Branding your architecture, engineering and construction firm

What does your brand say about your architecture, engineering or construction firm? Does it accurately reflect who you are today or is it still rooted in your early days of establishment? How a potential client perceives your AEC firm holds significant sway over their decision-making process. If your brand seems outdated or inconsistent, it could be the decisive factor that sends new business into a competitor’s arms.

Michelle invites Mark Wierda, co-founder and president of Cultivate Brands, to talk through everything AEC firms need to know about building a strong brand that resonates with prospective clients. They discuss why brands evolve, how to execute a rebranding campaign, common mistakes made by AEC firms, and how branding impacts PR and marketing strategies.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn

• Who is Mark Wierda and what is Cultivate Brands

• What is a brand and what it means to have a strong brand

• How brands evolve over time

• How to execute a rebranding campaign

• Advice for building a brand that resonates with prospective clients and employees

• Common mistakes AEC companies make with their branding 

• How branding impacts the effectiveness of your public relations strategy

About our featured guest

Mark co-founded Cultivate in 2005 and serves as the agency’s president. With a background in photography, marketing and technology, he is often found on video and photoshoots and in the trenches with the web and apps teams. He’s proud to have a team with a knack for building strong brands — and bringing those brand stories to life to help clients overcome challenges and move the needle.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Check out Cultivate Brands

• Follow Cultivate on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram

• Connect with Mark Wierda on LinkedIn

• Say hello to Michelle Calcote King on Twitter and LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Reputation Ink.

Founded by Michelle Calcote King, Reputation Ink is a public relations and content marketing agency that serves professional services firms of all shapes and sizes across the United States, including corporate law firms and architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) firms. 

Reputation Ink understands how sophisticated corporate buyers find and select professional services firms. For more than a decade, they have helped firms grow through thought leadership-fueled strategies, including public relations, content marketing, video marketing, social media, podcasting, marketing strategy services and more.

To learn more visit www.rep-ink.com or email them at info@rep-ink.com today.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Mark Wierda: I've seen construction companies will tend to throw a lot of energy at going through a rebrand process, but then have this tendency of saying, "We're done here. We don't have to do it anymore. We did that," and then kind of move on. So it's always trying to encourage that group to stick with it because it's not a one-and-done process.

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[00:00:21]: Welcome to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink, where we feature experts in growth and brand visibility for law firms and architecture, engineering and construction firms. Now, let's get started with the show.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to “Spill The Ink.” I'm Michelle Calcote King. I'm your podcast host, and I'm also the principal and president of Reputation Ink. We're a public relations and content marketing agency for architecture, engineering and construction firms, and other professional services firms. To learn more, go to rep-ink.com. 

Today we're talking about branding in the AEC industry, and it's not a term a lot of architecture, engineering and construction companies have a lot of familiarity with, but it can be quite complex and impactful. It balances lots of visuals, the needs to speak to diverse client base and you've got to effectively communicate your team's technical knowledge and expertise.

What do construction firms need to know to build a brand that resonates with prospective clients and employees? We're going to tackle that in today's episode. As part of that, we have welcomed a guest that I've had the pleasure of working closely with on a large construction company rebrand, Mark Wierda. He's joining us today. He is the co-founder and president of Cultivate Brands They are a brand agency, like I said, that my agency partnered with on a rebrand. We worked together to launch a new brand for an 85-year-old construction company. Throughout the process, I was really impressed by Mark and his team's brand strategy and creative work so I'm excited to pick his brain today. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:03] Mark: Thanks so much, Michelle. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

[00:02:06] Michelle: Yes, I'm excited to talk about this because you and I have been deep into a rebrand for quite a while here. One, if you don't mind, I made a short intro about Cultivate, but tell us a little bit about Cultivate, and I know you're one of the founders. Give me a little overview of what you guys do at Cultivate.

[00:02:24] Mark: We have a relatively small team, about 15 folks on our staff. We're based here in the Chicago area and the southwest Montana area in the Bozeman community. We got our start, my gosh, back in 2005 really as a bunch of creatives, creative shop taking whatever projects we could find. I think for us the big epiphany or whatever was realizing that even though we’d feel good about maybe the projects that we'd be doing, the creative we'd be making, our clients would feel good about it. It came to a point where we realized if the foundation wasn't good, if we didn't have the right information, if we didn't really know that core idea or why we were making what we were making, it really impacted the effectiveness of any of the work that we were doing. That, I think, required a lot of soul searching for our team, a lot of thinking about what do we need to do to put our team and our clients in a better spot? Because when we're doing any of this creative communications work, any of that, and really settled in on this idea of brand and branding.

