When it comes to first impressions of your brand, your digital marketing platforms are critical—including websites, social media channels, and overall digital marketing collateral. In today's digital world, these are arguably more influential than a company's physical location. Low-quality, grainy, blurry, or dated visuals will probably reflect poorly on your brand and your business—and let's be real, that's not how most firms want to be seen.
In Episode 38 of The Shortlist, Fadi Asmar and Kyle Davis of MOS's Digital Marketing Team, share their insights on the power of visuals in digital marketing, including the equipment and resources you need to create on-brand digital content. Listen in to the team's tips and lessons learned from countless projects and brand image shoots for AEC firms.
CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 5
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to The Shortlist.
We are exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.
I'm your host, Wendy Simmons, and each episode, I'll be joined by one of my team members from Middle of Six to answer your questions.
Today, we have two guests from the Middle of Six team.
We have Fadi Asmar and Kyle Davis.
They are both working in kind of the digital marketing area for Middle of Six, although they jump in on all kinds of other marketing tasks for our clients.
Because their roles are so related, it felt like a great combination of people to bring on the podcast today and talk a little bit about the power of visuals in digital marketing.
So Fadi and Kyle, welcome to The Shortlist.
Fadi, welcome to...
Is this your first podcast?
yes, this is my first ever.
First podcast.
Here we go.
The power of visuals.
First podcast ever.
So, yeah.
You're so brave.
I really appreciate that, you know, when we first met you the middle or late end of 2022, and you were thinking about coming from Brooklyn to Tacoma, Washington, I was like, okay, that sounds like a huge culture shock.
How are you enjoying the Pacific northwest?
Well, thank you for having me.
It's super exciting to be part of this team, which I've been here for two months almost, and it's been a wonderful journey so far.
And what brought me was always wanted to move west Coast, and that was something that we've been planning for years.
And when the right moment came and joining the team at Middle of Six, it was the right moment, and moved all the way to Washington, and here I am, Tacoma, Seattle area, and it's been really a wonderful time.
Yeah, well, we love having you on our team.
You're adding a lot of talent, for sure, and we're excited to have you doing more and more in the digital marketing area, but this extra skill that you have as being a photographer and being super passionate about it, I can't wait to see that play out too in our work.
So I think this is the perfect podcast, right?
Digital marketing, visuals, photography, videography, everything is coming together.
Moving across the country and doing your first podcast, so what could go wrong?
You know, we don't have it as part of our formal interviewing process.
sometimes it comes up like, hey, have you heard about our podcast?
How do you feel about being on a podcast?
Or sometimes we forget to ask, and then when someone starts, we're just like, let's record a podcast.
Oh, by the way.
Yeah.
So I know that it's not an easy position to be in, but I really appreciate you being here.
And Kyle for playing the role of producer and podcast guest today.
Yeah, look at us.
We have three legitimate professional quality microphones going all at once.
It's another first.
We are really stepping up.
I was like, could I get a microphone at my house?
Absolutely.
Done.
Let's do that.
24 hours later, unboxing.
Thank you, Amazon.
So I want to know, Fadi, what got you interested in photography, videography?
How did you learn about the power of visuals in digital marketing at the beginning of your career?
What was your entry point there?
yes.
So I would separate this question into like photography, which is very kind of different than my interest in marketing and the visual world later on with my career.
But photography, I can say, goes back as far as I was like a teenager.
So I would just steal my mom's camera and take photos.
I that's all what I remember.
Digital was not a thing yet, so it was just film.
And I got that interest in taking photos, landscape photos back then, and even sometimes street photography.
So it's been something I've always pursued and enjoyed doing.
So obviously, my career choices were influenced by things I love.
I studied urban planning, and that's how I ended up in the kind of AEC world.
And that's where, with time, I got more interested in combining my interests, my personal interest in photography, and my daily work in marketing.
And it just became as a marketing person, photography is part of our daily work, and I applied a lot into what we do on a daily basis.
What about you, Kyle?
