The Architecture of Image
Branding Your Professional Practice
The Architecture of Image
Branding Your Professional Practice
The brand of the professional service firm is one of the most misunderstood and often under-utilized tools used to build market share and increase business. In The Architecture of Image, Craig Park, SMPS Fellow and award-winning author, explores how culture, collaboration, and communication create, develop, and sustain an enduring brand — providing your firm with the understanding and tools to establish your brand in the professional service marketplace.
Your brand is critical to establishing and sustaining your firm's image in the market, and critical to the creation of a successful and enduring professional practice. Sharing insights, best practices, and examples from some of the leading brands in the AEC industry, this book dispels the myths of what branding isn't and provides a laser focus on what many have found to be an elusive and mysterious concept for professional service firms. Drawn from real-world experiences spanning more than 30 years in the building industry, the examples provided, advice cited, and recommendations made can make an immediate and lasting difference for any firm seeking to define, develop, and enhance its brand.
What You Will Learn
Key Takeaways
- Understand how culture, collaboration, and communication create and sustain an enduring brand
- Learn why brand is the most misunderstood and under-utilized tool for building market share
- Explore best practices and examples from leading brands in the AEC industry
- Establish your firm's brand identity in the professional service marketplace
- Move beyond theory to actionable brand-building strategies that get results
Who Should Read This
Leaders, marketers, and business developers at architecture, engineering, construction, and professional service firms who want to define, develop, and enhance their brand. Essential reading for every client-facing member of a firm, from new grad to CEO.
Contents
- 01The Brand of the Professional Service Firm
- 02Culture as the Foundation of Brand
- 03Collaboration and the Brand Experience
- 04Communication: Telling Your Brand Story
- 05Developing and Sustaining an Enduring Brand
- 06Brand Strategy in the AEC Marketplace
- 07Building Market Share Through Brand
About the Author
Craig Park, FSMPS
Founder, Laquilan Press
Craig Park, FSMPS, Assoc. AIA has been active in the building industry for more than 40 years, holding strategic marketing leadership roles for firms in design and engineering consulting, contracting, and manufacturing. A Fellow and past national president of SMPS, he is the recipient of the Weld Coxe Marketing Achievement Award and the William B. Hankinson Award for Lifetime Achievement.
What Readers Are Saying
Park has captured for all of us in the AEC industry the essence of what it takes to be successful developers and marketers of our brand — a heretofore little understood concept in the industry. His book should be required reading for every client-facing member of our firms from new grad to CEO.
As a nationally recognized master of marketing A/E services, Park takes a fresh and fascinating look at the whole concept of branding. His book guides you to a highly effective approach to evaluate and implement a brand strategy. A must read!
Dispelling the myths of what branding isn't, Park provides a laser focus on what many have found to be an elusive and mysterious concept for professional service firms and gets to the heart of the matter of effective branding. The examples provided, advice cited, and recommendations made can make an immediate and lasting difference.
I wish I had access to this book when I was leading my firm through a new branding initiative. No one has a broader, more researched perspective of marketing professional services. When Park speaks... listen; when he writes... read.
A must read for anyone responsible for developing, protecting, and promoting a firm's image and brand. Park points out why firms need to do more than be different from the competition. It's more than theory, it's about getting results and Park provides the pathway.
Park has done a great job of organizing all the basics about what a company's brand is and how it specifically relates to the A/E/C industry. His book should be an essential read for anyone hoping to start their own practice or be an owner of a large firm.
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