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Architects should target people that don't know that they need or want an architect. Yet by the time somebody has decided that they want to engage an architect or a designer or an artist or something, they're then researching the field, right. So you're instantly in competition with a bunch of people, unless they're coming to you for a specific purpose. But if you target them before they know that they need you, then they'll be like oh, I remember when Gerard from Gerard Dombarowski Workshop came and talked to me that time well, maybe I'll use him to do my project kind of vibe and I thought that was really interesting. And that's definitely sort of an approach that we've decided to take with our marketing has put ourselves before the public before they know that they need us.
Gerard Dombroski:Hello, welcome to Design Principles podcast Episode three. You're here with myself, gerard Dombarowski, gerard Dombarowski Workshop, ben Sutherland, bear Architecture and Sam Brown of ARET. Today we're going to discuss marketing, the tumultuous waters of marketing.
Sam Brown:How to promote ourselves. Yeah.
Gerard Dombroski:Rock on. So I guess we'll crack things off. I'll give you guys a little insight to my wobbly world. I think like this whole conversation ties into episode one. We were sort of discussing ourselves again, so I guess this is a very lived experience discussion. So there's lots of stories there. So I think from a lot of my strategies come out of working at a job previously and sort of, I guess, reacting to their tactics to a degree and giving a context in how I don't want to do things. I guess Save it nicely. So that which is, and lots of thoughts running around, because that comes full context, because they ran a lot on word of mouth and word of mouth turns out is very good.
Sam Brown:If you've got a deep pool of connected people to draw from, yeah, I guess that was a business that had gone for a long time.
Gerard Dombroski:So there's like a deep pool of preexisting clients and stuff there and I have this theory that you kind of seen you get the work you're seeing doing perhaps, and if you can get into magazines and into media, then surely that lays like a foundation for a wider audience. So that's kind of been my approach is trying to set a foundation as much as possible and like engaging with magazines and different.
Sam Brown:Do you find Gerard the magazine one's an interesting one. Obviously, word of mouth is a very simple way of marketing what you do and it's very direct. You know some of her clients looking to come to you. From a word of mouth point of view, they know exactly what they're coming to you for, apart from, like, a magazine or publication point of view. Do you feel like those avenues are targeting potential clients, or are they just targeting other architects, or are they just targeting your peers, because it's something that I've always struggled with? Yeah, it's interesting.
Gerard Dombroski:I think a lot of that depends on the magazine as well, because I guess being architects, you want to get into.
Sam Brown:But only architects read the architecture of magazines.
Gerard Dombroski:Well, I think that's a valid point.
Sam Brown:You know, like, if you're an architecture and said that's cool and your peers get to see and recognize your work but only your peers, really. You know as funny as it sounds, you know it's almost better if you're looking for prospective clients to be in magazines like Home and Garden or something that's a little bit more far reaching.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, exactly, apparently their viewship is massive.
Sam Brown:But are we too proud to sort of feature our work in a magazine like that?
Gerard Dombroski:Well, I think we like start off these things of great ambitions and ideals and then you slowly see the gaps in your logic and see that like those sorts of magazines and stuff may have better feedback. I think like here and Home and stuff are pretty good, but perhaps Architecture NZ? I don't think that.
Sam Brown:Yeah, they sort of like us here and Home. They sort of flirt between that more accessible magazine you know, the general public and more likely to read, and the local. The local project in Australia as well is another good example, Whereas you've kind of got these other ones, these more architecturic centric ones, which are less likely to reach potential clients.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, essentially, though, if you've got a project that is magazine worthy, you're going to be pushing it along into as many magazines as possible, though really wouldn't you?
Sam Brown:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's all. It's all a potential avenue for promotion, right, and I guess we're talking about print publication here, which I think still is very much has merits, but less so than it used to. And this kind of brings us nicely into the discussion around social media and how far reaching that is and how much do you guys value or view social media as a strong form of marketing or building your brand?
Ben Sutherland:And just quickly to point out, I guess, like some of our, you know, whatever old employers or older firms definitely didn't have that social media aspect back in the day. So I guess for them, relying on their own reputation, their previous projects and how they were executed and word of mouth is probably their main player, can't imagine them you know, some of them anyway embracing social media, but not to the extent that we rely on it.
Sam Brown:That's a generational thing, though, right, you know, we're all young, absolutely.
Ben Sutherland:And in our fields, yeah. So it's kind of a newish aspect to marketing that we are lucky enough to benefit from now.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah for sure, and different generations use tools they have at the time. That's something I've had to convince myself of sometimes. So I guess when you get real into architecture and you just want to have some integrity, it's easy to like trick yourself into thinking that maybe social media doesn't have as much merit as other things. So, like if you look back in time, like Frank Lloyd Wright used every media possible term like he was all over the news, go on as many interviews as possible, and I wonder if that had an impact on his career. Absolutely so I think really just got to use the tools you've given.
