Ep. 20: Communications, Reputation and Being A Responsible Business with Rebecca Snow, Stiff + Trevillion
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Marketing In Times of Recovery. I’m your host Ayo Abbas, a built environment marketing consultant and founder of Abbas Marketing.
Today’s guest is the rather lovely Rebecca Snow who is the Communications Director at West London-based architectural firm Stiff + Trevillion.
In our discussion we talk about:
their work as a practice
how they’ve fared in the past year,
how they tackle digital marketing and social media
and why being a responsible business is a key part of who they are.
If you’re a regular listener to the show – make sure you subscribe so you never miss out on an episode and help us to spread the word.
This episode was recorded on Thurs April 22 2021.
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Resources
Stiff + Trevillion website
Abbas Marketing
AHMM
Witherford Watson Mann Architects
Transcript.
Ayo Abbas 00:05
Hello, and welcome to the latest episode of Marketing In Times of Recovery. The podcast has changed its name basically because I don't think you can operate in a state of crisis for every year. And recovery really feels like where people are at the moment. So, I'm your host Ayo Abbas a built environment marketing consultant and founder of Abbas Marketing. And today, it's Thursday the 22nd of April and my guest is the rather lovely Rebecca snow, who is the Communications Director at West London based architectural firm Stiff + Trevillion. In our discussion, we talk about their work as a practice and how they fared in the past year, which is pretty well, how they tackled digital marketing and social media, and why being a responsible business is a key part of who they are as a practice. If you're a regular listening to the show, make sure you subscribe, so you never ever miss out on an episode. And really, also, if you can help us to spread the word, it's really, really helpful. For now, let's get on with listening to the interview today with Rebecca, enjoy. Hi, Rebecca, thank you so much for coming onto the show. Can you give me a brief intro to you and your role at Stiff + Trevillion, please?
Rebecca Snow 01:17
Okay. Hi Ayo thank you so much for asking me. Well, I can see all the good people must have gone by now, after a year of lockdown. So scraping the barrel with me, but thank you!! Um, so I work for Stiff + Trevillion Architects, and I've been there for quite a long time actually is the longest job I've ever had, which I don't know if it's a good side or a bad sign. My background is PR. I started off in a marketing consultancy, and then moved more into the PR role. I've worked in agencies in-house and in government communications, I was a civil servant for about five years running national campaigns. At Stiff + Trevillion I sort of stumbled into the role really, I was sort of in had my children and I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do. I was doing bits of freelance, I kind of went to help out there just two days a week, and got my feet under the table and never left really. My role has developed and I've recently been made a comms director, which was really nice. And I hope that will be a good incentive to others, because I've always worked part time since I've had children. And it shows that you can do a good job and not be in the office every second of the day. And I hope also this last year would have proved that case as well. And, you know, we look at strategy, but I also work very closely with my fellow directors, looking after our team internally as well. So I do a lot of internal comms as well as outward facing work.
Ayo Abbas 02:48
I do have one question. So what's the size of the practice? And what kind sectors and things do you normally work in? And how does that work? Right?
Rebecca Snow 02:56
We are 60 people now and the practice has actually bizarrely grown in the last year, we mainly do commercial work, a lot of office work, and we've done refurbishments now, for quite a few years, so, you know, that's something we're really keen on. You know, the best, the greenest building is the one that already exists. I believe this the strapline is so we do a lot of that sort of work. We've done sort of resi projects. And we're doing one at the moment, Brill Place. We also do private residential work, which has always been a really strong part of the practice. Again, so lovely houses. For people with a lot more money than me, it's quite depressing looking at the photographs, but those sort of things. And traditionally, in the past, we did a lot of restaurant work, which is we don't do quite so much of. But, recently we did Seven Dials Market in Covent Garden for KERB food. So that was a really lovely project. Not exactly a restaurant, but a food court. But those are the sort of main areas, you know, with other little bits and pieces that Mike Stiff likes doing he's quite interested in art and art fairs and things like that.
