Ep 55: Content, Climate and Thought leadership with Rachel Davies, Hoare Lea
Welcome to the new season of The Built Environment Marketing Show.
I’ve been a fan for a long-time of Hoare Lea's marketing so it has been really lovely to connect with Rachel Davies via LinkedIn and now on this podcast to find out more about how they do it. It was such an interesting honest conversation.
Welcome to the new season of The Built Environment Marketing Show.
I’ve been a fan for a long-time of Hoare Lea's marketing so it has been really lovely to connect with Rachel Davies via LinkedIn and now on this podcast to find out more about how they do it. It was such an interesting honest conversation.
We cover:
The importance of thought leadership, how to get buy-in for it and how to do it.
How they take a ‘no brochure’ approach and champion digital
How they choose digital channels
The importance of diversity and inclusion.
Resources and links
Find out about Abbas Marketing
Check out Stacey's website
Support the show
The Built Environment Marketing Show is a podcast for architects, engineers and marketers who want to do better marketing make sure you check out our sizable back catalogue of interviews and solo episodes if you're facing a marketing challenge.
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Transcript
Ayo Abbas 00:01
Hi there, but before we get going properly just to let you know that this episode is episode one of a two parter, part two will be out next friday.
Ayo Abbas 00:14
Hello and welcome to the Built Environment Marketing Show. And I am your host Ayo Abbas marketing. I'm a marketer, a content creator and trainer for built environment firms. The podcast, I've had a bit of a summer break, and it's so nice to be back. And back in the interview. See, I guess, I've got some lovely interviews lined up for you over the next few months. So make sure you stay tuned, and that you've clicked the follow button wherever you listen.
Ayo Abbas 00:41
Today's guest is from a firm whose marketing I really admired from afar for many years. They're an engineering firm called Hoare Lea and if you've not checked out their marketing, I really, really advise you to do so because it's quite honestly brilliant. I've been a huge fan for a long time. So it was really lovely to connect with Rachel Davis from there, who's their marketing director. What's most impressive to me is they actually do most of their marketing in house. And to me, it really does stand out from the crowd in terms of, I guess how crisp it is, how sharp it is and how it represents who they are. This conversation touches on a lot of things, but mainly around kind of content and their approach to thought leadership. And y how they programme, what they do and how actually good content takes time to make, which I which I love as a kind of overall message and takeaway. Anyway, I'll stop talking now. And I'll let you get on with listening. Enjoy the conversation with Rachel.
Ayo Abbas 01:39
Hi, Rachel, thanks so much for coming on to the show. Can you introduce yourself and your role at Hoare Lea.
Rachel Davies 01:45
Yeah, hi. It's lovely to be here. I'm Rachel Davis, and I'm the Director of Marketing at Hoare Lea.
Ayo Abbas 01:50
And what do you do in that role? What do you what kind of aspects do you cover? How big is your team?
Rachel Davies 01:55
Team is I think about 15. We've had a couple of new recruits. I've lost count recently, but that's great. We cover all sorts of things, all the things that you'd expect internal comms external comms, look after social look after the web. We have our own in house graphic design and motion graphic designers. We're also really lucky because we have a small team of three that create 3D visualisations and so that's a little added extra into the into the mix that we have. So, yes, that
Ayo Abbas 02:31
3D visualisations for marketing or also for what the business uses.
Rachel Davies 02:35
Yeah, a bit of both. I mean, generally, they help support in winning work. So when we're trying to conceptualise a scheme for clients, often it helps if it's in a 3D realm so they can see what it is that they're going to be getting. So there's a large chunk of their time that's there, but also in marketing. And they can do all sorts of funky things as to way above my paygrade. But no, it's great. Really, really nice.
Ayo Abbas 03:10
So, can you talk about Hoare Lea as well, because like, it's one of those practice names that I've always known of, but I don't know much about. Yeah, no, it was like the stuff but
Rachel Davies 03:19
like, Yeah, well, I'm relatively new. I suppose. I've only been here for six years. And Hoare Lea is 160 years old. So
Ayo Abbas 03:31
I saw that, I was like Whoa, yeah.
