Architecture and marketing

What happens when an architect stops thinking about building spaces and starts thinking about building brands?

Positioning, consumer journey, target customer, touchpoints, value proposition, unique selling point (USP), and P&L (profit and loss) may not be typical terms in an architect’s lexicon, but when “architecture thinking” is leveraged in a broader context as “design thinking,” interesting synergies emerge between architecture and marketing. This can be an advantage for architects interested in utilizing a design background to create brands and brand experiences that engage people in multi-sensory dynamic environments.

While working with international and local brands in China, STUDIO DOHO realized that brands often engage marketing and advertising companies to implement brand activations because of the strength of their focus on human behavior and their ability to engage consumers across numerous touchpoints, which is anytime a consumer has any type of interaction with a brand.

While challenging the assumed dichotomy of architecture and marketing, similarities consistently emerged in the creative-thinking process to solve a design problem or case, yet a very different set of deliverables produced from the two disciplines.

Architecture by nature is a people-driven endeavor, yet when considered through the lens of marketing, it has the opportunity to engage consumers on a deeper, experience-rich level through the similar storytelling process architects use to define architectural concepts. Marketing helps these stories come to life through designing full brand concepts that define all levels of customer experience and engagement.

The real resonance between architecture and marketing is to apply the standard generalist thinking of an architect to an even broader domain. This breadth of perspective can allow for unique opportunities outside the traditional path of an architect and leverages architecture training to expand further and create concepts, experiences, and new brands. Key clients, represented by the marketing department of a brand, often need more than standard architecture or interior design services traditionally offered to create the full concepts required in their briefs. Success in this arena required STUDIO DOHO to consider how we could stretch our service offerings to go far beyond the traditional architecture model. Building on these insights, STUDIO DOHO began to evolve from an interior-design-based practice to a brand-driven creative consultancy that works to create a wide range of brand concepts and strives to bridge the gap between architecture and marketing. Bridging the gap

“Architecture is not so much a knowledge of form, but a form of knowledge.”—Bernard Tschumi

A simple comparison between architecture and marketing can be found when considering the difference between building a house and building a home.

The intrinsic value of four built walls versus the value of the meaning given to those walls by the people who live within them is very different. While some esteemed pieces of architecture have certainly elevated to have meaning beyond their walls, buildings can still stand without achieving this level. However, it is critical in marketing to create meaningful brands that live in the hearts of consumers because brands inherently lack a physical nature, so they will simply vanish if they do not achieve this level of endearment and meaning.

Similarly, a house will stand even when it is empty, yet the relationships of the people living within its walls are critical to success in creating a home.

This differentiation became clear when we began to design whole brand concepts instead of a single space and required our team to develop multidisciplinary skill sets. For example, the deliverables required to create a new food and beverage (F&B) brand concept for Budweiser necessitated a wide range of design thinking to consider all aspects of the project. First, we had to define a clear, concise concept and write a brand story that resonated with our defined target consumers. After the Unique Selling Point (USP—which is the thing that

Above: Excerpt from Brand Playbook for Budweiser China Localization. Image Courtesy of STUDIO DOHO and Budweiser

makes you stand out in the market—was defined, we simultaneously developed the 3D design of a spec interior space while hiring and collaborating with a chef to develop the food menu that supported the concept. We then organized food tastings to develop the dishes, developed a P&L to define the business case, and provided menu pricing based on the dishes to create a viable business model.

The other branding assets were then further developed, including graphic design, naming, logo, staffing requirements, uniform design, and other collateral design that, all together, created an entire F&B concept. The final product was a brand book that tells the complete story of all aspects of the concept and financial planning, which can then be implemented in the market.

Design thinking allowed us to apply our architecture skills on a much broader scale to think like a marketing company, while enabling us to deliver this type of product.

Positioning our company When we began thinking like marketers, we realized it required us to shift the perception of our own company. Architecture and interior design no longer defined the full scope of our services and became a limiting factor for potential projects. Our value proposition—or what we promise to deliver to clients— had to be redefined to help us break free from the traditional architecture thinking of creating spaces, places, and environments.

We came to realize that our ambition was found more in engaging the people who visited our places, rather than creating the place itself. This helped us to take a human-centric and personal approach to crafting the experience, memory, and perspective of the consumer, which we articulated in our company’s vision statement:

We create excitement This guiding principle allows us to think in a much broader context than traditional architects. Instead of focusing on creating spaces, places, or environments, we above all else aim to create excitement for all consumers who engage with our projects. This shift in perspective helped us innovate our practice model and step further into the realm of marketing.