Ayo Abbas 04:07
Fantastic. And so, I mean, today, he's actually World Earth Day. I mean, it's quite interesting. So is that you said that refurbishment is one of the reasons why you've kind of is that one of the reasons why you've been kind of growing in the past year because I know this is kind of huge shift or huge momentum to being greener, COP 26 coming up and things like that you finding that's kind of influencing where you're going as a practice,
Rebecca Snow 04:29
I think so. We have had an in-house green team for a couple of years, and they have a sort of lowish profile. Now, it's at the sort of forefront of everything that we do. And obviously refurbishments are generally the greenest thing to do. But having said that, we've just, we've got planning permission for a new build on Tottenham Court Road earlier this year. And there was a lot of discussion and endless discussion about whether it was better to keep the existing building or knock it down. build a new one. And in that particular case, it would have been, it's greener, bizarrely enough to build a new one. Because the old building was so poorly insulated. It was sort of it reached the end of its life. So, but obviously, refurbishment specialists do lots of interesting things to buildings without knocking them down and creating something new. So, yeah, it's a strong part of our business. And it's something we're really committed to
Ayo Abbas 05:24
Fantastic. So in terms of as we're transitioning out of lockdown in this staged manner at the moment, how are you finding it in terms of how you're marketing your business and what you're doing?
Rebecca Snow 05:37
really know what I'm doing half the time, to be honest, it's been it's really odd time. I mean, when we went into lockdown last year, it was pretty clear that we had to sort of abandon certain things and refocus on others. So it was sort of digital, really, everything sort of went online. And we sort of carried on with a lot of things we did like our quarterly newsletter, which goes out, you know, an email newsletter, we've focused heavily on Instagram. And a lot of those things were sort of carrying on with and although I'm a great believer in face to face and and sort of personal communications, if you can. It's not going to be easy, because at the moment, people are all over the place. Some people are in the office, some people are at home, some people are working, you know, out of their home, perhaps in other places. So it's going to be even harder to reach people without doing it online. So we're sort of carrying on, I think we're going to try and pick up things like our award entry programme that went a bit sort of awry, because loads of awards have been cancelled
Ayo Abbas 06:42
or moved to the same time, they were all in October, for some reason, weren't a sudden block of all of them, and you were like what?
Rebecca Snow 06:50
on your award entries in all the first half of the year, and people will be saying, you know, chasing, I think my god, I can't remember which project is this going in for which which award it's for which project is. So that's sort of cleared out a little bit. And actually having less, makes it easier to focus on, on what you're doing. But then also, we've had projects, which you probably should have finished, but have dragged on a little bit longer. So they you know, things that I was aiming for awards this year, probably aren't quite ready yet, for photography, and things like that, so. So yeah, and I think the other thing we really want to do is look at our website, which we've been planning to update, and that's sort of went on hold as a lot of things did, because we have no idea how things might pan out. Also we run a responsible business programme in the office, and that entirely shifted to looking after the staff. So we didn't do a lot of outward facing activity or community work, you know, all our work experience. school kids coming in stopped. And it was primarily making sure that everybody in the office was fine and coping unable to work wherever they were. So now it's sort of we're kind of prising people out and getting them coming back into the office on a rota or in for meetings. Because we can't keep it, we can't fit everyone in the studio at the same time. And some people are still a bit nervous. They're worried about public transport, things like that. So we're sort of I feel like we're kind of creeping out of a dark cave, which is a very bright sunshine, I'm not quite sure what we're gonna see yet or where the main focus will be. But I want to keep doing all the things that we usually do. And then maybe look at doing different things that are yet to be decided in my brain. Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 08:33
So what kinds of different things are you considering? What's your kind of when you're thinking about?
Rebecca Snow 08:40
Well, I I would like to do, we've done exhibitions in the past, I would love to do something like that, again, an exhibition about the practice. I'm not sure how interesting that is to anyone else, but we love it, it's a great way of looking back and taking stock of what you do. The work cycle is so intense and so busy, that people finish projects, and then on to the next one and the next one, and you rarely ever take the time to look back and appreciate all the amazing work that people are doing. And I'm always saying, this is fantastic. Look at this beautiful project, look at the pictures. It's sort of a way of taking stock and remembering the things you've done.