Do you have a similar story for your role in marketing and how visuals can play in that?
I definitely wasn't taking photographs with film, but when I got out of college as more of a literature major, English major, I actually got into like visuals on the web just through, believe it or not, cutting the background out of photos of golf clubs, because I was working for a place that sold golf clubs.
So I was just photoshopping a bunch of tees and golf balls and all this stuff.
But then later on in my career, when I moved to Bellingham, I worked for an outfit that sold attachments for skid steers.
So a skid steer is like a bobcat.
It's those little four wheeled pieces of equipment, machines.
At the skid steer place, we did a ton of photo and video, and that was actually a really fun and educational experience for me, is working for a place that invested very heavily in their YouTube channel, in their social media.
There was a lot of high quality equipment and a lot of emphasis put on photography and videography.
So it was a total jump into the deep end, crash course, editing video, editing photos, scheduling shoots, planning out shoots, learning how to tell stories that way.
And it was later on in my career and later on in my adulthood, but I instantly became extremely interested and passionate about it.
And when I joined Middle of Six, I've looked for every opportunity to kind of continue that journey for sure.
Well, that's great.
From both of you, your stories there, it's the visual photography, videography, and being creative in that medium has been something that you can bring into your work to actually enhance the work you're doing for your, I don't know, the businesses you're working at or your clients now in this case, but then also enhancing your own enjoyment and fulfillment of the work you're producing.
Instead of being, I wish I had that image, I wish I had a snippet of that video, going out there and like, well, I'll just go get it, and that's what I want for this.
And that's pretty amazing.
Not everyone can do that.
That brings us to the crux of this conversation today, which is the power of visuals in digital marketing.
For you both, whoever wants to jump in first, for AEC, for our industry, why do you think the visual element is so important?
Why is it so powerful?
And Kyle, does it win over the words, since you're the words guy?
I don't know.
What a question.
Right.
What a conundrum.
I think the simple answer I want to say is yes.
And I'm almost like, hesitant to say it, because when you work in digital marketing, or you work in any kind of marketing, it does seem like, oh, content is king, writing is king.
But man, even just in the five years of being at Middle of Six that I've been here, it just really seems like a picture is worth a thousand words seems to become more and more prevalent in the way that I view a lot of the work that we do.
All the boring cliches we say all the time, you know, everyone's attention span is getting shorter.
People just want to get the information.
They want to get in and out.
I think they're cliches for a reason.
I think that's what's happening.
You want to be able to give folks the ability to engage with your content at whatever level they're comfortable with or what they're interested in.
And by having really strong visuals, you are guaranteed to grab the attention and interest at least at the very highest level, the most instantaneous level.
And then if someone wants to go read the paragraph, click the button, learn more, that's all well and good.
But if you have that really compelling video or photo right off the jump, you're going to get your message across very quickly.
And if that's all you accomplish, then you could probably be pretty satisfied with that effort.
And to add to that, I think especially in the AEC world, a photo is a testament to the work, right?
You know, that photograph proves all these years of design and hard work and what it led to.
So without that, you don't even have the evidence anymore.
So it does complement the text.
I'm not undermining the text and the value of content, but the photo is that evidence, and it has to be extremely professional so that it's conveying the hard work of all these teams working on one project.
It takes years for these buildings to be part of the city skyline or anywhere they are.
But the photograph is the main testament to it.
And then everything else comes secondary at that point.
You mentioned the professionalism.
I couldn't agree more.
It doesn't matter how expensive or how prestigious the project is, if you take a poor photo of it and put it on a website or on a social media post, it's not going to convey the professionalism and the sophistication that you want it to.
And a bad photo can make Rainier Tower look like crap.
I think of it as almost like a branding exercise where it's like that first touch point with your brand or the work that you do.
If it's not clean, clear, professional, you risk being interpreted as unprofessional if the quality of the image is poor.
And again, we're talking about the snap of your fingers.
That's how quickly we're making these judgment calls.
