How architects designed a personal brand or the results of the ‘Design: Personal Brand’ intensives
At the beginning of October there was held an intensive for architects and designers ‘Design: personal brand’, organised by Plan The Best communication agency. The training was attended by 6 specialists in architecture and design. During the whole course they were accompanied by mentors and experts in business psychology, marketing, brand creation and development, digital, PR, as well as managers-practitioners: owners of well-known architectural bureaus. At the end of the intensive, the students presented their personal brand development strategies.
Read more about the training, participants' conclusions and useful tips from mentors. And at the end of the article you will be the first to learn insider information from the organisers.
The trajectory of building an architect's personal brand
Let's start from the end. The result of the Intensive was the presentation of a plan of personal development trajectory for 12 months. Each participant carefully worked out and spoke about the values and features of the personal brand, methods of their own promotion, as well as prepared a roadmap for the coming year and a strategic vision for 5 years.
Architects were trained in order to qualitatively form each block of the presentation: from positioning and goal-setting to the features of digital tools and public speaking training.
Goal setting and personal development maps
At the first lecture we discussed in detail the importance of goal-setting in life and business, analysed the scheme of building a personal brand, and learnt how to use archetypes in branding. This stage is very difficult, but extremely necessary at the very beginning of building a personal brand. Together with Ekaterina Panova, course supervisor, managing partner of Plan the Best communication agency, we practised identifying the types of famous architects and defined our own.
Business psychologist Natalia Pershina spoke about the personal development trajectory of an entrepreneur. Participants learnt how to make a roadmap for personal growth, find their key competence, competently distribute working and personal time, form a positioning and outline goals.
‘The most memorable emotionally was the lecture about ikigai and resourcefulness. Probably because I came to the course with a complete loss of energy and without a clear understanding of what to do about it. The course even exceeded my expectations. I just wanted to shake myself up and get some practical skills, but I got a comprehensive model that can be used not only in building a personal brand, but also in business in general. Besides, I feel a burst of energy and a desire to move forward,’ said Leisyan Azanbaeva, a participant of the intensiv, head of the architectural bureau KB11, about her emotions.
Communication strategy - our friend or foe?
Plan the Best Operations Director Antonina Zazovskaya and Plan the Best Communications Specialist Olga Scherbakova helped to deal with this issue. ‘The communication message is based on your positioning, which is the basis of the UTP - unique selling proposition’, - shared the speakers of this block. Specialists spoke in detail about the goals of communication strategy, target audience, communication channels, tone of voice and attributes of personal brand. Using examples of famous architects, the participants analysed their approaches to communication, went through several exercises and created their first message.
In the context of communication, it was also important to discuss sources of resourcefulness and personal effectiveness. With this in mind.
How architects designed a personal brand or the results of the ‘Design: a personal brand’ intensives.
At the beginning of October there was held an intensive for architects and designers ‘Design: personal brand’, organised by the communication agency Plan The Best. The training was attended by 6 specialists in architecture and design. During the whole course they were accompanied by mentors and experts in business psychology, marketing, brand creation and development, digital, PR, as well as managers-practitioners: owners of well-known architectural bureaus. At the end of the intensive, the students presented their personal brand development strategies.
Read more about the training, participants' conclusions and useful tips from mentors. And at the end of the article you will be the first to learn insider information from the organisers.
The trajectory of building an architect's personal brand
Let's start from the end. The result of the Intensive was the presentation of a 12-month personal development trajectory plan. Each participant carefully worked out and spoke about the values and features of the personal brand, methods of personal promotion, as well as prepared a roadmap for the coming year and a strategic vision for 5 years.
Architects were trained in order to qualitatively form each block of the presentation: from positioning and goal-setting, to the features of digital tools and public speaking training.
Goal-setting and personal development maps
At the first lecture we discussed in detail the importance of goal-setting in life and business, broke down the scheme of building a personal brand, learnt how to use archetypes in branding. This stage is very difficult, but extremely necessary at the very beginning of building a personal brand. Together with Ekaterina Panova, course supervisor, managing partner of Plan the Best communication agency, we practised identifying the types of famous architects and defined our own.
Business psychologist Natalia Pershina spoke about the personal development trajectory of an entrepreneur. The participants learnt how to make a roadmap for personal growth, find their key competences, allocate their working and personal time competently, form a positioning and set goals.
‘The most memorable emotionally was the lecture about ikigai and resourcefulness. Probably because I came to the course with a complete loss of energy and without a clear understanding of what to do about it. The course even exceeded my expectations. I just wanted to shake myself up and get some practical skills, but I got a comprehensive model that can be used not only in building a personal brand, but also in business in general. Besides, I feel a burst of energy and a desire to move forward,’ said Leisyan Azanbaeva, a participant of the intensiv, head of the architectural bureau KB11, about her emotions.
Communication strategy - our friend or foe?
Antonina Zazovskaya, Plan the Best Operations Director, and Olga Scherbakova, Plan the Best Communications Specialist, helped to deal with this question. ‘The communication message is based on your positioning, which is the basis of UTP - unique selling proposition’, - shared the speakers of this block. Specialists spoke in detail about the goals of communication strategy, target audience, communication channels, tone of voice and attributes of personal brand. Using examples of famous architects, the participants analysed their approaches to communication, went through several exercises and created their first message.