Sam Brown:So on that, given our main tool is social media. Now, like, how do you guys have you guys found it for building a brand and marketing purposes?
Gerard Dombroski:I think it's a good day to day. I kind of use it as in my stories I'll show process and pictures of things and works, works in progress, and then I'll kind of keep the portfolio side of Instagram just to kind of nice finished pictures, which is it's drawbacks, because stories are only up for a little bit. It's probably partially my laziness that end of always been big on photography, which I think photography is a big underlying current all through marketing, so I've always only tried to put nice photos on my Instagram.
Sam Brown:It's an expensive undertaking, though, unless you're a good photographer yourself.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been quite intentional about it right from when I started my furniture 2016, I think, was my first photography commission well, me commissioning a photographer, and I've done that ever since. I've spent a lot of money on photography over the time, but I think it's values.
Sam Brown:Have you recognized the bent law? Have you recognized that investment? Well, not even there, but just kind of garnered the recognition or, I guess, exposure of your work that you're hoping to.
Gerard Dombroski:Well, I think it's another big issue with the whole marketing and setting a trajectory of your practice, I think, is understanding time and that Rome wasn't built in the day, so for me it's been a very slow process. Like this is. 2016 was a while ago now, so it's incremental when you're laying these seeds of photographs or whatever you're investing in to get you along the way, and I think now it's starting. In the last few years it's been starting to pay off, so I'm gonna get a lot more recognition and I love print. I'm a big believer in print, but I think social media allows you to have this small sort of inch platform where magazines or other people can then, I guess, pick through their local all New Zealand architects that have social media or whatever.
Ben Sutherland:It's similar to what you were saying before about Frank Lloyd Wright. It's essentially, it's about creating an audience, and that's what he was doing, whether it be public speaking or events or what not. All you're trying to do is extend your reach as far as possible, and, yeah, social media is an easy way to do that. You post regularly and consistency, I guess, is a key part to it, but it allows you to reach as many people as possible.
Sam Brown:Yeah, I just want to come back to a point that Gerard made earlier, and that was it's a long process thing is what he said. He said he started photographing his work and trying to promote it in 2016. And we're sort of being faced with that slow approach thing as well, and that it takes a long. Our industry is a slow moving industry. You don't start a project on day one of your business and it's finished on like day 20 and then all of a sudden you've got a backlog of work you can start promoting. We're for us, we're like three years into the existence of our practice and only in the last sort of three or four months have we started completing projects and having them photographed and putting them up for awards and having them ready to put out for publication and things like that.
Sam Brown:And so it's been quite hard to market off actual built or real projects, and for so long we've felt a little bit like a pretender, in that the only way we've been able to promote our work is based on, like, paper architecture or paper design. It's a promise. We haven't been able to prove that we can deliver, and now we can. It's gonna be really interesting for us and we are because we now have this body of work that we can actually start to promote. That's real and we're pushing that quite hard. It's gonna be interesting to see if that has an impact on our marketing and the response that we get, because we've pushed pretty hard in the past on concept work, I guess, but haven't really realized much of a response on that Because it's not real. How do you find that then? Yeah, I mean.
Ben Sutherland:I'm going through that exact same thing. Obviously new company. It's hard to start a new company with a bunch of built projects. It's just not realistic. So you have to kind of start somewhere, and that really makes it hard to post consistently or anything like that, because you just don't have a content. So what are you doing in that situation?
Sam Brown:You just got to keep working, and that's essentially why it takes so long to build up an index of projects over a period of time, I think as well, though, what you can't be shy about and you've noted this to me before, ben is, if you don't have a big body of work, don't be shy about just pushing the same stuff over and over and over again, because every time you post something on social media, or every time you put something out to market, whatever marketing strategy you use be it that print publication or whatever you're always going to catch a new eyes, right?
Sam Brown:There's so many people out there that you're not going to hit the same people time and time and time again, particularly with social media, and you've got these ways of targeting new audiences with hashtags and mentions and all that sort of stuff. So every time you post something be it the same project, time and time again, you just use different hashtags or ways of targeting different markets, be that locations that it targets and things like that, and you're always going to get new eyes. So I wouldn't shy away from reproducing work on those forums.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, that's a good point. And also, I guess, how many platforms would you consider using? Obviously, instagram is a no brainer for the architecture realm. It's very that was you to post images, which is essentially what we do, what we do, what we do, yeah, so what about other stuff Like, I guess, facebook also that's kind of tied into Instagram anyway, and obviously, having a good website is basically your business card, your modern business card, so absolutely critical. Yeah, how have you guys found, have you found that you're getting you know people just from search engine optimization coming through your website?
Sam Brown:I find I've found SEOs to have no real impact. I mean, I think that we've had maybe in the last three years we've had two inquiries come through our website, which isn't a lot.
