enough to be a differentiator within the kinds of services that you provide. There are gonna be times when partners are looking for a specialty firm like that to make sure that they’re being judicious in their projects. But for the most part, it’s not going to tell a client anything about what you do or what kind of problems you can solve for them. So for me, those three things are things that do not qualify as they shouldn’t be part of your positioning statement. You should not worry about where you are or what kind of firm, you’ve corporate structure or, how long you’ve been in business. Those three things really, they don’t tell the client anything more about your firm and what you can do for them. So I wouldn’t include them.

David Lecours: So one of the classic formulas I’ve heard for positioning is we do x for y. It’s pretty basic and that’s a great start. But I dunno about you, but I’ve found it challenging when working with our clients is that a lot of times they’re x is a lot of things right? They have a couple of different services and then they’re y is a couple of different things they work in a couple of different vertical markets. Does a firm have to pick just one, one service in one market in order to be effectively positioned?

Elke Giba: No, but I think it’s critical that they know what those unique, what those differences are, because it changes the message. To that end, you could in fact have a couple of different positioning statements and what that would do is just simplify the kinds of messages that you’re going to give to that particular market. So, if you are a multidisciplinary firm and you have lots of different services, then my recommendation is to try to simplify it. If you can focus on one that you use the most frequently, that clients know you for most frequently, then that might in fact be the one that you would work from the most. But it makes a lot of sense to have a couple of other ones ready so that you can be responsive to the different messages that need to be put out there. Your clients are different. Right? So that’s probably how I would approach that situation. I think that you can have- We can start with one, be a little bit more general, but then get really granular in your services.

David Lecours: Like that one is you’re leading statement, the majority of your work comes from this, this is what we’re gonna lead with, but it doesn’t cover everything that you could do. It’s just gonna be putting you in in a solid position so the client can get their head around it and then that’ll help create other opportunities. That makes total total sense.

Elke Giba: And lemme just add right here that that’s the key part. That’s a key thing that we wanna focus on when you and I are talking about positioning it’s not really to the benefit of the firm. It’s to the benefit of the client. The client is the one who has to understand what it is that you can do for them before they can decide whether or not they wanna choose you as a teaming partner or have you on their project. They need to be able to hear your message and evaluate for themselves specifically, this answers my problem. This firm will take care of my problem. And that’s all that they really are concerned about. And I think that opens so many other opportunities to you when you can communicate to potential clients, these are the kinds of problems that we solve. And if you’ve got that problem, we can solve it. It’s a different shift talking, letting the customer, the client pick you based on how you can solve their problem as opposed to, it’s an outward message. We are this, we are that. So that’s another way to think about positioning is thinking about it in that way. How’s the client? But what are they looking for? What are they hungry for? What are they searching for? And then using that as a way to position your firm.

David Lecours: Awesome. Hey, so I did a little research knowing we were gonna talk about this and, I found two or three positioning statements and I would love to read them to you and just get your take, as a fun exercise. Are you down with that?

Elke Giba: All right, I’m ready. Let it all to me.

David Lecours: Here we go. We designed the places where people love to be together. This is for a firm called Populous and they are architects. They designed stadiums, arenas, and convention centers, which maybe I should or shouldn’t tell you, but I did. So, now you know.

Elke Giba: I like it. The thing that I like about it as a marketer that I’m responding to directly is, the sense of emotion that comes into the positioning statement. Right? Their already attributing what it is that these spaces- They’re really connecting to their y, which I love. I’m all over that. The impression that I got when you just read the statement had more to do with, family homes and maybe even house of worship. It was an interesting spin when you added arenas and- Okay. Yeah, I can see that. So I think-

David Lecours: That’s a really good point. I think that this positioning statement rarely lives in isolation. It’s often gonna be combined with imagery, or be placed on a website. And so that will give context.

Elke Giba: Yeah, absolutely. Again, we’re talking about if we were going to use the criteria, is this addressing a problem that a client might have, right? Are they trying- Will they choose this firm to help them solve this problem about- or I’ve gotta have this really big space and it needs to be flexible enough to host a concert, and a big ticket sporting event. Well, there’s different questions around that. So depending upon who their audience is and how they’re trying to get to it, I think it’s a really strong start, and I like a lot of things about it. So I’d get the past.

David Lecours: And since they do olympic stadiums and they do large convention centers and master plannings for like giant spectacles and events. I think they can get away with sort of having that the more minimal and not being- And maybe a little more poetic too. I think they should have that.

Elke Giba: Well I was just gonna tweak it if I’d said [crosstalk 00:16:25] where people celebrate together.

David Lecours: That’s interesting.

Elke Giba: Anyway. We’re not doing free work. That’s [crosstalk 00:16:33].

David Lecours: I’ll read one more to you and [crosstalk 00:16:37]. Okay, this one is, we’re not architects who do healthcare. We are healthcare architects.