Rachel Davies 03:33
It's got a pretty good heritage, in fact, that the founder, Henry Lea, was, he was quite the man. So he, I think, did the first of air conditioned cooling at the Royal Belfast Hospital, I think he pioneered street lighting. And he was the person who coined the term consulting engineer. So he was quite the dude was Henry. So he started the firm, which has been a partnership for many, many years. And we are predominantly have been traditionally MEP based, but we have a huge number of specialisms now, including sustainability, lighting, acoustics, security, AV, lots of lots of lots.
Ayo Abbas 04:27
And understanding it under the engineering banner. Well, yeah,
Rachel Davies 04:31
absolutely. And and they're there too. I mean, if you're designing a building and if you took away that civil and infrastructure pieces and the structure of the building, Hoare Lea does all the concerning the environment of the building, if you like, so firm has great. Let's see, we're mainly UK based. And we've got over 1000 people now about 1200.
Ayo Abbas 04:59
That's it I just asked him for 1200. Like, lots of people don't have that.
Rachel Davies 05:04
You mean my marketing team? Yeah.
Ayo Abbas 05:07
It almost sounds like it's in the realms where it should be
Rachel Davies 05:12
Yeah, I think when I joined six years ago, there was more like three or four. That's what Yeah. And I've been very lucky because the the firm have supported the growth of the team. And I think that's mainly due to the success of the of the rebrand work it completely transformed the firm from where it was to where we are today. And so they seen the value that the team can bring them. We're very busy team, I'd love more people. But then probably megalomaniac stage there. So
Ayo Abbas 05:53
that's my team. Your rebrand when did you do that? How did that come about? Because that was that a big shift for the firm in terms of how they operated?
Rachel Davies 06:04
Yeah, huge. So yeah, I joined six years ago, they brought me in really to do the rebrand for them. So they were already working with Bristol agency called Mr. B and Friends. A lot of the exploratory work had been done already when I joined. And then we put into practice sort of the implementation of that about a year after I joined. So the firm's rebrand has been going for five, five years. Wow. Which seems like a long time, but also really short term
Ayo Abbas 06:41
But it's evolved, isn't it? So you've got the you've got the crux of it. Now. It's just the case of it evolves and develops as you as you grow and flex really, isn't it? It's kind of fun, isn't it?
Rachel Davies 06:51
Yeah, I'm responding to what's going on in the world around us, you know, so all the changes in net zero, for example, and responding responding to that. Climate change, skills gap is massive for engineering consultancies. So we're constantly evolving. But it's built on great foundations, which I thinki is critical in any brand. Otherwise, it sort of loses its way if it's not real. Yeah. So it's been fantastic.
Ayo Abbas 07:25
And what's going to kind of in your overall approach to marketing overall, in that six years, what's your what's your take? What's your approach? Is it on kind of yearly plans or grander ambitions or themes or at least different ways, isn't it?
Rachel Davies 07:38
Yeah. I think me personally, I'm quite a dreamer. I quite like big aspirational things to aim for. I like the fact that we are small, but we punch well above our weight. So we're, you know, we are competed with the big boys like Arup and WSP, and others. So I think the, the approach is very much content-led, and thought leadership led. And the heart of it really is how we connect the brilliant things that our people could do here, their expertise, their knowledge, and the different specialisms that they offer to the world at large. So whoever those people are, sort of loads to say clients, because there's lots of people who aren't necessarily the client that we are also trying to connect with and understand what we do. So
Ayo Abbas 08:39
There's so many different communities, there's something there's so much, there's so many different communities that you do actually have to connect with. That you bring, I guess, you bring a fresh approach to what we're doing but connect with different people, because it's not always the same kind of technical, technical kind of content. It's actually it's much more story led, and it's a much more open in a way more I can see.