In the context of communication, it was also important to discuss sources of resourcefulness and personal effectiveness. Ekaterina Guvakova, strategist and moderator of Skolkovo Business School, helped the participants with this.
In the finale of this block, architectural blogger Margarita Podgorna (@podgorit) told her story of creating a blog that works for all the activities of Margarita and her bureau Heads group.
Content rules the world
That's why our participants had to learn the main chips and secrets of content creation: text, photo, video. We discussed how to present their work competently in social networks and beyond with Konstantin Kaminsky, the author of the manual ‘How to tell about architecture to be read’,
copywriting teacher on the Skillbox platform. And Ilya Ivanov, architectural photographer No. 1 in Russia, spoke about visual content: how to approach photography of architecture and landscaping, and what advantages high-quality images offer. Website, clickable headlines, articles that you want to read, text structure, mesmerising photos and videos - participants could learn about all this and more in the content block of the intensive.
Digital in the architectural environment or how does Perfomance marketing work?
Participants had to learn new promotion formats: targeted advertising, live broadcasts, video content, personal blogs. Architects learnt why content policy is needed, how to use these and other digital tools to bring leads to the site, and later new customers or employees, as well as how to pull off an advertising campaign so that the brand reputation starts working for you. Maxim Panov, managing partner of Plan the Best communication agency, and Antonina Zazovskaya helped to understand these subtleties.
‘It was useful for me to learn more about Instagram management, media publications, social media. I can advise others to also blog, talk about their activities, don't be shy’ - Yakov Abutov, Intensive participant, founder of Archikompany, shared his feelings.
The art of self-presentation
Statistics say that the fear of public speaking ranks second after the fear of death. Therefore, the participants had a serious immersion and a whole cycle of training on public speaking and presentation. 6 architects trained their voice, speech and charisma with Sergey Vasiliev, a public speaking teacher, actor, director and journalist, learnt the secrets of successful presentation with Mikhail Shatrov, curator of academic raves MARSH Labs, partner of NLTR practice, and also tried themselves as media experts with journalist Olga Mamaeva at the media training on effective interaction with the media.
‘I was hooked by the whole block about speeches and presentations. On them we got knowledge that can be immediately put into practice. After the intensiv I once again come to the conclusion that it is important to learn, develop and communicate. In addition to professional skills, I would advise colleagues in my field to work on smm promotion and public speaking. Nowadays it is an integral part of any profession. The most important thing is not to be afraid of mistakes, gain experience and practice,’ says Shushanik Khachatryan, participant of the Intensive, founder of STUDIO SHOO.
‘The best remembered lectures were the ones followed by workshops. It was an amazing feeling after the speech technique workshop. I didn't realise you could improve the sound of your voice so quickly. I would recommend the intensive to those who want to change and improve, but are a bit lost where to start and how. I would also recommend it to those who value more professional meanings in their work than financial ones, and to those who are afraid of the word ‘marketing’, - said Kristina Ukhina, participant of the Intensive, architect.
The importance of community and networking
During the Intensive, the participants visited architectural companies and talked to the heads of Wowhaus, Boris Uborevich-Borovsky and Buromoscow, Margarita Podgornaya. These were frank conversations about the development of their brand with their creators. Participants asked exciting questions, as well as heard useful insights, first-hand advice for architects, and listened to curiosities and case studies on resolving difficulties. All of this also helped shape the trajectory of the brand. Personal acquaintance with industry leaders created a unique atmosphere, networking and socialising, immersed the participants in the modern architectural business environment.
Final test
The most important test for the participants was the presentation of their personal brand trajectory at the end of the intensive. The presentations turned out to be colourful, unique and very elaborate, both in terms of content and presentation. Participants were able to build a personalised trajectory based on their capabilities and unique personality characteristics.
‘Each of the participants did a tremendous amount of work on themselves! Everyone's final presentations are identical to their personality and developmental needs, because everyone came with their own goal, and everyone managed to carefully consider their unique path to that goal,’ - Ekaterina Panova, course supervisor.
Serious work was done by the participants of the ‘Design: Personal Brand’ Intensive - Yakov Abutov, Kristina Ukhina, Yulia Gridneva, Evgeny Sofronov, Shushanik Khachatryan and Leisyan Azanbaeva. The interaction with specialists does not end after the end of the Intensive. The Agency will continue to work with the participants: to check the effectiveness of the tools used, the implementation of the roadmap, to help with the necessary consultations.
‘It is interesting for us to form a community around the project, we see great potential in communication with our graduates after the programme. We all grow together, we get closer during the training, and we want to continue to enjoy successes and help in crisis situations. We do not lose touch with our graduates and are always open for counselling and further individual work", - Ekaterina Panova.
The article is coming to an end and the good news is not. The Plan The Best team is planning to repeat the ‘Design: Personal Brand’ course in the near future, and now we offer to deal with business at our ‘Design: Business’ intensives for architects, designers and all representatives of creative industries.
Since you have read this article to the end, it means that you are interested in development in this field. That's why Plan The Best communication agency gives you a discount on the next intensive.