[00:03:37] Michelle: Yes, and it's so important today, especially in the online world, I think, to have a really distinctive brand. Let's talk about construction companies. What would you say is unique in that industry when it comes to branding and developing a strong brand?

[00:03:55] Mark: I’d love your perspective on this, too. I think, not to oversimplify it, but a lot of times we've seen that for a lot of construction companies, they've just never really considered it. They've never really had to. A lot of times these companies have been around for generations, and it's always been built on a handshake and relationships. For them, branding, it starts and stops on the sign, the logo, or whatever that's on the door.

Now there's all these new pressures in terms of labor shortages and material, and there's technological advancements. Now the way that they've maybe done business for decades is not going to work as effectively as they have. I know that's not everybody. I don't know, what's been your experience so far?

[00:04:43] Michelle: Yes, I agree. I think it's a couple of things. I think it's one, we see this in every area of professional services that we work in that it's really transformed from a— it's still a relationship business, but the way relationships are formed has gone from just an offline thing to an online thing. 

I think in an online world, brands are more important. We have so much information thrown at us, so having a clear, distinctive idea of who this company is, what it stands for, what it's about helps people process and understand, okay, rather than it being Joe, the guy I see at the Rotary Club once a month, and I have this good relationship with him. It's more about who is this company? Especially, like you said, with attracting employees and keeping the right people. The brand. What does this company stand for? What kind of career is this going to be for me? Those things become important and branding becomes really important.

One of the things I liked about the work that your team did when working with this one particular client — quite an old client — showing how brands have evolved over the years. If you don't mind, talk a little bit about that in terms of— What I thought was interesting was helping them understand that, when we're talking just purely a logo, the trends are more towards simplification of a logo, pairing down a little bit of the design. 

Tell me how brands have evolved over years.

[00:06:25] Mark: Maybe to answer that, if I could maybe take one step before that in terms of what we mean by branding and what a brand is. Then I'll answer the second part. I think when we talk about what is a brand, we kind of say, and you hear this, your brand is what others say about you. It's that feeling someone has in their gut. When they see your name, when they hear your name, it's that perception that folks have.

That perception becomes, I guess you'd say it becomes reality when folks are making decisions based on that. If they're going to choose to work with you, if they're going to choose to get on board with what you want. I guess we would say, you have a strong brand when it's aligned because that perception is shaped by what you say, by what you do; it's shaped by all these types of things.

We would say, you have a strong brand when that's all aligned. When what you say and what you believe and what you stand for and how you treat others, treat your audiences, your clients, your employees consistently, because then you start to create— When you consider what your audiences care about and can align with that, that's where that strong brand happens.

But your question was, how does it evolve? I think a lot of times the branding evolves because, in the case of the client we've been working on together, in some ways their business had evolved where their branding, their visual identity that they had had was rooted in a type of work that they really did 10, 20 years past. Now even that had shifted. That kind of pigeonholed them into a way of working that wasn't representative of who they are now. I think I see that a lot of times where, yes, to your point, there is a move to just go simpler and stylistically, all of that. A lot of times it's driven out of if there's a misalignment in what they're saying, what they're putting out there, that's a real good reason to shift it to create that alignment.

[00:08:40] Michelle: Yes. If there's a construction company out there that's thinking, "Yes, our brand's a little dated. We probably need to go through a rebrand.” Can you talk us through what that process looks like? How does your firm approach branding projects?

[00:08:55] Mark: Oh man, you’re throwing all the questions.

[00:08:58] Michelle: What could they be facing?

[00:09:00] Mark: I'd love to hear your take on that one too. Sorry. Can you reframe that question again?

[00:09:07] Michelle: When we first start working with them, your team did a really great job of holding a workshop where you asked some really important questions and dug around, did that fact-finding process. Maybe if we talk about, what are some of the things that y'all are asking in that process? We all came together and we did that workshop. What would be some of the things that you guys look to draw out?