Rachel Davies 09:02
Yeah, thank you. I mean, that's what we try and do because at the end of the day, we are talking to other human beings. And when you're 160 years old, I guess as you can make some assumptions that we typically know how to engineer. We're quite good at that. I think the other thing that's been really interesting is just the voice of the engineer is just as relevant as any other party in the construction of a building or of a community or office of a city. And I think the engineers voice has been quiet for too long. And I think given the challenges that the world faces, now's the time really for an engineer to or engineers in the whole not just at Hawley across the globe across every company for them to step up and state their state their relevance claim.
Ayo Abbas 09:59
How comfortable are you're engineers in doing that, because that is quite a big change wrench, you know, across the
Rachel Davies 10:10
It is challenging. I guess that's part of the part of the fun. I think as well. It's always best when you can demonstrate that it works so that people don't feel like, oh gosh, am I being set up here to do something silly or make a fool of myself in some way? So I think we've had some great success stories that give confidence to others. Is everyone ready to do it? No, does everyone need to be ready to do it? Maybe not. So I think we've got some great champions who are really good at going out there and talking. In a I'm gonna say more simplistic way, I don't mean in a dumbing down sense, but just can, can connect what we do day to day with our clients in easier, easy language as it were. So no, it is challenging and remains challenging. But I think if we don't rise to the challenge, we're gonna be in trouble. Especially now with the emergence of AI, a lot of the, what you want to call it sort of like the grunt work of engineering will be done by machines and computers, you know, so the skill of the consultant will be the thing that, you know, really will help
Ayo Abbas 11:29
their ideas, and their solutions. I know, that's what it's gonna be. And that's that thing of like, expertise and using that because it's like, those bog standard calculations are going to read just be run on the computer. So how do we solve these huge, challenges the world is facing? So yeah, it's interesting, but yeah, it's like, how do you make engineering? Yeah, because because I think the other thing is, if you try and simplify engineering, sometimes people like you're dumbing us down. And you're like, actually, no, I'm just making it accessible to more people. And I think that fine balance, isn't it?
Rachel Davies 12:05
Yeah. And that's a there's a place isn't there? There's a place to be technical and to be deep into that. The ice truck tea journal?
Ayo Abbas 12:13
Yes, you can do that.
Rachel Davies 12:16
Go for it. You know, maybe the website is not the place. Maybe when we're trying to explain something to someone who's not an engineer, maybe that's not the place for that. So I think it's about bridging the two worlds as best as you can, and showing them that you, you can still make real impact without the technical jargon. So that's what we try. We try and do. I'm sure we're successful, sometimes fatal in others, but it's all part of the,
Ayo Abbas 12:53
in terms of like content and thought leadership, what I mean, how do you approach it? What's your kind of approach and viewpoint? And? And how do you do it? Because you do create some lovely stuff? It wasn't just me saying that I had to do I have virtual coffees with people. And I had one on Friday with the head of marketing from an architectural firm. I said, I was interviewing you and he went "I love her stuff did" you actually did, look at their new website?
Rachel Davies 13:20
Oh, well, I'm really pleased about that. I'll do this podcast again.
Rachel Davies 13:29
Now with the thought leadership stuff, I mean, we lead our marketing really with thought leadership. And we do that for a couple of reasons. The first one is actually the importance of thought leadership internally. Because you have to bring together the experts who are talking about a subject matter. And you have to get some consensus around that you have to get them to focus what you know, what are we going to go out and talk about? What are the challenges in this sector or, or whatever the scenario is. And so you have to, you're already bringing that different way of thinking internally in amongst your engineers and specialists, because we're not all just engineers here. But you know, so you're bringing that technical expertise together to discuss a bigger problem. So that's really valuable in itself.
Ayo Abbas 14:27
And you do that as a separate kind of standalone you come together, and you do that or what's your
Rachel Davies 14:32
Yeah. So we bring we bring a team together, it has to be a fairly small team because otherwise descends into chaos. And you know, things take 500 times longer than they actually need to take. So you have a fairly small core team. You discuss what's going on and you're challenging as well. So someone might say, oh, we need to talk about subject Y, the subject Y is well understood and you know, it's been covered in lots of places. And you know, there's there's no value in us talking about something Y? So we have to be challenging as well till we get to a point where we think we've got something interesting here, that would be good to explore. And then we begin the process of who would we like to go out and talk to about that? So the next bit then is our internal expertise, thinking about their clients, influences sponsors of us, maybe Institute's that we have connection with, and then sort of some more of the left field voices that might have an opinion on the subject matter as a whole. And we go out and start asking them would you want to participate in this with a so second bit of that brilliant, because that's either deepening existing relationships, starting a new one, you know, and so there's that the relationship management piece there is also really critical. And then we go interview, and then we build whatever it is we're building. And my team would look at how are we creatively going to tell this story?
