Craig Jensen of Idibri Design, which describes its?business as: “We are technology designers, theatre consultants and acousticians” recently wrote this blog posting, which raises some ideas worthy of consideration for anyone in the AEC marketing space.
The AE design industry is under both threat and opportunity. It?s a great time really.
When Google first started, there was a huge flood of data?but that moved quickly to making it useful?forming data relationships. For example, if you want information on an airline flight, now you just type it in and up pops this tremendous information. You don?t have to go to the airline website at all. This of course is disintermediating the normal sources, completely modifying the way work is being done.
The next step which is well underway is artificial intelligence. Think Super Siri where it takes conversation threads and starts spitting out information that?s relevant to us. These are big threats to our industry. Our clients know this. They?ve got this information and if our industry is based on making money by providing information, we are missing the boat.We?ve got to accept and leverage these changes and we?ve got to modify our businesses to provide new value. That means among other things moving further upstream and closer to the business case of the client.
He is right. Paradoxically, it seems, the new technology enhances and adds to the value of the old concepts — namely, word-of-mouth referrals, references and positive (even better “wow”) client experiences count for far more than they did before.
As an example, I discovered Jensen’s blog posting on reviewing my daily Certified Professional Service Marketer (CPSM) feed, where Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) CPSM members can pose questions and request recommendations from their peers for specialized consultants.
Another reader had asked for guidance on a branding/naming consultant and four peers responded. Ibirdi vice-president Cathy Hutchinson joined Carla Thompson of NAC|Architecture in recommending a specific consultant, Josh Miles of Miles Design. Josh certainly has earned his “word of mouth” within the AEC community and even though I had never heard of him before reviewing this thread, if I needed these services, he would be on the short-list for consideration.
(As a rule, discussions on the CPSM threads are not public, but since the entire message here is positive, I doubt anyone will object to the word-of-mouth here. It is touchier if the news is negative, but you can be sure that while lawyers can put a scare on anyone broadcasting negative stories, they will still get out — and quickly — if things aren’t right.)
Nevertheless, we should not forget nor ignore these powerful disintermediation and incredibly rapidly advancing artificial intelligence innovations?changing the way we do business. In this environment the underlying human needs for community, validation, and security/safety remain at the forefront. Don’t blow it by thinking you can get away without truly appreciating the overall client (and colleagues/supplier) experience.
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