Ayo Abbas 09:19
What's happened, isn't it, because you're right, it's so easy just to move on to the next thing and just keep going, keep going. And it's like, actually, you've done something brilliant.
Rebecca Snow 09:26
You know, just look back and really appreciate what we've done. Also, it's quite interesting because you can sort of see maybe the direction that we're going which might be quite organic, rather than a sort of, you know, strategic plan. You can it will actually we have moved into this area and you know, maybe that was unconscious. I don't know how it happened, but it's great. We want to do that. So and I I'm you know I think people will have a thirst for face to face meetings or activities. You know, I just want to do some fun things. I want to have some drinks parties things I want people to know I want to have a few drinks and just sort of relax a bit. I think it's been very pressured and intensive. So I want to do things that are less. You know, I don't at all be about, you know, new business, I want it to be about having a nice time as well, really. So, I'm really interested as well in doing more film and video. It's great for the website. It's great for social media. And I think it's a much better way of capturing the feeling of a project, we we work with fantastic photographers who do brilliant pictures and make our projects often look lovely, and sometimes nicer that they are in real life! But I think film is really important. I think that that is, that's really important. And we've got a couple of lovely, private residential projects that have completed in the last year. And I love getting those in the sort of glossy Elle decorations and magazines like that that's really satisfying for me. I love seeing that. And it's fun to do as well, those sorts of things. So the kind of Yeah, yeah, the key areas.
Ayo Abbas 11:15
So do you think you're going to kind of adopt any new channels? Or has anything changed for you marketing wise in the past year? Do you think actually, we're gonna move away from this and move forward to that? Or is it more kind of getting back to where you were?
Rebecca Snow 11:28
I think, I think we want to get back to where we were, because so many things sort of, well, things stopped. But not completely, you know, we were very active on Instagram, our Instagram following has grown. But I'm always thinking who's who's looking at it is it the sort of people who are going to purchase from the business or are most of our followers, you know, interested architects or architectural students. One of the things is going to be making sure that we're in lots of different places. I think one of the other things that's happened this year is that, as I mentioned before, reaching people is a little bit more difficult. There's so many options to get to people that you have to sort of cherry pick, which are the best places to go to, I mean, we have a Facebook page, but we sort of kind of didn't really use that very much anymore. Because it mainly seemed to be my friends and family liking everything we're putting on there. Yeah, focus more on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, on our social channels. And then obviously, as I've mentioned before, I want to update the website. So it's a bit more dynamic, it's quite static at the moment, to make that more of a sort of, you know, that's our shop window. But also reflects, it reflects a little bit of all the there's so much activity going on. I want to make sure that people can see that we're energetic, and there's lots going on in
Ayo Abbas 12:53
I think practice websites now. It's like, how do you keep it fresh and live? I always talk about because, yeah, that's what you really want is that, you know, when you talk to, you know, one of your partners, for example, about a project and you see their eyes light up, you kind of want to capture that on your website, you know, and I think it's all too easy for, you suddenly start talking to people when you're like, on your website looks really dull in comparison to actually know what you mean. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, capturing the essence of that practice, and I think yeah, I mean, to do, but when you get it right, you can, you can definitely see and you want that passion to come across on your site, isn't it that enthusiasm?
Rebecca Snow 13:30
You really do? Yeah. And I think it's been quite easy to sort of park a lot of these things. Because the focus has been on let's hold the business together, let's keep that going. You know, you know, service, the clients, get them what they want get to, you know, deadlines met and things like that. So it's been hard to think outside of those, I'm hoping they'll be a little bit more space in everybody's lives in the office to think about, you know, how we communicate ourselves, and what we what we are and what we mean, and what our brand is, and what makes us different from you know, the other very good architectural practices that are based in London and the UK, generally. So that's the thing, I think, you know, often when we pitch for work, is it Well, there's not a lot in it. It's really just about what we're like and what the client might be like, and how we get on and whether our, you know, our chemistry aligns together and things like that. So
Ayo Abbas 14:21
fees wise, it's generally as long as you're in the right ballpark, isn't it? Quite often, it's going to be that way. Right? Personality driven and exact relationship as well Yeah.