Ayo Abbas 16:13
Oh, I love that. So you don't you don't go in with a it's going to be a report. It's not a or it's going to be a blog. It is more a case of what's the story?
Rachel Davies 16:22
No, one of the things when I joined Hoare Lea marketing was brochure production. One of the things I said very quickly, when everyone came, oh, I need a brochure on this. No, you don't, you don't need a brochure on this. Trust me. Let's talk about what you're trying to do. So we always start with the, you know, what, what's the story we want to tell who needs to be involved in the story, before we even get into what is the thing that we produced, because the thing could be anything. And the thing shouldn't drive any of the decision making really, so lovely. That's where we go, and then we build the thing. And then it's released into the wild. And hopefully, hopefully, if they are successful, the reason it's successful is because you've done all that internal work, because you've got to land the thing. And then you can't land it unless you're invested in it. So all of that internal stuff. Once the things arrived, you can go off and you can talk to your your client about it.
Ayo Abbas 17:43
So I guess it helps them buy in as well. Right? If they bought, they've taken it from those early stages, and they understand how it's come through. Yeah, it's definitely going to help you in terms of internal buy in and wanting to share it right.
Rachel Davies 17:56
Exactly, the easier it is to create the thing. Yeah, the Hard bit, is to come up with a figure in the first place and then connect the right people to it.
Ayo Abbas 18:09
Hi, is Ayo here. And as you're a listener to the show, I just wanted to tell you a bit more about how I can help you get your built environment marketing done. If you're looking to set up a company podcasts are trying to figure out what content you want to create for an amazing campaign that really engages your audience. Or even if you want to get your business more up to speed in terms of how they approach digital marketing, and how you get kind of senior level people on board with workshops and training, then do bear me in mind, I'm actually a marketing consultant, content creator and trainer. But I work specifically with built environment firms just like yours. So I know the best practices and approaches, but also most importantly, how to apply them to our sector. There's also links in the show notes to thanks for listening and now back to the show.
Ayo Abbas 19:08
What timeframes does that kind of take you to get a piece of footage from
Rachel Davies 19:25
Yeah, it really depends on the team really depends on the team have taken a long time. And and that's probably in part because it was untested in Hoare Lea. So there was nervousness about Hang on. What's Rachel asking me to do here? Why would this work? Why am I going to give up my time to do this? And so the lot of hand holding and reassurance and trying to give examples of why this would be the approach we should take. So it really does depend but I I'd say on average, they're sort of 6, 7, 8 month programme. So they're big time intensive, but then anything that's worth doing normally is. So I think that I would rather, I would rather spend eight months pulling together, that piece is really good thought leadership, then spinning out 50 brochures in the same timeframe.
Rachel Davies 20:25
As would any other marketer, you know what, its that thing when they would come over to you, because I always think the brochure was was someone's crutch, basically, you know, without it. Yes you can!
Rachel Davies 20:43
It's exactly the phrase I would use. It's, it's a crutch. And it's also the other phrase that I really liked, which I have to give credit to former boss of mine, Rod Kay. It's also what you call spray and pray marketing? Yeah. Because, you know, it's not tailored in any way. It's really about us and not about the client. And so,
Ayo Abbas 21:07
yeah, get everything out there. Tell everyone everything,
Rachel Davies 21:10
Tell everyone, everything, they'll be interested. No they won't,
Ayo Abbas 21:15
But that's I mean, so how many of those like pieces? Do you aim to kind of have over the spread of a year? That's quite a long process, isn't it? Do you have like, yeah, we're looking to five? Or is that too much? You know, like,
Rachel Davies 21:29
no, we'd love to do one major piece of thought leadership in a year or two, if we were really had, if we had a really energetic internal team who could run at the same pace as us, then we could do two. So generally, what we try and do is have one or two big pieces, and then we supplement that with what we call an insight series. And that is a much smaller web, LinkedIn post type pieces that are not quick or digital thought leadership, but they are giving a commentary giving a view about something that's going on making a suggestion, highlighting a challenge. So we supplement it with that.