Elke Giba: There’s a whole range of practice, right? When you talk about- well, we focus on health care, but they’re actually practicing the skill set behind it. So I like this one. I think I’ve seen this one. I think I’m familiar with this firm. So, I’m thinking this is a really strong start too, I’d like to see them get a little bit tighter for each of these in terms of what kinds of health care, health care is a huge [inaudible 00:17:19], right? I mean, it is a- Or usually [inaudible 00:17:22] are you talking about health care facilities? Are you talking about research facilities? Are you talking about the local clinical facilities? All of those things. Is it multidisciplinarian? So, I think there’s an opportunity to get a little bit tighter, but it’s a really good strong start.

David Lecours: And, part of this I think is also beginning the conversation, where you’re not gonna give all the details and so, you’ve gotta be intriguing enough so that someone will want to have a followup conversation.

Elke Giba: Yeah. I’m gonna push back a little bit on that because, positioning I think- What I understand and I would imagine you have to is that, it can be really scary, because it’s the reverse of what we want to do, especially when we talk about new business acquisition, how do we find new clients? When you position your firm, you have to have some courage doing it because you will be, and you talked about this earlier when you wanted to talk different lines, but when you position your firm, we really need to stand on- This is our core practice. This is how we are known, this is our expertise. And that takes some courage. You have to be able to stand away and say, ‘that’s okay. I don’t need all this extra pieces or extra work that’s coming in that doesn’t directly align with what it is that we do’.

Elke Giba: And sometimes that can be really scary to do that depending upon the size or shape, or age of your firm. So sometimes that can be a real challenge. And so it’s easier to be generalized and just have a very general positioning statement. But the more focused, more hyper focused you can become on that positioning statement means that you can get really aligned and very focused. You will become an expert in that field. Right? So we’re talking about vertical versus horizontal. Are you gonna be really hyper focused on that? And to be honest it just takes a lot of courage to say, ‘that’s okay. We used to do this kind of work in the past and we’re not going to do it anymore’. Even individually. Right? I don’t do websites anymore. Having to say that for a while was a bit of a challenge just to say I’m cutting out that business line out of my practice, but it’s better to send it to somebody else too. So anyway-

David Lecours: It makes total sense. And I wanna follow up on this idea of courage, but before we get too far along, I just wanted to clarify the firm, and I would just wanna give credit to the firm who’s positioning statement that is called Array Architects. They happen to work in all their multi offices, hundreds of staff people. So, they do work in almost all of those markets you mentioned. So I think for them it did work pretty well.

David Lecours: But you bring up this idea of courage and I think- Well I’ll let you answer the question. So what do you think is the single best hesitant, reason for hesitance, or resistance that you get maybe when you’re working with clients? Why do they fear positioning?

Elke Giba: It really comes down to- Well the single biggest thing? I have not found a single answer for that, it really depends on the leadership and what their used to doing, and where they’re coming from. If it’s a newer firm, If it’s a very broad based firm, they may be hesitant, and very focused simply because it cuts out some of their business line already. And that is a change in their business structure. So it’s a position to have a really firm strong position within a single core that, that’s a change in their business structure. And that can be really challenging.

David Lecours: I know offline we talked about fear. Speak to that a little bit.

Elke Giba: Fear gets into so many of these levels. I mean there’s the fear of not being able to take on new clients that come in the door, but the counterpoint to that is, if you take on everybody, then you’re never going to be able to be an expert.

Elke Giba: If you position yourself for a very narrow target, then you’re not gonna have a lot of projects variety either and [inaudible 00:22:13]. But again, you can’t be an expert if you are all over the board and you can’t really focus on a specific project type, or clientele, then you’re serving lots of different clients and you’re never really gaining expertise that you need to have. And honestly, it requires some uncomfortable naval gazing. We’re not really used to doing this. And that’s why I think it takes some practice and it takes some comfort to say, well I’m going to start here and then I keep refining and getting hyper, keep refining that positioning statement. So fear for me is- that’s the biggest thing. It could be. I don’t wanna limit the number of clients I have.

Elke Giba: I can even have a client that I really but they’re outside of my positioning that I want to go for. So I don’t wanna lose them. How do I- Well, that’s a whole different client relationship question. But that comes into it, right? We’re humans, we’re just trying to get aligned and make sure that we’re doing- But ultimately it comes down for me, it has to do with running your business, running your firm in a smart way so that when your clients are looking for people who can solve that problem, they can see you’re firm and recognize they can solve my problem. So it’s not for everybody, but for those that they’re ready to make that choice and really get hyper focused on their firm and what they practice, then it’s the right place for them. Did that answer your question?

David Lecours: And the idea that there is this fear because you’re asking people to narrow their focus and they feel like by narrowing their focus, they are going to limit their opportunities. But I would argue, and I think you would too. The converse in that by narrowing your focus, you’re going to be so good and develop so much expertise that it’s going to create opportunities that you don’t even know exists, called this adjacent possible. Right? You go into a room, you don’t know what’s in there, but by excelling it opens up these new doors that just never had existed prior. But it’s a huge leap of faith and I get it. And I think it requires that naval gazing and some introspection in order to get to a place where you’re ready to move forward in a great way.