Ben Sutherland:I bet you've had a lot of people look at your website to understand a little bit more about it.
Sam Brown:Yeah, that is true, but I don't think that it's the avenue for getting work as much as well and this may be our shortcoming as much as, let's say, instagram is, because it's not as regular and it's not as current and like. Maybe we should just update our website more often, but that's quite time consuming and difficult to do.
Ben Sutherland:Well, they start with Instagram and then they would go to your website if they liked what they saw.
Sam Brown:They're two-way, you can't have one without the other. And the nice yeah, go, go, go.
Gerard Dombroski:I think they all work together. Like you're creating like a little spider web, I guess of you're just trying to get people eyes on projects, I guess. So we're trying to get stuff in magazines. You're hoping that then they Google you or Instagram.
Sam Brown:I guess what you're trying to do is like really cohesive narrative about who you are as a business or who you are as an architecture practice, and everything, like you said, goes hand in hand. It builds a spider web. So obviously your website is probably your, that's your home right, that's your plush like base that people come to see the best of what you have to offer and then probably the most information as well. But then all these other little things be that Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or Reels or what have you they're building a narrative about what you do, who you are, why you do it. And print media is the same. You know if you're, you know if you're a sustainably focused practice or doing sustainable design, you may target like Green Magazine, for instance, rather than another publication. So you're trying to sort of weave, like you said, the spider web that creates this really cohesive narrative of who you are as a brand and as a business.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, and Gerard, I have a question for you, because you're, I guess, your business having both you know the artist side and also the architecture, and essentially, your name, your company name is your name. So essentially, what you're doing is you're creating a personal brand. How, how tied in is your basically your personal brand with your company brand, or do you kind of, is there any sort of separation there, or is it just essentially one and the same, do you think?
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, it's kind of one of the same. I guess one of the slight issues I've run into is that, like you're trying to create a brand that's architecture, furniture, art, I don't know like just the whole thing is art in my mind. It's hard to communicate to people that you're an architect and you do furniture and you do something else. Like, for some reason, it is hard to communicate.
Sam Brown:So you're getting pigeonholed into each one of these sort of categories.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, so sometimes I'll get asked oh so when did you quit architecture? Or Really, no, no, I got some like.
Sam Brown:I've got a bunch of projects on the go currently, so that kind of brings us on to our next sort of like area or topic discussion, which we've sort of outlined today, and that's understanding your personal market and defining your niche. I mean, it sounds like you're sort of struggling in a way, because I guess your niche is really art or artistically focused work, right? Do you find that hard to portray? Or sounds like you have find it quite hard to portray to the market that you're looking to target. I don't know if it's hard to portray.
Gerard Dombroski:But I think it's hard to portray that you do multiple things. So it's I think it's easy to communicate to Instagram that you do one thing like the like. It's an issue I've made myself. I just am outputting lots of chairs and lots of furniture and then architectures a lot slower and I've had an aversion to renders for a very long time. So I think I've only put out one render on my Instagram. That was in a story I couldn't bring myself to it.
Sam Brown:Do you think that's something that you'd look to sort of, maybe embrace a little bit more to, to continue to build that more cohesive narrative like we've discussed?
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I was wary of putting too many renders out early Just because I wanted to build projects in there. So then if people then see renders, they you've got some validation that you can deliver a building which probably wasn't, and like a wise way to go about it. But alas, it's done now Made the bed. But yeah, if we circle back to the intent is to make like a design practice that multi-disciplinary that I do architecture the spoke furniture, so I have a love of design and a strange need to do everything.
Ben Sutherland:How would you describe your niche? Can you describe it, or is it more?
Gerard Dombroski:of just like a personal brain. Yeah, I think so. My niche, I guess, is that it is my artistic output. So I guess, like people go to Sean Godsell for Sean Godsell because he's got such a strong aesthetic, yeah, so I'm just just want to be an architect that people go to for for my take on things, this is interesting Is a personal brand such as you know, like you were just talking about, is a personal brand, the niche, because essentially a niche is more in my mind.
Ben Sutherland:You know you create some sort of competitive advantage, whereas architecture, especially, is so aesthetically based that sometimes that your niche just is, or people come to you because they like your designs or they like your architecture, or that kind of becomes your stamp. I guess your business card or something like that. A visual language, it's not essentially a competitive advantage. Well, I guess it kind of is, because no one can do what you're doing, because it's your design.
Sam Brown:If you're quick enough, you know, if you've got, if you've got a very distinct style or if you've got a very distinct way of operating that sort of separates you from the majority of your peers, then it totally is a niche, I think. And if you think about you know, let's go back to like early F, for instance, or like Roger Walker, or you know those guys in those sort of like early 80s, 90s and the stuff that they were doing 100% they had a niche, without a doubt, and people would go to them for that specific design and to work with those specific architects because that's what they wanted. I think that's probably. I'd argue that that's it's lesser the case these days because we are not as as a general rule, you know, throughout the industry.