[00:09:39] Mark: First and foremost, I think it'll be that recognition from the construction company that it's needed. You need willing and open participants.

[00:09:50] Michelle: Coalition of the willing is my joke.

[00:09:52] Mark: Yes, there you go. I'm going to use that.

[00:09:58] Michelle: Yes, exactly.

[00:10:00] Mark: Absolutely. That has to be the starting point. Then I think it's going through an exercise to understand where the brand is now, and what's its desired future state. And understanding what's the gap between that and then working towards building that bridge between the two. I would say, yes, we worked through this workshop process that had a research component, had a lot of just fact-finding, getting as much information from the client. Really it's about fostering those conversations within the company to get to a point where they really understand their true identity. What is it that they stand for? What's important to them? All of that. We often say we don't see it as our job here to tell them who they are. We feel like we've done our best work when we can take what they say, come back, hold up a mirror, and they feel like that's it. That's who we are. That's what we're all about.

First, it's going through that process of understanding their identity, which the practical aspects of that might be developing a vision statement, listing out those core values. You were very active with those guys in doing all of that work. Understanding core values. What's a mission? What's the vision? Maybe positioning ideas like where are they going to plant their flag relative to others? Those would be the foundational pieces.

The second part, or the counterpart, is then doing the same for their audience. Who are they trying to reach? Identifying them, naming them, understanding what they care about. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter much who you are if you can't do that in consideration of your audience. Those two pieces come first. Then it's about trying to figure out how do we create those connections between those ideas that will connect those two together?

Maybe we think about this idea of really humanizing the brand. How do you bring your brand to life by giving it a personality? That's where a lot of the design work or logo design work or creative work comes in terms of just some extra tools to really get those ideas out there. You can do that and you can maybe draw attention, but we'd always advise for these construction companies, they have to then deliver on what you say. Deliver the value, do it consistently, behave as you aspire to be. Then if you've done all those things, that's where you can watch that gap start to close. I don't know that answer—

[00:12:45] Michelle: Absolutely. I thought one of the interesting things we did was after all the fact-finding, we came away and said, “Okay, there's two directions we can go here.” We had that one that was more rooted in history and a little bit more traditional. Then there was one that was a bit more modern and forward-thinking. I thought it was an interesting opportunity for them to go, “Both of these are true about us, but where do we see this company going forward, too?”

This particular client chose the more modern, forward-thinking brand because they're thinking about the next generation of employees who are younger. There's a real generational shift happening in most industries and definitely so in construction. I thought that was a useful exercise, especially because the people often making the decisions are the older generation too.

This company is unique in that it's got a younger CEO. But looking at, how do we position our brand and show who we are, but thinking of that next generation of employees and clients? That leads me to my next question about, you and I know working in this construction field, working with construction clients, the key issue right now is the labor shortage. Getting the projects isn't the concern, more so getting the right people and getting the people. 

How does the brand impact their ability to attract the right people?

[00:14:16] Mark: That's a great question. I think there's a few ways. On one hand, there's an awareness component. If the brand is out there, people see it, know it. Already there you're starting to draw attention to the potential labor market, if you will. I think I would say the other piece is having a strong brand can really help pave the way so that folks already know what you stand for. What's your reputation?

There's already a sense of, is this a place that I could see myself? Is it exciting? Is it interesting? Is there going to be opportunity for me to progress in my career? Things like that. I think for anyone, especially if there's a labor shortage, like a struggle to find folks, you have to give them more reason to choose you over somebody else. A strong brand, which really just is a way to say you've got a well-aligned organization who knows what they stand for and knows where they're going, that's where that can really help.

One thing I've noticed is construction companies are great at tackling a project. It's in their blood. They'll put resources on it. They'll figure it out. Once they make a decision, they just go. There's not a lot of second-guessing usually. I wanted to know if you found this with more of the engineering and architecture side, but 've seen construction companies will tend to throw a lot of energy at going through a rebrand process, but then have this tendency of saying, "We're done here. We don't have to do it anymore. We did that," and then kind of move on. So it's always trying to encourage that group to stick with it because it's not a one-and-done process.