Ayo Abbas 22:13
That's gonna say, those big ones, can you do it? I was like, that's a lot of work. So how do you, kind of approach digital kind of media. And also, as opposed to social media and the channels, which are not on things like Instagram and stuff where I couldn't find you, I was going.
Rachel Davies 22:32
Yeah, I feel like it's a confession time. Yeah. So I mean, just as a general approach to digital, I don't really, really view it like that digital is a platform. So I would say today, you know, 99% of what we do is going to involve digital in some way or another. But we don't start out with how we're going to use digital. That's not the question we ask ourselves, it's more, here's a story wants to tell what's the best way to do it, it's going to be digital, for example. So we can't do it that way. And as I say, there's very few projects now that have don't have a digital component to them. Social media, we, we heavily use LinkedIn as you, as you'd expect. And as you know, this is how we we bonded together for a shared post that drove us up the wall. So we use LinkedIn heavily. It's where, you know, the vast majority of people who would be procuring for the most part would would would see us we stopped using Twitter or X as it's now known.
Ayo Abbas 23:53
When someone bought it by any chance,
Rachel Davies 23:55
No, actually, we turned it off way before there because we just were getting no value from it and it was a another thing to do with no return. So we we just quietly without telling anyone turned it off, and no one noticed. So I think that was the right decision. And then just like stealth bombers, we just turned it off. And then Instagram, we actually started up using Instagram this year, under the title generation steam, and we've done a piece of work, you'll have to look about where we are targeting young girls who are 13 to 18 years old, and trying to encourage them to or at least be inspired by a possible career in the built environment. And so we've done a piece of work on there and And we will continue to evolve that. Because one, it's a good platform. We like the platform. There's other platforms that we probably wouldn't choose as a firm to go into. It's where our target audience are hanging out online.
Ayo Abbas 25:22
It's very visual as well, isn't it? So? Yeah, help them. Yeah.
Rachel Davies 25:27
And we wanted to separate slightly from, Hoare Lea. And we wanted to almost slightly separate from the word engineering as well. I suspect there may be some instant turnoff to young people when they just hear that word. So we're trying to talk to them in a different way. In fact, we had, we trialled it with some friendly 16 year old who absolutely brutal and cut us down size, and told us it was rubbish. It's boring and that's got too many words on it. And he only had like five words on it. So
Rachel Davies 26:10
did you like, couldn't do as well. It's not even like four words, you're like, what do
Rachel Davies 26:18
We reassessed, and now, it's good to get the feedback. We're all a bit bruised, like, wow, they're really honest. And, yeah, so we've been doing that now for a few months. And it needs lots more pushing, and lots more content. But yeah, we do have a good content stream, because we've got the podcasts. And we try and get really interesting, not just women, but lots of interesting women. We have our client magazine as well, that has some great content, so we all sort of repurposing and sort of making it more appealing to in particular, young women. So I mean, it just reflecting on the weekend. Unfortunately, we didn't win the World Cup, but But it was amazing or who would have thought, you know, you'd see crowds and the numbers and the professionalism and that you know, just everything around that such a positive step forward. For women in sport, and actually we looked at we took a lot of inspiration from sports industry who have been doing a pretty good job in terms of attracting and activities into sport. So what can we learn from them
Ayo Abbas 27:41
Thanks so much for listening to The Built Environment Marketing Show. Don't forget to check out the shownotes which will have useful links and resources connected to this episode. You can find that on bass marketing.com. And of course, if you liked the show, please do share it with others on social as it helps more people to find us. See you soon.