Ben Sutherland:We're less experimental and more complex and our designs based, so it's hard to get around a lot of those restrictions in terms of planning Well, in terms of regulations, you know no, I think it's like clients attitude for risk.
Sam Brown:I agree with Gerard.
Gerard Dombroski:I definitely think so, and I also also think it's huge scope within our building code for a shit ton of creative history, not as much as then.
Sam Brown:I think people want because people are so much more careful with their money and money is a lot harder to like get in terms of lending and things like that these days. I think people want I would argue People want a sure thing, though right Resales also a massive consideration, more so these days than I feel like it used to be.
Ben Sutherland:So, as a situation, it's probably mentality, because you know I would arguably back then people kind of wanted to design a house to live in it forever. Now people are kind of chopping and changing.
Gerard Dombroski:I had a real estate agent complaining to me in the weekend about why everyone makes their houses great Really.
Ben Sutherland:I thought they loved it.
Gerard Dombroski:Well, I think it makes it harder to sell because it's just like everyone else. So if you're doing a basic house, exactly the same as everyone else, it's going to be hard to find that point.
Sam Brown:Back on the niche thing. Drabber sort of talked about yours, ben. Your one's quite interesting as well, because I feel like you're coming at development from an architectural point of view and we mentioned this in the last episode and you sort of I feel like you're following in the footsteps, maybe consciously or subconsciously, of people like that. There's hype from Australia. How do you, how are you looking to separate yourself in that realm?
Ben Sutherland:I guess there's two avenues. One I will never not have an architecture firm with a construction company attached to it.
Ben Sutherland:So I guess that is somewhat of a competitive advantage and that's just basically because of my history in construction and my need to not only desire or control the architecture side of things but also the construction. So that's, that's kind of one avenue. But in terms of the development side, interestingly my customer is slightly different, as I would be mainly like. I definitely have more general architecture clients as well, but they are mainly selling at a different stage. So we're getting to sort of build majority of the building at least, or at least kind of selling off plans or selling a completed product as opposed to designing for a client.
Ben Sutherland:So the cost the end customers purchasing a product that's already maybe not being completed but close to so yeah, I guess, like our, from our point of view, it's more of like what Gerard was talking about, about, you know, not creating gray houses and that sort of thing. It's more about like I'm keeping an eye on what is market trends and what people want and targeting certain demographics and understanding the market a little bit better. So not just designing a product or a house for the sake of designing a house, but being like who's buying in this area? What are they buying? What do they need. Do they need a three bedroom? Is it like a family? Was it like an elderly demographic? If it's elderly, do they need elevators? You know it's like access needs to be designed completely fascinating.
Ben Sutherland:A lot of you know. We talked to a lot of real estate agents and we try and identify like, okay, they know this area, that that's their profession, that's the job. Who's buying, what are they buying, what do they need, what's selling, and we kind of work back from there. But you know, obviously there's that whole brand as well, brand identity. So we're bringing our own design aesthetics to these things and making them to the best.
Sam Brown:Do you reckon you're going to maintain like? Do you feel like you'll maintain quite a lot of flexibility in your design aesthetic to fit in mold with market trends though?
Ben Sutherland:This is a great question and the reason is I've been thinking a lot about this recently and essentially it depends on when the product is sold or when the purchaser becomes a part of the process, Because if you're selling off plans, then essentially you're creating the structure, I guess, but the actual purchase has the opportunity to make tweaks that they kind of want to make, and that's like you know, within a certain extent. You know we don't go and do anything that we don't think is of good quality and good value, but then they have the chance to adapt the building slightly to, you know, make some adjustments that suit their needs a little bit better. So yeah, I guess a lot of that depends on when the building is actually purchased or sold.
Sam Brown:I want to just circle back quickly to an interesting point that you just made about. You work quite closely with real estate agents and that's something that we you know that I feel like we don't often do as architects, but something that we personally at a red have started doing recently as well, as I actually think we realize that there's a lot of benefit and Creating those relationships with red estate agents. As slimy as it might sound sometimes, they are, you're right. The other people that probably have the finger on the pulse of the market particularly we're coming at it from a residential point of view, but I feel like this is probably relevant to commercial as well They've got the finger on the pulse what's happening in the market. They've got the connections with buyers and, you know, if you ingratiate yourselves with Redisad agents, they can put you on to potential clients probably more easily and more effectively than you could ever do through other marketing avenues.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, and it's a huge strategy, especially up here. This Act, sorry. Real estate agents have preferred architects and a lot of clients go to our real estate agents. We like I'm looking for such and such and such in this kind of area and they'll actually just refer them to.
Sam Brown:That's up in Auckland.
Ben Sutherland:They're generally up in Auckland. I haven't seen it as much, but then again I haven't tried in Wellington, but I'm sure that that same sort of yeah.