Rebecca Snow 14:31
Exactly. Oh, and provided we have made a spelling mistake in our presentation.
Ayo Abbas 14:37
Some people are quite picky on that. In terms of, I guess, when you're tackling things like social media, what makes a story to you what what things kind of do you like to share?
Rebecca Snow 14:50
Well, this week we're doing a focus on our model shop. So we've been looking at models of current work, future projects. And also looking back, our model makers created some lovely models of actually, of older projects. So we've decided, yeah, we've been sharing those. And through exploring how important this model making is in the kind of creative journey that you take your clients and your team on. I love models. I love them cos they're like little dolls, houses, they're like little worlds. And you can sort of imagine, when you see that I don't have a mind like an architect. I don't visualise things in the same way as they do. When I see a model, and, you know, little tiny door, and I think lh my goodness, I can imagine living in there and going in there how your life would be. So I think there's such magical creations. So that's what we've been looking at on there. We've also, it's hard on social media, because some days I think, well, what are we going to do today? We haven't done anything for a while. What's our plan? Where are we going? And other weeks, there's so much stuff coming in? I need to make sense of this. Hang on, where are we going? What are we doing? During the first lockdown, we decided very quickly that we were going to trawl back through the archives. And it was a lovely thing to do. We posted projects back from sort of, you know, the end of the 1990s that had been done. But most people in our practice hadn't even been born, let alone started work. It was such a lovely, lovely way of looking back at all work you've done, because you forget what you've done, you know, 30 years ago. And that was great. So we had a really clear strategy to follow at a time when things were very fluid and not clear. Now it's a mix, mainly between what we're on site doing what we finished, interesting things that are happening in the practice. It's quite, probably chaotic. It might be described us, but maybe it's a reflection of my mind. But yeah, so we do occasionally as well as focus on past projects where we can look back at them. Yeah, creative thinking how we led to a decision why the building looks like it does now this is how we started. That always works quite well, too. So yeah, that's kind of some of the ideas that we've explored on Instagram.
Ayo Abbas 17:09
I love the idea of the creative decision and how you got there. Because I think that's so easily lost. We know when you move on to different kind of milestones in a project, it's so easy to forget why you made a certain particular decision. And I think that's, that's actually that journey. And the reasons why is actually fascinating. That's one of the kind of key things
Rebecca Snow 17:27
you do. People are making creative decisions every day, the you know, the design team. And they don't even realise what they're doing is interesting. And we want to shout about it as well, that's, you know, that's lovely. I've never seen that before. Why do we share that. So when you're doing something all the time, it's hard to miss the milestones. So it's, I feel like it's my job to pluck those out and make sure that I'm over what people are doing. But, you know, we've probably got about 40 jobs in the practice all at different stages.
Ayo Abbas 17:57
So how do you find that information and especially in a lockdown, because that's really hard,
Rebecca Snow 18:04
That actually, is the hardest thing is, people have been getting better at sending things through and reminding me and and sending images. And you know, when people go to site I say that if you see anything interesting, take pictures, send them back to me, let's see what's going on. But that really is the hardest thing. And often it's you here sort of several weeks later, something's happened. And you think, Oh, if only we'd caught that if only we remembered it. But it's been a sort of collective change of thinking we've all we all have to think in the same sort of way. And one of the best ways of doing that is when you work closely with people to do an award entry. And they have to, you know, there's certain information that you have to provide, and they have to help you find it. And actually, that makes a huge difference because they realise if only we'd caught pictures at this stage, it would have illustrated the project so well. Well, let's remember that for next time. And hopefully that's that's one way of doing it. I think the other way is just going around and sort of nagging people on a regular basis to remind them I want to see no updated pictures for the website what we put on social media. Is there any you know any can we send out any kind of, you know, stuff to the press stuff like that? So you know, I have to remember as much as they do, which is hard.