[00:15:55] Michelle: 100%. I think that comes from the age of before the internet, is my guess, because we see that, too. In the past you would hire an agency, have them go away, create your stuff. You'd have your collateral. You had your brochure, that sits on the— In the age of the internet we expect new content. If we don't see new content, their latest project, we don't see their thoughts on the latest issues, then we assume they're stagnant or they're not a growing dynamic company just because our information demands are different nowadays because we're accustomed to this constant feed of information. A company that's not regularly telling its story, we assume something by that. I think today's leaders grew up in the pre-internet days where, “Wait, I did that already. I've got my brochure. I've got my logo, my business cards. I'm done.” That need to constantly tell the story is a new thing, really. That's my guess as to why that happens. We see it not just in construction and other industries.

[00:17:16] Mark: Do you?

[00:17:17] Michelle: Because it's a “Wait. That's not my job.” But it is your job now. 

I wrote this blog post a while back about it's not a one-and-done anymore. Unfortunately, to have a good strong brand and reputation, it's an ongoing, regular process. You got to tell your company's story because of how people expect to be fed information nowadays. It's interesting that you saw it from your side of things.

[00:17:42] Mark: What's been your experience with how a company's brand contributes to the effectiveness of any of the ongoing PR work and things like that?

[00:17:51] Michelle: It's pretty important. If we have a client, because we're definitely more focused on PR and my agency, we do a full range of services, but PRs are our number one, I always say to them, "Look, we have no problem getting attention to your company. That's what we do."

I always tell them to sort that side of the house first because what we're going to do is if we get attention to your company, people are going to come to your website and your social media feeds. They're going to request information. If it doesn't align with what you're putting out there, you've missed a huge opportunity. It's really important to get things like your brand and your website and those things first before we start creating that engine of attention, really. Of media articles and your social media and all those things that you do on a regular basis. Because otherwise, you've really lost the opportunity. It's not worth it. It's not worth it to do all that if they then come to a website that is really old, a brand that looks out of date, they're not saying anything on social, that kind of thing. That's where I see a disconnect. Because we don't build websites. If I've got a client that the website's terrible, I'll say, we got to do this first before we kick that in. 

What are some of the common mistakes you see construction companies make with branding?

[00:19:13] Mark: It looks like I might have jumped the gun on that question. That one mistake is just seeing it as a one-and-done kind of thing. That's probably the biggest mistake. A lot of times I think it's just that follow through with, really, I'll use the word activating. Maybe that's a buzzword. You've developed all this great work to figure out what you stand for. You've maybe gone through a rebrand with a new logo and tagline and all those kinds of things. Then following through with maybe a brand awareness campaign of some sort just to make sure that then is put to use. We often say the logo you put out there, the tagline, those things are really like—they don't have any meaning really in and of themselves. They have some based on the style and all of that, but it's more about how do you start to attach meaning to that.

I think just encouraging construction companies then to figure out ways to tell that story. Then just using some of the low-hanging fruit might be—at least the things that we see is like maybe you're telling stories. We've gone through the work to figure out who your audience is. Maybe it's putting that out on social media and putting a little bit of an ad buy behind it that's very targeted. Just to ensure that it's getting out there and in front of folks or on the recruitment side, developing maybe some strong creative that really speaks to that workforce that you're looking to attract. Then, again, putting a little push behind it so that it goes out there.

The other, I guess, mistake, maybe an example that we saw or we've seen in the past is if you can then just make sure on the recruitment side in particular, that there's great follow through. What I mean by that is we had a client here, a building materials company in Chicago. Finding truck drivers has just been hard. There was a lot of effort putting together this campaign to really try attract folks to leave their current job maybe driving garbage trucks or other delivery trucks, and come work for them to drive a ready-mix truck.

One of the most important things that the company did was, in addition to recruitment campaign, they really worked hard on the experience that these recruits had in onboarding, because what they found is that they would sign up, they would leave after the first day or two on the job because it was just too overwhelming. So they worked really hard to create this experience for the first couple of weeks of training to really bring them to reset expectations, to help them understand what they're going through in a way that was consistent with the messaging that was put out there in the campaign. Just to see that that was aligned. That was the case where they would attract a bunch of people, but if the expectations weren’t right then it was just more work.

[00:22:06] Michelle: That's fascinating. Your prior point about attaching meaning to a logo and a tagline, I don't know if you've seen that movie, there's a movie out about the Nike deal with Michael Jordan. I don't know if you've had a chance to see it.

