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Awards help business development efforts by elevating firms above their competitors. They also provide valuable visual assets for marketing and social-media content. Another benefit of entering professional awards is that prominent jury members review the submissions; jury members are often media professionals or other architects who sit on approval boards, project competition juries, and conference committees. The primary challenge is prioritizing which awards programs are the best matches for our clients’ budgets and goals—whether recognition for a specific project, firm, or individual.
Architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry hall-of-famer and HOK CEO Emeritus Patrick MacLeamy, FAIA, wrote a book chronicling his 50-year career at the global architecture and engineering firm. The book’s release coincided with the pandemic. Patrick retained Taylor & Company to promote the book at a time when face-to-face interviews weren’t possible.
Taylor & Company conceived a virtual book tour. Our campaign began with a press release announcing the book. In the release, we bullet-pointed several scalable business lessons from the book, insights that doubled as potential story angles. We distributed releases to AEC and business outlets, gaining several placements. Separate releases were written specific to the building industries, and then more general for any business.
Taylor & Company has chaired awards committees and uses this insight to council clients on which programs can provide the best platform for uplifting clients and their projects. We maintain a growing calendar of awards that includes deadlines and eligibility requirements. In addition to awards consultation, Taylor & Company can manage the submission process. This usually entails our team writing text to fit word-count requirements, gathering additional information, and re-formatting photography according to specifications. Each submission has different parameters.
Leveraging excerpts from Patrick’s book, we placed additional reviews and Q&As in both AEC and business outlets. Taking advantage of the pandemic-stimulated rise in webinars and podcasts, we booked Patrick as a speaker at several continuing-education programs. We prioritized AEC-themed podcasts and pursued peripheral opportunities on shows about leadership, climate, smarter cities, technology, and more.
Often overlooked, local awards offer opportunities to stand out in the community. Many business journals and urbanism groups offer awards programs that recognize local projects and staff for a variety of accomplishments. As well, several awards programs offer opportunities to support younger team members with “40 Under 40” and similar commendations for new talent. On the other end of the spectrum, senior staff may be eligible for “Life Achievement” and “Legacy” awards.
Webinars promoting the book and Patrick’s leadership were done for AIA/Los Angeles, Architectural Record Academy, and Moscow International Urban Forum. Book reviews, excerpts, and interviews appeared in ArchDaily, A Daily Dose of Architecture Books, “Business of Architecture” podcast, ArchNewsNow.com, Building Design + Construction, C Suite Quarterly, Market Scale, Authority Magazine, “Unfrozen” podcast, and Design Intelligence, among other outlets. Further, we successfully nominated Patrick for the lifetime-achievement ENR Legacy Award, manage his LinkedIn profile, and routinely update his Wikipedia page.
Awards wins are marketing tools with impact, as they recognize important industry achievements. They provide engaging web and social-media content, and they bolster “About Us” boilerplates with impressive results. Taylor & Company reinforces award wins by creating and distributing announcements, which often result in additional coverage and features.
Podcast bookings led to an offer to co-host a new show, “Build Smart,” on the EntreArchitect network. Taylor & Company also promoted this show: the first 14 episodes were rooted in Patrick’s book, and the ensuing 12 focused on his 30-year mission championing BIM/international standards as co-founder/chairman of buildingSMART International (bSI).
Our relationship with Patrick has circled back to books: The second season of “Build Smart” inspired Patrick to reverse-engineer his podcast and write another book, chronicling bSI’s creation and mission. Patrick plans to extrapolate how ultra-efficient building construction and operations championed by bSI’s certification of openBIM software can expand to smarter city design and infrastructure. We’re beginning pre-promotion of this yet-to-be-titled book.
Initially retained for a fixed-period book-promotion project, Taylor & Company’s larger-picture success positioning Patrick as an oracle in both the AEC and business segments yielded an ongoing relationship.
Individual achievement awards can also help fuel future campaigns for other professional certifications, such as AIA College of Fellows admission, boards of directors candidacies, and other committees and endeavors. All previous project and individual award wins fuel submissions for firm awards.
Ready to elevate your company’s presence in the media? Contact us today to learn more about our marketing and public relations team and how we can help you achieve your goals in the industry. Let’s tell your story and make an impact together.