Ayo Abbas 19:22
I was gonna say I hadn't to nag people. I just remember once that I remember walking down the corridor once and somebody literally hid behind a copier to hide from me. Hey, go I've got power at last. So I guess in the more kind of digital world what tips would you give to someone who is say starting out on social media and looking to get their practice known? Are there certain things you can make sure you do this?
Rebecca Snow 19:56
Well, it's interesting because I wouldn't you know, many months ago, years ago, in fact, I went to a seminar thing on in a practice evolution. And it looked at sort of tiny startups to large established practices. And it's so interesting, because when you're small, and starting out, you have tremendous agility, and flexibility. And there's usually only a few of you, you're very close knit together, you can make decisions really quickly. And you can be, I think, a lot more daring in some ways in what you do. Even though you might not have many completed projects to show, there's a lot more scope for showing your ideas and, you know, research that you might be doing things that you find interesting and stimulating. If there's an opportunity there to start out on social media, when you begin your company, so you grow together. In some ways, when you're well established practice, it takes much longer hauling around a tanker. And that's understandable, because you got to drag a whole load of people with you. Yeah, change is difficult. And
Ayo Abbas 21:07
as well, isn't it? Why are you suggesting?
Rebecca Snow 21:12
That's a ridiculous idea what you know, we'll never do that. Or that will the worst thing is usually is when you say, why did we do this? And then sort of silence and then a few weeks later, why don't we do this, Rebecca. And that's what I said three weeks ago. Just sort of percolate in you know, when you're making, you know, daily directors who lead the company making so many decisions, you know, they can't remember everything that they've agreed to, or everything you've asked, so you just sort of have to think that let it sink in. And then maybe it'll emerge later. But yeah, when you're young and agile, and you can be creative, you can be daring, you can take some risks, you don't have the sort of reputational baggage that you have to always be careful of. So I'm always I mean, I think of anything. My problem is I'm so risk averse. Now, I've thought because I'm old and boring. But also, I think, you know what a wrong step can sort of set you back. Or as you know, you have to be so careful your judgement has to be really spot on all the time in everything that you do. And you don't want to lose that reputation by by not thinking carefully enough about what you're doing. And sometimes, perhaps, you know, I think too carefully, and I should just get out there and do it and take my own advice.
Ayo Abbas 22:31
But I think those are great tips. Oh, really? Yeah, really, really smart. But I think you're right, the whole reputation thing and having to kind of, I guess it's experience, isn't it as well, I always think, you know, once you've been burned on certain things, and you? Well, you are you end up just being a bit more, I guess a bit more thorough before you do things. And it's because you've seen what, because you've seen what could happen. And I think as well, if you if you know, if you've had any comms teams, and you've had to deal with crisis management, then you're the one who's had to, you know, sweep up, helps sweep up that mess. So, yeah, so I think there is that kind of cautiousness, when, as you as you grow, I guess, but yeah, when you're small, you get it is you are a lot freer, which is, which is an amazing thing to kind of do, and you can really try stuff out.
Rebecca Snow 23:15
I think, and also if you you know, the relationship with your clients is key and all of this, because they, if they're happy to sort of go on this journey with you and share things, you know, as you go along, and are a little bit daring about, you know, sharing ideas as they're developing. That's, that's brilliant. Because often when you get, you know, for some of the projects that we've got, clients that are really cagey about putting stuff out, they don't want to share a lot of stuff till they're, they're ready to do it. And they feel they've got their comms in place. So I think that's one thing that I would always suggest to younger practices, when they're starting out is, you know, speak to your clients about, about PR and marketing and about how you'd like them to be part of the story. It's very hard if you're doing beautiful work, and you can't share it for you know, any number of reasons. Or you're the worst thing is I think, which happened to Stiff and Trevillion in their, in their younger days, is doing work, and then nobody realising it's yours. And even somebody else really lets you know that, you know, that left a big legacies in how you take ownership for things that you do. And, you know, often they can be a little tension between you and the client, because it's their projects. They're paying for it, but you've sort of created this idea. It's really important that you've got that aligned that you know, who's doing what and how you're working together. And, you know, you don't want to suddenly open a magazine or see something online about your projects that's got no mention of you in it.