Elke Giba: And when you’re thinking about leadership, the firm leadership and how they’ve built this practice, they’ve done it but with blood, sweat and tears acquiring clients one at a time and new projects to their list, and some of those are really hard ones. It’s a little uncomfortable to say, I’m not gonna try to get everything. I’m just gonna focus on specific areas, specific niche, and serve them. So that I can be an expert. So it can be really- It takes some courage.

David Lecours: And as are our friend David Baker likes to say, it’s about the work that you seek, not necessarily what you accept. And so, you’re gonna have other opportunities that if your pipeline isn’t filled and it’s a little bit outside your positioning, of course you take on that work. And actually probably because you’ll be so well known in one area, it might bring up other people that hear about you and to go, I really want to work with that expert. Cool. So let’s get a little more practical. And what might affirmed you to get started on positioning their firm, do they have to do this at the very inception or can they do it mid track?

Elke Giba: Yes, they can do it mid track. I was talking about my own practice and what I did. I did have a period where I was doing- I was trying to be a full service quote unquote marketing agency. For me it happens while I was in the middle of things, in the thick of things really evaluating the kind of work that I wanted to work on consistently and frequently and, and really become an expert in that area. So that’s part of it.

Elke Giba: You have to- You can start it when you launch your firm, think about the kinds of experience that you serve. The kinds of things that you’ve done, that kind of projects that you’ve worked on, the things you’ve enjoyed, the things you don’t enjoy about that work. There’s no reason you have to position yourself to work on stuff you don’t like working on. But I do think that it’s a constant refinement. I don’t think that your positioning is ever really fully fixed, right? That technology and the industry changes so dramatically and frequently. And, talking about fear, there’s probably even an aspect of if you pick a market that is no longer viable, I began to wonder if some of the firms that are serving large retail shops. They’re starting to think about, maybe we should shift a little bit and see if we can move this practice to another area that’s not quite so volatile, or government work when the budgets are down.

Elke Giba: Any of those things, it can be something that would be a part of it. But your question was, when can we do this? Yes, you can do it at the beginning. You can do it in the middle, but you should do it often. I wrote a column last month. Where the way to test to your positioning and I think that that’s actually a really good way to start to think about, am I positioned properly to be in with? And that’s just a visual exercise for you. Think about the clients that you served over the last 12 to 18 months and you’re thinking about them in groups, in stacks, and you categorize them according to either project type or project size or market, and then get a picture of where your work concentrates. What are you doing the most of?

Elke Giba: If you’re positioning phrase, if your positioning statement reflects that bulk of your work then you’re positioned correctly. If not, then it’s time to refocusing a little bit and practice it, polish it off, and get a little bit closer to being a true reflection of what you’re doing now. Or if you don’t, then stop picking those projects and start moving towards what you want to be positioned as. That’s, that’s the other way to do that. So, it can be done in the middle, and also at the beginning. But if you’re starting out and you’ve not done any of that work, how do you know that that’s really what you want to do? I think that’s probably the cautionary tale on doing it at the beginning.

David Lecours: We’ll link to that article in the show notes. If you go to psm.show, we’ll provide a link to that. So I guess what I’m hearing you say is that, the positioning statement is not forever. And I think that’s one of the fears clients have is when they attach themselves, they’re like, this is going to be us forever. And I think what you’re saying is that, no things will move around, but by the same token, it’s not something that you change from one proposal to the other because it just that makes you a little bit flighty.

Elke Giba: And keep in mind what you and I both talking about here is the reason that we feel so strongly about positioning, is that we want to help these firms get to the point where they’re not commoditized. Positioning removes that and- or at least avoids the opportunity for being commoditized. ‘Cause then you have a specialized skill, you’re really focused on, on your craft. And you can say we’re experts at this and then you can price a little bit higher than you would if you were just a run-of-the mill. We do everything, Jack of all trades, master of none. Then you’re just gonna get whatever is given to you, and you’re not gonna be able to pick and choose.

David Lecours: So our audience for the show are marketing professionals, specifically in the architecture, engineering, construction. We’re well positioned. So who should they be leading the effort for positioning, or should it be the c-suite, or a combination? Like what have you found is the best mix?

Elke Giba: This really needs to come from the leadership. It’s difficult for marketers, marketing managers, marketing coordinators to really be able to bring this to the table without them, without the leadership already thinking about it. Now, there are ways that I feel you can have that conversation with your leadership and have them start thinking about it. And that would simply- There’s a couple of reasons why you do this. One, it would give them an idea that you are invested in the success of the firm and that you want to know more about it. So simple question to the leadership like, tell me what you think is our best skillset. What did we do the best? What kind of projects do we excel? And start to have that conversation internally.