Gerard Dombroski:I've got a friend to get a lot of work through.
Sam Brown:We're sort of targeting it down in Central Otago as well, because I mean, that is one area that there's a huge amount of Spear land or, like you know, development land or plot to land that are available for new build. And so we're really kind of targeting the real estate agents and and quite carefully you know targeting the ones that have their names all over sections rather than actual houses, and coming to them and being like hey, we're here, if you've got clients that are interested, send them our way, kind of thing.
Ben Sutherland:Absolutely. I think of it from a market developers perspective. They, they need to know what the market is doing. They're not going to go and build well, I mean a lot of them do, but it's stupidity really but you know, they're not going to go build a bunch of houses without doing that research and they really just kind of design because that is what the market wants and that's what selling in those specific this kind of continues on into that sort of collaboration Avenue that we're talking about.
Ben Sutherland:Well right, I was actually just just quickly before we moved to collaboration, sam. I guess like you've got something similar going on, but with more of a, you know, another type of niche, which would be like targeting certain Typologies of architecture, for example, sustainability, and attracting people that are like-minded people, essentially, that are interested in similar things as you are, which is a huge marketing stretch.
Sam Brown:Yeah, it is and that's well.
Sam Brown:Yeah, it's interesting, it's definitely when we started out. We always wanted to. One of the big reasons for starting my own firm was to kind of work with the clients you want to work with, but and, and we have done that. But it's taken probably about three years for us to really define what that meant and when it's landed us in is what we like to call this holistic architecture field, and that might sound a bit like, you know, buddhist prayer flags, airy-fairy kind of stuff, but what we're really trying to say with the holistic architecture thing is that it's architecture that targets Every aspect of design or every aspect of a residential build.
Sam Brown:So it's not just aesthetics, it's not just performance, it's not just sustainability, it's everything all kind of bundled up into one, and so it's what we've really looked to target and present with our work. And yeah, you're right, what that's meant is we sort of really put ourselves in this niche of high performance, sustainable architecture for clients that want exactly that thing, because I think people aren't going to come to you unless they've done their research first, and if you're not An expert and can't present an expert opinion, then you sort of sitting there a little bit, a little bit false. So we've had to really like upscale ourselves within our practice to be able to like hold ourselves in that niche and validate ourselves as well.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, if we get to the the meat of things real quick. I think an interesting Analysis would be like if you've had much feedback from presenting this sort of these directions via social media and things like defined any of that marketing paying off.
Ben Sutherland:Does everyone call you asking for a sustainable house? Yes, and that's what.
Sam Brown:Well, recently, yes, and that's kind of interesting, and that one thing we're really struggling with is, you know, we've got this list of projects at work that we revisit weekly and the growing list of potentials is Exciting. The problem is none of them are converting, so I'm not quite sure how to get to that next stage. But, yes, heaps of people are coming to us being like, look, we've seen, well, we've seen you do this, we're interested and like there's a couple of avenues that I'll just quickly mention that we've used to put ourselves out to the public within this realm. One of those is formants, who are the sip design partners that we work with. They run open days for that build, both mid build, so you can kind of see how the things are fitting together, and then post build, which are open to the general public. And now we've actually we've run several of those now I've got and a post build open day at my house down in Lake Harwear next Wednesday, and that's a great way of just being able to showcase your work to the general public.
Sam Brown:Basically, the house is there, they come in, formants are there where they're, the builders are there, they can come in and pick our brains, and we've had several inquiries come through that avenue. Again, nothing converted, but it's definitely been a good way of getting our work out there. And then the other way that we've other avenue that we've used is really kind of outlining ourselves as specialists, particularly with the New Zealand Green Building Council, obviously through the homestar process, and I've been invited to be an expert on the on a housing panel at the New Zealand Green Building Council housing summit in May. So it's just another way of kind of presenting yourself to the wider industry and general public as an expert in the field. And yeah, we're getting definitely getting um murmurs but nothing concrete yet. So hopefully that'll all start to sort of evolve into into proper work.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, it'll be interesting. So what you're talking about is, you know, networking and Collaboration. It's exactly.
Sam Brown:That's a great segue, because those both of those avenues once collaboration with formants and then the NZGBC thing is totally networking.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, exactly, and it'll be really interesting to hear A post event if you know the type of people you were meeting and if anything comes, comes out of it, I would say, in terms of the collaboration there's, there's plenty of opportunities.