Ayo Abbas 24:49
So the impact of that meant that you they were more kind of open with what they wanted to achieve in terms of marketing communications.
Rebecca Snow 24:57
I think so I think and do I have a huge amount of freedom to to make decisions and how I write about the company and what I do. I work very closely with Mike Stiff, one of the founders, because he's very passionate about this sort of thing. He's always been really keen on, recording the work that they do they he's produced practice books over the years, which have developed from sort of, you know, small pamphlety type things. Do we still call pamphlets? Or is that still a big anymore? Yeah, What do we call them? I don'tthink anyone talks about pamphlets anywhere, except perhaps vicars anyway. Yes, sort of small brochures to producing an actual hardback book about the practice each year. Also, each decade Mike was keen to encapsulate, what could work, what work had been done in that previous 10 years and how it looked. And so we've done that on a fairly regular basis. In fact, we're probably due for another one fairly soon. So you, it's really important to have somebody on the leadership team, who's really committed to this sort of stuff whonis engaged with marketing and can really see the benefit of it. Because they'll be your champions. And they'll it's nice to work with somebody as well. Because if you're in-house, you know, there's any, perhaps one or two of you and it's only me, at Stiff + Trevillion. You need to have somebody to talk to and test ideas. And just, sometimes it's even does that copy Make sense? Is that does that make up the essence of the project? Right? You know, it's collaborative, it's nice to work with somebody who's who's interested, and as excited as you are, where you get the, you know, a nice bit of coverage or, you know, a bit of business because of something that you've done. So that's Yeah,
Ayo Abbas 26:52
I agree with you completely. I mean, I think that's one of the reasons that I kind have been on the committee for Build Up for example, which is about, you know, networking for, you know, architecture, marketing, marketing, marketing people, because, like you say, you're often the only person in the practice, it's like, who do I talk to, you know, oh, what do you think of this? Or even just to have those marketing conversations? Sometimes it's just, it's really nice to do. And I yeah. And that's kind of one of the reasons I do this podcast as well, because I think it's the it's the proper marketing conversations that we should be having and businesses should be having. So
Rebecca Snow 27:25
in fact, and also, like, any sort of, I forget what marketing is, that sounds ridiculous. But you know, you're sort of doing things on a daily basis. And I sort of have to take stock of that, what do I do? I don't have no idea, do I do anything? So and then you sort of look back into that, yes, I am doing all these things. And they're all really important for the business and the future of the business. So that's the thing you have to sort of keep remembering. And especially again, in the time we've been in this crisis time, that's really an important time to start making sure we've got everything ready. You're keeping going with stuff, if you've got the sort of energy and capacity to do that no, not not to sort of put a lot of stuff on hold. It's very tempting to do that. I think when you're just trying to keep, you know, survive, I suppose for a lot of businesses, that's been a very real issue.
Ayo Abbas 28:18
But there is that whole thing is no of continue to your marketing, even during downtimes. Because that will keep you going and you're more likely to come out stronger than everyone else. But it is a tough thing, though, when you're trying to balance the books, as well as keep keep keeping everything else ticking over. But fingers crossed for everyone, really. So, on to my final two questions. Are there any kind of particular companies that you admire in the way that they tackle their marketing? And why did you have? Yes, I
Rebecca Snow 28:47
do I really admire AHMM, they do. I don't, I was looking at their website just before our conversation today. And it's great, it feels really vibrant and lively. And you can feel there's so much going on there. And the work that they did with Derwent for the White Collar Factory, for me was like a sort of well, that that's like marketing that you used to do in consumer products, you know. They really did a fantastic job on marketing that building. And it just shows you what you can do. If you and your client are working together with a common aim, and they want to do the same thing. And they want to celebrate the design that you've done and use that as a positive in your marketing. It's a really, really strong way of positioning your projects. So I admire them. And then there's sort of smaller practices who have been able to do interesting things with film. Now. I might have to clap my hands in a minute. I think the company's Witherford Watson Man, is that does that sound the right
Ayo Abbas 29:52
of them?