[00:22:17] Mark: I haven't seen that yet. Would you recommend it?

[00:22:19] Michelle: I do. It was great. One of the things that it was fascinating to watch them talk about—these were executives with Nike and they're talking about, “Yeah, have you heard, there's this new tagline they're talking about called 'Just do it'?” And to hear that from—this was, I guess, in the '90s when they were starting to talk about it. If you'd been in that meeting where it's like a swoosh mark and just do it, you'd have sat there and thought, “What?” They have attached such meaning to that through their ongoing efforts to where now we get it, we get what they're saying by that. Without all that, it would've been a useless just do it. Definitely. From a brand guy I think you find that movie fascinating. I definitely did from a PR side.

Second last question I'd like to ask. We talked about how brands have evolved and that kind of thing. How does a creative make sure that he's reflecting how brands are? Is it just watching what other brands are doing and helping them stay relevant? There might not be any way other than just working in the industry and seeing how brands are changing, but how do you do that?

[00:23:33] Mark: Probably like any industry, there's folks who tend to rise up as really leaders, thought leaders. I think we try to stay pretty in tune with that. Participating in conferences, secondary workshops, those types of things. There's been some really great thinking in terms of brand strategy and design. A group out of southern California called The Futur’s Chris Do that we love to follow and just learn about how to do our work better. I'm trying to think how to frame that up for these AEC firms in terms of how do they get better educated about that.

[00:24:18] Michelle: I'll jump in. My guess is, one, just to be aware that these things change. Design sensibilities. I think that was a lesson I got. It's like you don't really realize that fashion changes until you haven't touched that pair of jeans for 10 years. You pull it out and you think, "I can fit in these," and you turn and put them on and you're like, "That doesn't work at all.”

The point is that these things change and how your target audiences perceive you because of those changes is impacted. They wouldn't be aware of that unless people like us told them because it's not their job to be aware of it. Just being aware of that and then working with somebody like you who stays connected. But being open to the fact that these things change and you've got to, if you look at any major brand, they have evolved. Like McDonald's or Amazon, these things, they evolve. They don't just stick with that same brand for the same reasons that you shouldn't wear your 10-year-old pair of jeans. Do you agree with that?

[00:25:25] Mark: Yes, I agree. It makes me think of the client we worked on together where the owner recognized, like, he used the analogy of the construction projects, the infrastructure projects they build, which I thought was really good where he's like, we 100% stand by the work that we did at that time. It did exactly what it needed to do. It was great work. Things have changed. Things break down over time. It takes work to keep at it and keep it together and keep moving forward. He really saw their rebrand as an opportunity to just honor what his father and previous generations had done before and really think about where they were headed. I think the result was in some ways their visual identity became simpler, stronger, more clear. It spoke more to the core of who they were and the what that they did.

[00:26:24] Michelle: Yes, that's spot on. I agree. I remember hearing that analogy he made. The analogy was, just like bridges, roads, they have to be updated. This company built the first generation of America's highway system. We're now looking at a need to refresh that and update the infrastructure and it's the same way. 

I think the idea there was that they had a lot of this as a company with a very strong culture internally. You've got people who've worked their generations, who had a real affinity and nostalgia for the current brand. He wanted to make sure and to give them an understanding of why would we change something that everyone feels so connected to? I think it really turned out well when he was able to explain it that way.

[00:27:14] Mark: Yes. For them it was definitely going through that process of just calling out and naming the things that they'd always stood for but never really identified.

[00:27:24] Michelle: Formalized.

[00:27:25] Mark: So that they could then make it go farther so that they could move from just a core group who understood it because they had been there and they'd been a part of building it to something that was really transferable. I think that's the power of branding or brand there is it really helps transfer those ideas.

[00:27:48] Michelle: Yes. That's great. Well, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much, Mark. 

We have been talking to Mark Wierda of Cultivate Brands. If our listeners want to learn more about your team and what you do, where should they go?

[00:28:03] Mark: Yes, probably the best place is to just head to our website, cultivatebrands.com.

[00:28:08] Michelle: Great. Well, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:28:11] Mark: Yes, thank you, Michelle.

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[00:28:14] Michelle: Thanks for listening to “Spill the Ink,” a podcast by Reputation Ink. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.