Elke Giba: If positioning is not already part of your practice, if it’s not already part of something that you’re doing. If you’ve moved a little bit further down the way and you have a positioning statement that you feel like as a pretty solid thing, then this is an opportunity when you have the next meeting where you’re talking about goals and kinds of projects that you want to go after, you can have this conversation even during the go no go phrase. Does this project really aligned with the kind of work that we wanna do?

Elke Giba: Yes or no. Well, if it’s not, then let’s not do this kind of work anymore. So those are little ways that you can start to have the conversation with your leadership. But my experience has been that, in order for it to really take hold and for everybody to be on the same page, the leadership really need to be the ones that are ready to make this change and to bring it to the table, and work on it as a group. ‘Cause it’s not just a statement, it’s an act. It’s a way of that you’re pursuing new work. It’s a way you’re pricing work. It’s all those different things and those are oftentimes spearheaded by the leadership team and not necessarily the marketing department. Although it should be, maybe.

David Lecours: I think marketing can take the lead and, if we follow the SMPS tagline ‘business transformed through mass marketing leadership’, marketers can lead and bring it to the attention and say, Hey, I’ll help facilitate this. But you definitely need to be involved and it can’t just be marketing driven totally. It’s gotta also come top down.

Elke Giba: Just for [inaudible 00:33:21]. One the ways that you can help the leadership figure out whether or not your positioned correctly is, look at the wind ratio. How many of the projects have you won, and how fair is your from aligned with that kind of work? So that would be a way for you to say to leadership, well, I noticed we’re getting a lot of these projects, we haven’t won them. I think it’s because we don’t talk about how’ve done that kind of work before. So that’s another way to broach the conversation with leadership and say, I’m really- I wanna get us to a better win rate, wanna make sure that really thinking about the projects that make up a fit for our team. So that would be another way to bring them into the conversation.

David Lecours: Okay. So, I gotta ask, does that the Giiba Group have a positioning statement?

Elke Giba: Yes. Yes we do. And it comes with hard work, right? You and I both will say that we have spent our own hours thinking about the kind of work that we want to do. And so it takes work on refinement. I noticed from the beginning that the kinds of things that I’m talking about it, and I’ve already mentioned it a couple of times before, is that I’m looking toward those courageous firms, those firms that are ready to make the decision. In my positioning statement, I talk about that I’m moving courageous AEC firms from being generalists to being specialists. And then I do that with foundational marketing strategy and activities. So that’s my- it’s not rote, that’s my- it’s moving them from, from being really generalists into a specialist and making sure that they’re taking advantage of that expertise, so it’s had one. I’ve worked really hard for it.

David Lecours: How bad. No. I hear you.

Elke Giba: Let’s put it out there.

David Lecours: And so if people wanna learn more about you and your firm, where should they go?

Elke Giba: Well, I would say go to the website. It’s Gibagroup.com, G-I-B-A only one B G-I-B-A-G-R-O-U-P.com. Or find me on Linkedin. That would be the other place where you could find me. And it’s Elke Giba, G-I-B-A. I’m the only Elke Giba, so I think if you get close, you’ll probably find me. But, there’s the website that might be the best way to find me.

David Lecours: I like it. All right, so that’s it for this episode of PSM.show. Love talking to Elke about positioning. So big thanks to her, and to our sponsor SMPS. If you, our audience, have any questions, or comments, or suggestions about future guests. That’s how we found Elke. Write to us via PSM.show. Just scroll down and there’s a simple form there. So, from Elke Giba and myself, David Lecours, we’re outta here.

 

This episode runs 31 min.

David Lecours and Josh Miles discuss A/E/C Firm Naming: acronyms, trademarks, and differentiation.

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Mentioned in This Episode 139: A/E/C Firm Naming

Why so many acronyms?
Why acronyms can be problematic
The importance of firm differentiation
What is a trademark?
Five kinds of trademarks:
Generic
Descriptive
Suggestive
Fanciful
Arbitrary
A/E/C firm names we admire
How to enhance an acronym name
The difference between TM and ® 

 

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Read the Episode

 

David Lecours: Hey, Josh, let’s talk about naming today. What do you think?

Josh Miles: I like it. Let’s do it.

David Lecours: I guess I should be more specific. I’m talking about like firm names, the use of acronyms and trademarks as we describe our firms.

Josh Miles: I thought we’re going to talk on how to name your puppy or your kitten or your child.

David Lecours: Well, I think so. I think it’s the universal. Some of those techniques can certainly apply. I want to remind our audience that PSM show, which is what you’re listening to, is underwritten by SMPS, whose vision is business transform through marketing leadership. Go over to SMPS.org to learn more about this great organization.

Speaker 1: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: All right, David. I was thinking as we’re talking about this, especially when it comes to names in the AEC marketplace. We have no shortage of this one thing and that is acronyms.