Rebecca Snow 29:53
No, no, I might have got that wrong. Perhaps. I need to check that
Ayo Abbas 29:58
okay. You take that and then what We can do is we can kind of I'll put a link into it afterwards.
Rebecca Snow 30:02
Yeah, but wasn't? Well, they, we always look at the Archiboo web awards. And they were they won a category A couple of years ago for the film that they did on it was a project about social housing. And they did this beautiful, really sort of quite moving film of the people who were living, who are going to be living in the social housing. And it was it was really affecting because it's very easy. I think architects, when we were like, when we do photography, we do pictures of these sort of beautiful empty buildings but actually, Reb it's about people use and live in, you know, sometimes even people sitting in there Rebecca, I know isn't it lovely.
Ayo Abbas 30:48
I can't stand empty built shots of buildings, I might just put people in them, you can't get any sense of scale. It's just like, yeah,
Rebecca Snow 30:58
you know, I can't see all those little details that you're talking about, what I'm looking at is a lovely living space that someone's going to use and how they're interacting with it, and the benefit, and then how it's going to change their lives. So I think that that sort of thing is, was quite, it seemed quite unusual at the time, but I think there's sort of post occupancy monitoring, which is a rather dry way of describing it, that sort of, you know, looking at performance, and you know, how well, the systems are managing is put in place, but also how people are living in the building or using it and what you can learn about that to inform future projects is important. Go completely off track.
Ayo Abbas 31:39
Yeah, actually put your finger right, I think post occupancy performance probably needs a rebrand. But yes, we are saying it's the most, it's the most important part because it's actually being used, which people should be more interested in, but they're not necessarily the next new shiny thing. It's one of those things where you're like, yeah, we should be looking at that. And, and actually showing how buildings use is a lot more interesting. If you say to a client, look, this is how they're actually using it.
Rebecca Snow 32:06
Yeah, yeah, this is why we made this decision because people are doing this in it. So it's a great way of informing future work. And just the way you talk about your projects as well, you know, in in English, I always think it's a good idea that people can understand. That's quite brave to just talk about things, you know, that sound ordinary and ordinary language, but you don't have to use, you know, flowery architectural speak. It can be quite alienating, I find sometimes so. But it's, you know, it takes a bit of bravery to step away from that. Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 32:47
Yeah, it's tough to do. Okay, so on to my final question. So what one tip would you give to a practice leader looking to make their mark in marketing, or marketing practice?
Rebecca Snow 32:58
Well, I think one of the things that we've done that I've really enjoyed, and I think has actually ended up being a real bonus is implementing implementing our Responsible Business plan, which sounds again, really boring. But we, we've worked with Heart of the City, who are fantastic, they're a charity and they are immensely supportive to small and large businesses. And working with someone to give a framework helped me so we look at our staff, we look at the local environment, and we look at our impact on the larger environment in the world, I guess. Now, sustainability. And having those three clear areas has really helped me work on that side of our business. And it's become increasingly important, when you're winning new business and you're doing, you know, trying to get on frameworks or or filling in pq q documents, that you are demonstrating that you are actually doing things to make you a business that not just good at the work they do. But actually add a little bit of benefit to the people who work for you where you where your business is situated, and that you're not going to leave a great big dirty mess in the planet, when you've done your work. So if you can try and implement that, or try and get a little bit of that going. It's enormously valuable. And it's amazing how motivating it is for your team, to know that you care about them. And you want to do things to make their working life as good as possible. You know, obviously, because architects work ridiculous hours, you want to try and make sure they don't do that and be if they're going to do it, you're going to make it as easy as possible for them to get home from work or buy them know, look after people it's really, really important to look after your team. So I mean, that's been even more so in the last year. Because, you know, for some people, it's been fine, something that's been really difficult. Everyone's experiences have been very, very different. So nurturing your staff is really important, as well.
Ayo Abbas 34:57
Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Rebecca. And that's the end of the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the latest episode of Marketing In Times of Crisis. If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review, as it helps us to spread the word and for more people to get to hear about us. If you want to know more about things mentioned in the episode, do look at the show notes which will give you more information about where to find us and also about our show website. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed it and have a great day