Sam Brown:Yeah, the collaboration ones an interest, the collaboration things interesting. I found so far Anybody that we've worked with in a collaborative Sense it's been relatively one-way traffic in the sense that that sort of come to us and being like, look, we think that we can benefit from working together, we bring you work, you bring us work and everyone's happy. So far all that we've realized With the collaborators that we've worked with is that we've just given them work and nothing's come back the other way. But all you can do is sort of sit there, continue to build that relationship and buy to time and hopefully something kind of feeds back eventually.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah exactly. These things take a long time. I think that's underlying with lots of marketing.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, one thing that I find really interesting in this area is the difference between, I guess, like what you guys are traditionally typically doing, and what I'm doing is with the one-off clients. They're going to come to you for a house or a building of some description, but you're not going to come back next year and ask for another one, so your repeated customers you know clientele are quite low, whereas you know, teaming up or collaborating with a developer, for example, you're getting ongoing work consistently because you know they finish one project they're straight on to the next. So that is a form of collaboration that has been working really well for me and that I have been pushing really hard.
Sam Brown:I agree, ben, you're right in the sense that, particularly for architects that predominantly do bespoke residential work, it's you don't have repeat custom and to, I guess, to supplement that avenue of work, you do need to have sort of an offshoot, and a lot of the times architecture firms won't even tell you about them, but you need an offshoot of work that's just constant and ongoing, and you know we're fortunate that we've got. You know we present ourselves as residential architects but we still do quite a bit of hospitality and commercial work and we're actually, you know, we're doing more and more in the hospitality realm and we've got Mojo as one of our key clients now and a lot of repeat work through them. And so you know that's something that we'll probably start to lean more into from a promotional point of view is that, hey, we do more than just houses, we do this as well, but it's a whole chicken and egg thing. We haven't had the finished projects until very recently to be able to present to the wider public, you know.
Gerard Dombroski:Do you want to give us a rundown on a bit more depth?
Sam Brown:into your story.
Gerard Dombroski:I'm intrigued to see how that works. So that's heavy on the collaboration networking side of things.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, which part exactly? The development side of it?
Sam Brown:Yeah, I think if you can delve into, just like well one, what networking you do to kind of ingratiate yourself with more developers, but and then also like how how it works collaborating with them and on an ongoing basis. Would be interesting to hear about that.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, okay, well, I guess, similar to you, sam, I have the opportunity to, I guess, collaborate with another construction company as well. But a lot of developers kind of go to them. They kind of work backwards. I guess they're all about feasibility and pricing. So they start with the construction company. Because a lot of these bigger developers, because they need to know build costs at an early stage, they need to understand the numbers before they even purchase the property to make sure things will stack up. So so I kind of get a lot through that avenue through collaborating with other construction companies or directly with developers.
Ben Sutherland:At the moment, our construction side of things is only, you know, small scale, residential. So that does. Actually, I had one lady ring me the other day and she's like oh, you know, I see what you're doing in Auckland. I saw your sign out. That's awesome, which is another form of marketing can't go wrong with a good old job sign. And so she called me and she's like this is you guys, are you know, I see what you're doing here. I've got something similar I want to do, like, will you come to this open home with me and check out this project?
Sam Brown:And I'm like just, quickly hold you on that open home thing, ben. I went to an open home with a friend the other day, the house that they're looking at purchasing in Wellington. He was just like, look, you know, can you come with me and just kind of you know, as a mate, tell me what I couldn't, couldn't do? So I did that obviously just just to help a brother out.
Sam Brown:But the afterwards he was like why don't you offer this service to everybody? You know anybody, that's anybody that's looking to buy a house. He's like why don't you just say, hey look, we can come. You know, one off fee of X amount. It gets absorbed into the overall contract if you want to move ahead with us to do renovation works or what have you. But I feel like it would give buyers a lot of confidence going into a purchase.
Sam Brown:They had some an expert there beside them telling them what they could have couldn't do Interesting Avenue to Target. Just sorry, just sorry to just pause you, but you know it's interesting to hear you have that very similar experience to what I've had recently.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, I go to a fair amount of open homes, even just like being those interests. You know, I like to see, I like to see what's out there. I like to see what other architects do.
Gerard Dombroski:It's a good marketing technique.
Sam Brown:Leave your cards or tishously on the bathroom vanity.
Ben Sutherland:Honestly, I think key with the essential, the fundamental key to marketing is just being active being as active as possible in as many avenues as possible, talking to as many people, trying to get, as you know, as much built as possible. So you've got more content, like everything that every work that we generate comes from. Like us, you know either talking or doing something to actually acquire customers. Very rarely, if ever, you know we we just kind of get someone walking in the door. Yeah, activities key.
Sam Brown:And it's. That's something that we've probably only really not cottoned onto but really kind of realized. The worth of recently is that you can't wait for something to happen. You've really got to push and it's, I feel, like, you know, for a lot of us it's not necessarily in our character but, holy man, you've just got to go, got like all guns blazing and you've got to just not be afraid of the world. You know, like if what's the worst that somebody can say, oh, bugger off, we're not interested, but you know if they're, you know, for the every 10 that say bugger off, one says, yes, it's worth it.