David Lecours: That is so true, not only for like internal marketing references, but I think what you’re referring to here is like firm names. There’s the HDRs and the HOKs and the HNTBs and that’s just the H’s. Don’t get me started on all the firms that have GO in their name. That’s not necessarily an acronym but the challenge, of course, with this becomes that they are an alphabet soup. And unfortunately, that can often mean that they lack distinction and one of the things we, of course, want to do is differentiate our firms, not sound like somebody else.

David Lecours: There’s funny stories out there, and I don’t have any evidence to back this up but I’ve heard stories of clients hiring one firm named in acronym because they got it confused with another one. They’re only like a couple of months into the project when they realized they’d actually hired the wrong firm.

Josh Miles: “Oh, yeah, when do we get to talk to Bob?” “Oh, yeah, he works for our competitor. He doesn’t work here.”

David Lecours: Right. No, it sounds similar. So, why do you think this is? Why do think all these firms are, in my opinion, kind of poorly named as acronyms?

Josh Miles: Well, I think so many of these firms started out with two guys and they added a third guy and added a fourth guy, and added a fifth guy and they started just adding the next principal’s name to the sign. And at some point, it’s just too much to manage. And years go by and decades go by, and those founding principals aren’t even … Maybe they’re retired. Maybe they’re not living any longer. Maybe they have nothing to do with the firm so they …

Josh Miles: I think it’s natural that they shortened it to these names. But the challenges like you said in the marketing industry especially in the AEC industry, we have acronyms for just about everything for ROI and SEO, and the industry itself is AEC.

David Lecours: AEC, yeah.

Josh Miles: It really just, as I say, it’s just alphabet soup that you’d start to gloss over. And especially for market to market or if you’re working internationally with different firms, you might even come across the same acronym in different states, in different markets enough to drive you crazy.

David Lecours: I know. I blame IBM. I think it may have … I don’t know if it started there. But for years, they were named International Business Machines. And admittedly, that is a bit of a mouthful and especially in today’s era, we don’t like to wait for things and so we just like to speed things up. It takes a while to type it out when you’re writing a letter, International Business Machines. It’s like many syllables. It takes a while for the person answering the phone to say.

David Lecours: So then at some point, they did sort of what Federal Express did. They said, “All right, everyone already calls us IBM. Let’s just call ourselves IBM or let’s just call ourselves FedEx.” But the brilliance of IBM was that they hired world famous identity designer, Paul Rand, to design this really iconic symbol that’s still in existence today with the lines.

David Lecours: They’d at least differentiated it with this really unique mark which I think is a plus.

Josh Miles: Yeah, and I think there’s something just sort of like friendly or casual about giving nicknames to people you work with or to friends or to family. I’m formally Joshua. But in my house, it was quickly shortened to Josh and lots of other variations on that which we won’t go into right now. But I think all the nicknames and the [inaudible 00:05:13] and the abbreviations and the, ultimately, acronyms in the professional world is kind of how you write it faster, type it faster, say it faster. And it sounds like an insider kind of language almost.

David Lecours: Yeah. That’s true. It’s a very democratic way of doing it. So, if you had four founders and you didn’t want to list all their names, it’s really easy to sort of like, “All right, we’ll take one letter from you, one from you, one from you,” and then the only decision is like what order to put them in, which I’m sure brings up a whole lot of other interesting comments about … And it should go by how it sounds, not by sort of hierarchy in my opinion.

David Lecours: But, I think it almost has become like this least common denominator or let’s … Because naming is challenging. It should be evocative, and as a result, it excites people and it also potentially scares people off in terms of names. And our industry, because of wanting to avoid lawsuits because we’re building things that affect the general public, we sometimes play it safe. And this is another example, in my mind, of playing it safe just using an acronym.

Josh Miles: I think maybe speaking of lawsuits, my trademark attorney friends would like me to include this little caveat in today’s conversation, which is, it turns out David and I are not attorneys. We are not providing any legal advice today and we highly recommend that you chat with a licensed intellectual property attorney to get legal perspective, if you’re ever considering changing the name of your firm or shortening it or how you market it when it comes to a nickname or if the logo is different from what’s registered. All of those things are great things to talk to your either state licensing board or local IP attorney.

Josh Miles: Anyhow, that’s enough of the legal disclaimer, I hope.

David Lecours: Your mileage may vary. No, it’s just that your mileage may vary. Back to the conversation. I think we’ve identified the problem. We probably know where it comes from. One of the things that I often hear from clients is like, “Well, wait. If having an acronym is not a great name choice, why are there so many, you know, like top ENR 50 firms that are using acronyms?” And I always like to remind them that correlation is not necessarily causation.

David Lecours: I think you hit on this earlier is that most of those firms didn’t start out as an acronym. It’s just through after 25 years of successful business and then maybe the public calling them that acronym that they adopted it. But typically, they don’t start out that way.

Josh Miles: Yeah, absolutely. I was trying to explain this correlation and causation thing with my kids and eating sugar yesterday.