The why This is an exciting time to disrupt traditional typologies such as F&B and retail, but to be relevant in a new generation of tech-

WE CREATE EXCITEMENT

Above: STUDIO DOHO IP asset representing the brand vision. Image Courtesy of STUDIO DOHO.

nology, architects must think more like marketers to innovate. An architect’s advantage is the knowledge and understanding to translate ideas into space, but to design consumer experiences requires more holistic thinking in telling the story of a brand.

Shifting our mindset to become master storytellers, like marketers, allows the architect to craft narratives that drive the spirit of a project. When this is achieved, it can be articulated into concepts with deeper meaning. For example, we recently worked with Coca-Cola to bring awareness of their recycling and sustainability initiatives in Shanghai.

Coca-Cola, as a part of its “World Without Waste” initiative, aims to recycle the equivalent of 100% of its bottles by 2030. However, because of regulations in China, recycled bottles are not permitted for food use by consumers. In response to these limitations, the company worked with vendors to create a range of fabrics and building acrylics from the recycled bottles. The fabrics are then produced into a line of merchandise including shirts, hoodies, bags, and umbrellas.

Despite the great initiative, Coca-Cola needed help to tell this story and bring consumer awareness to its efforts. We leveraged our storytelling skills to narrate a concept we called the “Flower Explosion.”

Fabrics made from recycled bottles were handmade into flowers, which were installed in a temporary exhibition “exploding” out of a Coca-Cola bottle. This visual representation of the lifecycle of the product—bottle to fabric to flower to exploding from the bottle—gave instant understanding to the story.

Clockwise from left: 1. Flower Explosion exhibit featuring handmade flower using fabrics made from recycled bottles. 2. Retail exhibit of Coca-cola merchandise made from recycled bottle fabrics. 3. Infinity Spiral exhibit representing the infinite life cycle of a recycled plastic bottle in colors of Coca-Cola gradient Visual Identity.

Images Courtesy of STUDIO DOHO and NOT YOUR TYPE.

The exhibit also featured a gradient “infinite” spiral made of acrylics from recycled bottles, which represents the brand’s new color gradient and shows the long-term sustainable thinking of the brand. This project was in collaboration with Not Your Type.

Architecture thinking to create a brand “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room.”—Jeff Bezos

Almost every aspect of society can be considered a brand. New York City is a brand. L.A. is a brand. Your university is a brand, and the USA is a brand. Your football team is a brand, and your favorite player on the team is a separate brand. Even the architecture company you work for is a brand.

The concept of a brand extends far beyond the logo on your cellphone or the emblem on your car. It is a personal or public statement of what you stand for, what you do, and what you believe in. Yet it is also a larger representation of the collective group of people who find similar values in your beliefs.

When an architect builds a building, the building can be considered the architecture, but the collective memories, experience, and engagement of the people with the building or the space inside becomes the brand of the building. Brand equity, or how people think/feel about your brand, can change over time and is one of the most important considerations in marketing.

These ideas became a driving factor when we worked with Zippo to create an experience center that provided a creative outlet for the brand. The project is a combination of creative studio, office, retail laboratory, cafe, and social hub for the Zippo community. We worked to create a space that captured the brand’s DNA in a spatial environment while utilizing storytelling to create an engaging concept for the brand.

The most rewarding aspect of the project came after the opening, when the client received feedback that people who visited the space said their perceptions of the brand shifted from its being a traditional product to a creative, innovative company.

Above: Render of Workshop at Zippo Edge with custom product Visual Merchandising. Image Courtesy of STUDIO DOHO and Zippo.

Lessons learned We believe the future will require more close collaboration and offices that can provide a wide spectrum of deliverables. The skill set of an architect has a unique advantage to create engaging environments, yet when viewed through the lens of marketing, architects can create full brand experiences that have lasting impact.

Architecture provides a strong foundation for our business. But we view architecture as a launch pad, rather than a fixed pedestal, to propel us to apply design thinking to a broad range of problems and scenarios.

The role of the architect in the future will continue to be more dynamic, and our generalist thinking can help us have a broader reach and impact in society. It is critical to remain agile and flexible in our rapidly changing world and continue to find innovative ways to leverage our architecture training.

STUDIO DOHO was included in the prestigious 2020 Architectural Digest Top 100 Young Firms (AD100 YOUNG) in China.

Jason Holland, AIA

Holland is the co-founder of STUDIO DOHO, a brand-driven creative consultancy in Shanghai, China. Holland was the 2019-2020 AIA Shanghai treasurer, and the 2020 COF Grant recipient for the Emerging Professionals Program.