Ben Sutherland:Oh, absolutely, I think. And so, like all of these networking events like essentially it doesn't matter if it's a potential client or potential collaboration, like just getting out there and, for example, gerard, your art, showcasing your art, you're doing an amazing job of that have you found that? Obviously, that's been working quite well for you.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, it's quite nice Socially and really cool to meet other people, like all of those exhibitions and supper in Auckland, the last one in fungeray. But every time I go up north to Auckland or something, I try to catch up with one or two people I haven't met before. One leads to one.
Ben Sutherland:Instagram is great.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I don't know. It's just nice to meet other people doing the same thing as you as well. Make friends, I guess, as it were. Yeah, like, because the other side of my niche, I guess, would be my workshop, that I make things, and there's just no real other makers in Wellington, so there's no real like anybody to hang out with.
Sam Brown:You're exhibiting at Fungare Art Museum at the moment. Right, Gerard, Do you find those sort of things a great avenue to further the opportunity to be able to present your work?
Gerard Dombroski:Definitely Like it adds to viewership, I guess, and I've had quite a few exhibitions now, and so you just it's more of a feeling Like I can't see it tangibly, but obviously people are seeing the exsyncs slowly, so to me it just feels like a slow building of awareness or visibility of my work, which been an incredibly slow process. But it's, it's working because we've got, like we've got, an article in Island magazine. It's like a just a big page about my workshop, but I don't know if people read Island magazine.
Ben Sutherland:You have to send us a copy.
Sam Brown:I was going to say you know you're talking about you're talking about that slow build, and that's an interesting thing as well, and I guess it's a, it's a hope for a lot of us. But do you feel that slow build, at some point the dam's going to burst and then you're going to be like anundated and you're going to be like oh, shit.
Gerard Dombroski:What do I do now? The workshop sites definitely getting there. Like got quite a lot of shit in the workshop to build at the moment, but I guess that's like most of the media have had is art or furniture, and the piccolo, the little house, was the first, the only, probably. Oh no, I've had a little. I had a little kiln shed in here, mac, but there's very little architecture like this. There's a building of done coming out soon in the magazine, so it'll be interesting to see if that has any change to the balance. So for all the stuff I've had, I've never had like a. I've had one email but I've never had a job come out of any of the media I've had hey.
Ben Sutherland:I've got a, I've got a question for you, just out of interest and this is to you, sam, as well has anyone done any paid marketing?
Gerard Dombroski:I did like a $10 add on some chairs because I tried to have a crack at products. So I've got like the one off commissioners that I build and then just a line of products. I mean I don't know I've done. Yeah, I really like people. I was pretty curious about it.
Sam Brown:Like and through a few different methods, like we've put down paid ads on Instagram quite a bit, paid ads on Google quite a bit, just particularly in the early days, to just get more eyes and more exposure, and what that resulted in was more followers, but no work.
Ben Sutherland:I mean, that's how it starts.
Sam Brown:We've also paid for a couple of newspaper or like advertising slots, which, in all honesty, was a total waste of time and money. Do they bring you and try to get everybody that gets newspaper just puts it straight into the firebox. So they did ring and sell the dream. We've got an interestingly a builder that we work with compound down in Queenstown. They're having a feature article in Business South magazine and business south's hounding on our door at the moment to try and pay for an advert to go alongside the feature article, and I'm like look to be honest.
Sam Brown:I just cannot see this having any benefit benefit.
Ben Sutherland:And they're like oh, I'm pretty sure we've been in that as well and had the same experience, and you get sucked in and a lot of the time.
Sam Brown:It's interesting. I don't know if you guys ever met Scotty from Scotty's construction in Wellington is an incredibly high energy, lovely guy. But I was chatting to him the other day and he was like he's like all it takes is one job. You know like he's like you know, even if you throw 10K and into advertising, all it takes is one job and you'll realize that benefit back. And he has a good point. The problem being is that we don't have that money.
Ben Sutherland:We don't have that money to advertise, yeah every other industry pays for advertising. It's just something about the I don't know acting. I also think to be honest.
Sam Brown:I mean, I don't know about you guys, but as a generally, as a small business, we run pretty close to the line and like we don't have a huge amount of just like back capital to be able to like plug into marketing, and maybe that's the shortcoming on our behalf and maybe we should annually like put together an advertising budget. We don't, but maybe we should Well is this something?
Ben Sutherland:is there some sort of creative way that I guess like architects? What are other creative ways that architects do to exhibit their products? Or data podcasts, data podcasts, absolutely.
Sam Brown:Hard, given it's not a visual medium, quite hard to showcase your work through a podcast.
Ben Sutherland:I'm here for the good, yeah, not the bad thing, by the way. I think different tactics you know.