David Lecours: Yeah. That’s interesting. Yeah, like really kind of ultimately, I guess what we’re talking about is developing a trademark. And I think our position, and I won’t speak for you, but my position is that you should have a unique trademark. You should have something that you can own that sounds different than your competitors, is highly memorable. And I guess in like a perfect world, it’s a bit evocative of your positioning or maybe what you do or something that your clients or stakeholders would have this positive association when they hear your name.

David Lecours: But maybe we should clarify, since you started out on the illegal track like what exactly is a trademark?

Josh Miles: Yeah, I think if you go historically, the idea of this trademark was it was something to protect the consumer, meaning, I think it was like Bass ale, if that’s the right term. That was the very first registered trademark. And it was because when you go to buy ale from the guy down the street and they say, “Well, this is the same stuff that you liked from the next town over,” that trademark was the thing that assured you as the consumer that you’re going to get the same level of goods or services, that it was the thing that said, “Oh, no. This is exactly the same ale. It’s not just some random barrel. This is actually Bass.”

Josh Miles: In that instance, we’re talking about a logo more properly, but you can also trademark just the name itself. You don’t necessarily have to … I’d still recommend that you trademark it separately but your name itself can also be a trademark, and the legal profession has kind of categorized all these different ways of viewing different types of trademarks which I also talked a little bit about in Bold Brand 2.0 which is available on Amazon, of course.

Josh Miles: But as I was working on this chapter, my editor was like, “You know, this is, I think, possibly the most boring chapter in the entire book, but this is really great content so we have to keep it in here because it’s really important stuff. But it’s just a little bit of a snoozer.”

David Lecours: Yeah. Well, you mentioned trademarks sort of initially came about to protect the consumer but I would also say that they are also designed to protect the company. The word itself is this idea of marking your trade. If you were a potter back in ancient Babylonia and you had a unique pot, you would want a mark to that trade by having some sort of stamp underneath that would identify your goods and differentiate them from another.

David Lecours: And so today, similarly, we want to mark our trade, and I think it’s especially important in professional services because we don’t have a product. Yes, we may end up creating a building in some form or another but the process is really what we’re selling. And so, I think we need to have really compelling trademarks.

David Lecours: And so, I know in your book you’ve identified four kinds of trademarks. Actually, let’s go with five. I just thought of another one. And let’s talk about those. The first one you mentioned is generic. Maybe say a little bit more about that. What does that mean?

Josh Miles: Yeah, these first two categories are the ones that even if you take this to a trademark attorney, they’re going to tell you these are kind of difficult to get through an actual registered trademark. I guess just to back up a little further, my understanding of this again is kind of layperson who’s worked in the space a lot is you can trademark something both with your state and federal. When you get that federal trademark, that’s when you can use that little circle R after that we lovingly, in the advertising and design world, call it the R ball.

Josh Miles: But you can’t use that unless you actually have a federal registered trademark. You can put TM on anything like I can say, some phrase TM, and that just means that I’m showing you that I intend to claim that but there’s no legal standing for that claim.

David Lecours: Yeah, until it’s federally registered with the US Patent and Trademark Office. And so if any of you guys are kind of nerding out on this, you can go to USPTO.gov and read more and find out the process for that federal registration.

Josh Miles: Yeah, and you can also nerd out a little further. You can even get on their website and search for trademarks. So if you have a name, then you can go to that trademark search tool and see if someone else has already claimed that trademark. It’s a really handy resource.

Josh Miles: Anyhow back [crosstalk 00:13:09] generic. Generic is like if you and I were going to create a company and we were going to call it the Indianapolis and San Diego Podcasting Company, that’s generic. It’s basically just literally stating location and name of the business or something like that. [crosstalk 00:13:30] It’s really, really tough to trademark that unless you’ve been going for so long that the market recognizes that distinctly as your brand.

Josh Miles: So, International Business Machines is actually a generic trademark. But they’ve been going for so long that everyone knows that is IBM, and that of course is a registered trademark of IBM.

David Lecours: Right. It has this sort of common law, historical precedence.

Josh Miles: Indeed.

David Lecours: And so that’s generic. We can differentiate that a little bit with number two which is descriptive.

Josh Miles: Descriptive is typically when you say like Bob’s Burgers or Miller Pipeline or something that’s like your name and then a product or service together. Again, this is pretty difficult to trademark right out of the gates. If you were going to launch a brand with that name, you probably could not get a registered trademark right away but if you’ve been in existence for a few years, it is possible to get that registered.

David Lecours: And so sometimes, people do things to help prove that their company has been in existence like they’ll send a registered letter to themselves. And so then the US Post Office stamps it with the indicia stamp date kind of thing. Yeah, just do something if that’s the road you’re going down to protect yourself down the road.

Josh Miles: There’s also this lovely tool called the Internet Wayback Machine or the Internet Archive. And if you have used the name or the logo digitally on your website since a certain year, you can always go back to that to prove that that logo or that name existed back then too. It’s just another way to demonstrate prior use or first use.

David Lecours: Is that a URL or is that an app, or what is that?

Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s a website. If you Google Internet Archive or Wayback Machine, you should find that probably as the first result.

David Lecours: All right, cool.

Josh Miles: It’s pretty amazing, really.

David Lecours: Yeah. That sounds fun. Don’t put anything on the internet that you don’t want to live forever. It’s the takeaway there, which I think we already know.

Josh Miles: Internet is forever.

David Lecours: Bad pictures, yeah, college photos at parties. Number three, suggestive trademark. Oh, I like the sound of this one.

Josh Miles: Yes. It is quite suggestive. A good example of this would be like Dunkin’ Donuts. It’s kind of more of an active or suggesting what it is without being quite so literal as the generic term. So where the generic version might be sugar donuts and the descriptive might be dough’s donuts, the suggestive is Dunkin’ Donuts.

David Lecours: I like that. It’s right. It’s active. It’s a little bit unique. It conjures up an image, and so now, I think we’re sort of going down like in terms of hierarchy, we’re moving towards what we think, at least from the legal profession, are easier to register. And I would also [inaudible 00:17:02] probably more effective names. Is that fair to say?

Josh Miles: Yeah. I definitely think so. And I think the fourth and fifth could maybe be a tie. And we’ll talk about why that is in terms of protectability and preference. But this first two definitely are pretty generic and the third one is just slightly better than generic but in a different category.

David Lecours: Fourth is fanciful. What does that mean?

Josh Miles: These, a lot of times, are the ones that are fun mouth sounds or made-up words. Pepsi is a good one of those because that’s … As the lore goes, it’s kind of the sound that the can makes when you open it. It says Pepsi.

David Lecours: I didn’t know that.

Josh Miles: Some of these other made-up names, Google is actually referenced to [inaudible 00:17:59] called googol, but these are fun, playful and made-up name. Most pharmaceuticals would probably fall in the fanciful category.

David Lecours: Right. And I’m thinking about Yahoo or some of these like computer mash-up names sometimes would fall in this space.

Josh Miles: Yeah, exactly.

David Lecours: So, they don’t have an inherent meaning other than describing that company which is kind of what we want. That’s kind of what we wanted, like it would be great to have this word that means nothing else out in the world except an association with our company. Then you don’t have to fight with any sort of associations that might be negative in someone’s mind.

Josh Miles: Yeah. I mean, assuming someone else has already made up the same word and is using it in a different industry, then I think you’re very clear to move forward with a fanciful made-up fun kind of name, which is not exactly adjectives that we would use to describe the AEC industry. It’s maybe not always good enough fit but just from a practical standpoint really could work nicely.

David Lecours: Right. Okay, and this leads us to the next one which is arbitrary. And your example is one that actually is a perfect example for a name that was used in one industry and not the other, and I won’t bury the lede, it’s Apple. Apple, for many years, had this sort of gentleman’s agreement with Apple Records, the famous Beatles record label, that they weren’t going to get into music. And they were kind of more focused on technology and initially just computers. But eventually, obviously that changed and Apple basically took over the entire music industry. And I don’t know exactly how they resolved that with Apple Records, but I’m sure there were some lawyers involved.

Josh Miles: Indeed. So, I guess the lesson or the theory there, not so much on the music side, is that arbitrary type of trademark is anytime you’re using a thing to describe your company that is what it is not. If you’re going to have a geotechnical firm and you wanted to call it anteater or aardvark or dog or its name for an animal and not for the service that it is, that would be arbitrary. That word has meaning. It’s a real word but it’s not how you’re using it.

David Lecours: Yeah. Let’s think of some examples of some good names within the AEC or maybe we could say a couple of names and then identify which category they fall into. One of them, I’m thinking of is this firm called Arcadis. They are an engineering firm. And I think that that name comes from sort of madeup land, kind of a play on Arcadia. It’s kind of a fanciful name that is also arbitrary. It’s not that they’re all in that like they’re not literally creating this. They’re not a movie company making up this land of Arcadis.

David Lecours: And I guess one of the things I like about that is I make this instant association with their symbol or their mark, their visual trademark or visual identity, which is this stylized dinosaur with a tail that becomes a swirl. It’s just a very unique name and logo for an AEC firm. For that reason, I like it.

Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s a good one. And I think their whole brand wraps around that nicely. One of the ones that we talked about earlier that I always enjoyed was one of the former projects that I worked on with my last agency called Idibri which was a play off of a bright idea. So, they did all of this experienced design and acoustics and kind of anywhere people get together to enjoy an event together. They did all the things that wrapped around that.

Josh Miles: But again, that was a total fanciful like made-up word that was kind of a mash up of the words of bright idea which is I-D-I-B-R-I. And then the logo mark kind of played off of all the I’s in that word as well. It’s kind of a fun way to differentiate itself from their former … They were kind of a result of a reverse merger that split out and that former company was called Acoustic Dimensions, so a little bit more in the suggestive category before, kind of like Dunkin’ Donuts.

