In marketing materials, proposals, and presentations, teams and firms struggle with the best ways to present their experience and their portfolios in the best, most memorable way possible. Unfortunately, from the audience’s perspective, our experience, no matter how delightfully presented is never as interesting to them as it is to us. Since experience in the A/E/C industry is certainly proof of past performance and a strong indicator of future performance, we have to find ways to communicate our experience in a way that resonates.
To engage readers of our marketing materials, teams need to select images and projects that fit both a client’s vision of the new project as well as enable us to tell “epic stories” of how we solved similar challenges to those faced by our clients. In the combination of the client being able to visualize his project through evocative imagery with a vivid and interesting story, our experience becomes not only interesting, but compelling to the potential client. If we can tell that story in an engaging way and show images that tell the story of people and place, now we’ve got something we can use.
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| Ellen Jaskol on location in Afghanistan |
Making experience come to life involves both the images we use and the story we tell. Starting with the imagery, photos become part of the overall story, communicating a sense of people and movement that the traditional project photos largely do not. For proposals, presentations, and brochures, our coaching/writing team has recently been partnering with an incredibly talented Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, Ellen Jaskol (you can see her work at www.ellenjaskol.com), to help our clients communicate their experience – and their process – through both images and stories. Ellen captures projects at work – people experiencing architecture and construction in incredibly rich ways. Through photographs, she brings readers into the context of the project, helping us understand the meaning behind the words in a brochure, proposal, or presentation.
While I was coaching a recent presentation team for a large healthcare provider, Ellen collaborated with us to tell the story of the team and the potential of the site and the building. As the team worked on presentation content, Ellen watched us through her photographer’s lens, shooting hundreds of candid team images showing programming and design happening in real time. Combined with the words presenters said in their presentations, the photographs communicated how our team worked at a much deeper level.
On a brochure we created for a housing authority in Washington State, Ellen photographed people and the places in which they live in a way that brings the reader into the image and makes one want to read the story. And, in a brochure for an electrical contractor, Ellen’s work showed the beauty of a duct bank and the human story behind the walls in a building. The synergy of words and images communicated a different side of each client that is much richer and more compelling.
Though not a traditional architectural photographer, Ellen’s work has a sense of richness and movement that we don’t typically see in our industry. Her images show people interacting with spaces. She captures images that help us see buildings or infrastructure in new and beautiful ways. By themselves, the images tell a story and encourage the reader to dive into the content and learn more.
When we combine these types of images with a good story, people keep reading. Great stories are larger than life, telling the adventure of accomplishing something heroic. A well-written story in the A/E/C industry tells of adventures in design and construction. The story starts with a problem, a significant challenge such as the fire breathing dragon terrorizing the village. Then, there has to be suffering in order for the reader to really understand the urgency of resolution: many young maidens have been sacrificed to feed the dragon. Then, we need a hero; of course he is both brave and kind (handsome and modest…). In an epic battle, our hero faces the villain (think Prince Charming and the fire pits in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty). Finally, our hero is victorious; he saves the beautiful young maiden, the villain is vanquished, and peace reigns in the kingdom once again.
So, while our stories don’t often involve fire breathing dragons (a pity, really), consider two examples of project summaries, both conveying similar information. Which would you prefer reading?
- Our team recently completed a 400-bed elder care and rehabilitation hospital in Pleasant Valley. The new integrated facility replaces three 1960s nursing homes and expands geriatric care services to meet the needs of the growing elderly community in the area. The facility was built to LEED platinum standards and saves the hospital more than $200,000/year in operating costs; the facility includes many innovations in care delivery and rehabilitation. The team worked with more than 25 independent user groups to design a facility that meets the functional needs of each group, while maximizing patient and family satisfaction. ABDC has a strong reputation for innovation and excellence in healthcare design for targeted populations. Pleasant Valley hospital is one more example of our focus on quality delivery for a community and a specialized patient population. [Include photo of hospital exterior a night – focus on Pleasant Valley Elder Care sign.]
- Pleasant Valley has long been the nation’s center for elder care with one of the fastest growing elder populations in the United States, confluence of care providers, and a pleasant year-round climate. Unfortunately, for infirm or rehabilitating patients, few options existed beyond five separate 1960s traditional nursing homes. ABDC worked collaboratively with the hospital’s 25 user groups over a two-year period to design and construct the nation’s first inclusive 400-bed geriatric hospital, featuring the latest innovations in care delivery and geriatric rehabilitation. The hospital exceeds LEED platinum standards, meeting the mayor’s energy mandate and saving the hospital more than $200,000 per year in operating costs. Six months after opening, the hospital director, Mary Sneed said, “We finally have a facility that meets the real medical and rehabilitation needs of our elderly population, and we’re able to attract and retain the dedicated staff to make this level of care possible for everyone’s parents.” [Include photo of nurse tending to smiling rehabilitating seniors in the aquatic center.]
Combining the imagery with the story is an art that incorporates a journalistic sense of photography with the ability to tell a good story. While we seldom slay dragons or rescue beautiful maidens, our teams do perform incredible feats, heroically solving client problems with amazing outcomes. When we bring the right story and the right image together, readers engage with the content and absorb messages more readily. As a result, our experience becomes both memorable and interesting. Telling a good story and using great photographs doesn’t cost any more than creating the standard, flat descriptions and images of projects. Writing well and using brilliant photographs means our readers will actually read what we write, hopefully wanting to know more about our firms and our teams.