Sam Brown:Like Ben, you talked about different tactics. One of them you know, for instance, like those open home or those open days for us are invaluable, right, and I think that's something that architects should probably look to do a bit more. You know, if you've got a project and we've just seen it with the in situ conference in Auckland, they did a trip to Waikia Island to check out some projects over there. But that was just architects presenting to architects. You should be doing that to the general public. You know you finish a super cool build. Say, hey, come in, as long as the clients are okay with it. Obviously. Say, hey, come and check it out. I think that's a great avenue to get work.
Sam Brown:Here make does their open homes, which I think like I've been to one of those in Wellington before and that was like a good mix of it's interesting because I listened to a podcast about marketing, particularly architectural marketing, last year and my biggest takeaway was like two hours long.
Sam Brown:There's a lot of waffle, but my biggest takeaway from the whole thing was architects should target people that don't know that they need or want an architect yet. And I thought that was really interesting because they were saying basically what they were saying, particularly for smaller businesses, is that by the time somebody has decided that they want to engage an architect or a designer or an artist or something they're, then they're then researching the field right. So you're instantly in competition with a bunch of people unless they're coming to you for a specific purpose. But if you target them before they know that they need you, then they'll be like I remember when, you know, gerard from Gerard Dombarowski Workshop came and talked to me that time Maybe I'll use him to do my project kind of kind of vibe, and I thought that was really interesting. And that's definitely sort of an approach that we've decided to take with our marketing is put ourselves before the public before they know that they need us.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, so that's interesting. And diving a little bit deeper, does that mean that you're talking to them before they?
Sam Brown:have generally, yeah, and I think that's like Get them young, because I guess the other way to think about it.
Ben Sutherland:What does that look like? Who do they go to once they have a project on who's the first person? Well, a lot of the time it's builders.
Sam Brown:you know we've found, particularly with residential projects, a lot of time people come to a builder before they come to an architect, and Ben interesting. I guess interestingly you know you're talking about your discussion with real estate agents. They're the first people you know. People have to buy property right and the state agent has to broker that deal generally. So they're the first people that they're up you know face to face with, and so your engagement with them, I think, is actually pretty critical.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, because that's quite interesting. Like, think about that a little bit more. How many people, how many clients that you guys have had already had the land or already had a building, you know? Like, I guess, if it's a renovation and they have lived in the house for a period of time, that might be like, okay, it's time to renovate. But most of them would be like, okay, cool, I'm looking to buy this land and build a project where I'm looking to sell my current house and buy a house.
Sam Brown:Either that or they've just recently purchased.
Gerard Dombroski:You know they've either just bought a new home and been like we need to upgrade.
Sam Brown:Or they've just built a piece of land and like we need to build. But if you're, but at that point they know that they're looking for architects, so they're shopping the field, but if you're there before that, then you're the forefront of that mind. So that's our tactic. So what are some ways you can do that? Like I said, I think it's just well, it is, it's Instagram.
Sam Brown:It's being present and I think you know one thing we briefly touched on it. You know you talked about having a site sign. It's those little things. It's when people having a sign on your car, whether that's beneficial or not, I mean we do, and I've had people been like oh, I've seen you sign around town, kind of thing before.
Gerard Dombroski:I think it's just kind of being present and constant and people subconscious helps a lot as well, yeah, I think, staying visible and then again, like using your tools to create a clear sort of message so you get sort of like minded clients. It's just so relational that you really need to really want people that you gel with it.
Ben Sutherland:So that brand identity really just comes into it. Yeah, you don't want to drink the wrong customers.
Gerard Dombroski:One of my big learnings is I think I lent real hard on thinking Arc Daily would get me heaps of work.
Ben Sutherland:I begin that promotion just to ArcTeX again.
Gerard Dombroski:You know, it's like media, media print, whereas word of mouth is pretty invaluable, like that's a pretty excellent way to get work If you just do a good job and hopefully they tell, say nice things about you, be a nice person. But I think like we've all got pretty clear understandings of what we do. And then time man, yeah, consistency.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, showing up and giving it a go.
Gerard Dombroski:Yeah, I think, being slightly tactical with your jobs, I try to be very tactical with my jobs. I only realized, like last year, that people have, like these background jobs that they don't show.
Sam Brown:Oh yeah, man, I'd say that, like 80% of the work we do, we don't portray.
Gerard Dombroski:I have a policy where I only do work if it's magazine.
Sam Brown:It's going to limit you, man.
Ben Sutherland:Yeah, good on you, you would be mind blowing at the amount of free work I do Just to chase leads. Oh man, chase and leads is a huge part of my day to day activities, absolutely man, that's a whole pod on its own, though Maybe we should wrap that up there, that sounds good. It's a good discussion. Please, you know, if you like our content, let us know and feel free to rate and subscribe and click the question.
Sam Brown:Email any questions or feedback that you might have to info at designprinciplespodcom as well.
Ben Sutherland:That's our marketing for the day.
Gerard Dombroski:Now, last but not the biggest, condolence for our visual, visual art and check Marshall for our soundbar.
Ben Sutherland:All right peace.