David Lecours: And I think that’s probably what you just hit on is why I think this topic is relevant for you guys, our audience, and that yeah, your firm may be named right now and you may not have control over it. But if you listen to this episode so far, you’re somewhat interested in this topic. And there are a lot of mergers that happened and acquisitions.

David Lecours: And so at some point in your career, you might be involved in one of those. Most likely you will be, and so in that case, you might have an opportunity to get involved in the naming aspect. A couple of other names I’m thinking of one is Array Architects, an arbitrary name. They focus in the healthcare. But I just like that AA, the Array Architects just flows nicely. The AR and the AR have a nice association.

David Lecours: And then one other one is Populous, the architecture firm that focuses … Their tagline is about creating places where people gather. So that means like designing stadiums and convention centers. And they’re always involved with designing some of the most iconic buildings for the Olympics. And so that name is suggestive, Populous, right? So, population where people gather and I think that’s a really cool … Yeah, it’s a great name.

Josh Miles: And I think it’s not that if you have … I almost said if you’re stuck with, that’d mean that might be the best way to look at it. But if your firm has an acronym as a name where that’s the shorthand that everyone knows you as, there are still things that you can do to kind of differentiate that further. What would be kind of your first recommendation if your firm is an acronym and you’re wanting to at least refresh that brand or thinking about how to differentiate?

David Lecours: I think we alluded to earlier where we mentioned the IBM examples. Just make sure that your symbol is really distinctive. Don’t just put the three letters in a box and make it red because that is going to instantly make you one of many. Make a unique word mark. Hire a brand identity expert to design letter forms that are unique to only you and that are stylized in a way that like instantly that’s your firm.

Josh Miles: I think even if you look at the HOKs and the HTRs of the world, those are two that at face value, it’s just an acronym but if you look at how those two for example have treated their identity, it’s actually kind of playful or very creative. The HOK, the letters bounce up and down, and HTR kind of breaks apart the letter forms to the most minimal shapes or kind of all belongs together as a unit. And again, I think that helps do a little bit more with something that otherwise could have been a little bit more forgettable.

David Lecours: Yeah, and that differentiates them from HKS, another prominent architecture firm. There was sort of this trend for a while. I’ve been seeing it lately of like including a number in your name. There was this CH2M Hills before they got bought out. And there’s like the NV5s and the TK1SCs. That is at least something that kind of like breaks up the alphabet soup, and it’s a little bit unexpected.

David Lecours: Even like calling your firm named after the founder, even after the founder is long gone, it’s fine so long as that name has some … It just sounds great. Maybe it evokes things. I’ve always thought the name Black & Veatch was incredibly powerful. It just got this very strong consonants of the Black and then the, I don’t know, something about the Veatch. It just sounds great. And so, yeah, stick with your name if it’s evocative of something and it sounds good.

Josh Miles: When you and I were talking earlier, you mentioned WSP too. Can you describe that a little bit?

David Lecours: Yeah. So, check that logo out if you go to their URL of where they’ve taken the tops and sort of bottoms of the letter forms and chop them off. But it’s still very readable. You can just go to WSP.com and it’s a real unique distinctive mark that stands out.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I like it. You think these acronyms are going away anytime soon?

David Lecours: I don’t know. We can try our best, but it’s hard to say. We’ll check back in, in about five years.

Josh Miles: This would be a good one to revisit and see if the trend has gone to a different direction like all the numbers you mentioned maybe from the 90s that all those names that added the digits.

David Lecours: Yeah. So, you made a note that I think is important, to say more about possibly combining your maybe generic acronym with a tagline.

Josh Miles: Yeah. I don’t know if I have an example off the top of my head. But I think if you’ve got … There is a firm in Cincinnati that I’m thinking of actually called SHP. And they always followed that with leading design. I don’t know if that was formally part of their registered name but anytime you saw SHP logo, it’s a leading design after it. I thought that was an interesting way to carry that trademark with something that was a little bit more memorable. And I think that’s good.

David Lecours: Cool. I think we’ve kind of captured this topic pretty well. Anything else you want to add or summarize with?

Josh Miles: Well, I think we’re going to name our new puppy B&L.

David Lecours: Barking and loud. [crosstalk 00:29:38]

Josh Miles: Excellent. Yeah, I like it.

David Lecours: Are you getting a new puppy?

Josh Miles: It’s been on the list for a while here but I think if my kids have anything to do with it, we’ll be naming the dog after a Hamilton character.

David Lecours: Nice.

Josh Miles: I believe Lafayette is [crosstalk 00:29:59] but we’ll see.

David Lecours: Very cool. All right, well, take us home, Josh.

Josh Miles: All right. Well, thanks for chatting with us today on all the naming and acronyms and trademark stuff. This is exciting, at least, it’s exciting to us. If you have a topic that you would find more exciting, please head over to PSM.show. And head over to that website to drop us a line. That’s all for today’s episode. From David Lecours and myself, Josh Miles, we’ll see you next time.

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