I mean, you can go to someone's website, see one blurry photo and be like, well, that's not a professional firm.
And whether that's fair or not, that's still kind of what's happening.
Yeah, those first impression type things.
And we do have those immediate reactions to what we're seeing and what we're reading.
I mean, same thing could be said if you catch a grammatical error or spelling error on a website.
It's shocking.
Totally.
But it takes a little bit longer to read to get to something like that.
But you can see an image in a heartbeat and make a decision.
What about, because you were kind of alluding to this in both of your descriptions here, but also conveying something that's emotional about the people, the culture.
I feel like that is an element that we see.
And while you can describe that in words, it does take a little bit longer to fully describe that.
So tell me about how the visuals can help represent a firm and what their values are, what they care about, who their people are.
First of all, those photos, the culture, showing the firm's culture, you're not going to be able to describe it.
And you can talk and talk.
And at the end of the day, a lot of these descriptions tend to be similar, more or less.
The main differentiation is when you see the actual people, that space where they are interacting, collaborating, working together, that's the main differentiation point.
Everything else is going to be supporting what you're showing.
And it's kind of giving people or your clients a window, a peek to see how your office looks like.
How do you work?
What?
Who are these people that we are working with behind those screens on a daily basis and how they're interacting?
And the spaces we interact in are very important.
It's part of our culture.
It's part of what we do.
And it's going to affect how we produce work and how we interact with others.
So it is really important to give that.
And it's not only showing the firm's culture, but also even in photography, when we're taking an architectural photography, it's super important to have that human scale, people walking, interacting with the space.
It just gives more context.
It gives more dynamics to the photograph.
So these are very important.
And just to convey a message is easier when you have people, people relate more to it.
And from my experience, I've always seen, you know, managing different social media platforms.
Whenever you have an, you post an image with people in it, you get way more interactions with it, more likes, more, you know, hits, versus just plain photos with no people showing that space.
So that tells you a lot how culture photos are super important.
People like to see other people.
So just think about it from that angle, why it matters, really.
I feel like I should have been counting the amount of times you just said people there, because that was absolutely my point as well, is we often tell clients, you know, we talk about differentiators, we talk about your brand, how you might build a building different or better than everybody else.
But at the end of the day, one of the most unique things you have is your team, your people, nobody else has your team, nobody else has your people.
And so we often say it's like a show, don't tell exercise, where you can make choices around how you portray your people and your firm, whether you're the type of firm that shows people laughing and joking around, or whether you show people with their sleeves rolled up and collaborating over a drawing, or whether you're using a lot of color or a lot of neutral tones.
I mean, there's a ton of individual choices you can make that's appropriate for your brand.
But at the end of the day, it's the people that are in the building that are going to make the difference.
And that's what the competition or what other firms don't have.
And so I think it's very important to show that and to tell that story visually is really powerful.
So we get to work with dozens and dozens of clients every year.
Not all of them are new to us when they're they're coming and engaging with Middle of Six.
But the thing is, is that we get to see on the inside what a lot of firms have as far as their visual assets.
From your perspectives, what do we commonly see?
What are you commonly recommending?
And for the marketers or principles who are listening to the podcast, then maybe some of this will resonate and they'll say, oh yeah, that's us, that's me.
That's what I've been saying or whatever it is.
So let's dig into that.
What do we see with our clients?
Yeah, I think very generally to paint with a broad brush.
Most of our clients don't have strong visuals or if they do, even our larger clients, they might have spent a bunch of money on a photo shoot but it could have been two, three years ago and unfortunately, this stuff ages pretty quickly and older, lower quality photos really stick out like a sore thumb.
And it could just be the clothing people are wearing, it could be the office and the environment that they're in, maybe you've changed offices.
The composition of your team has probably changed, so a lot of those collaboration photos can feel out of date if they're not showing the newer workforce that you have.
oftentimes, you want to highlight the diversity of your team and maybe that's not coming through.
So, I would say that photography often is the number one thing that we recommend to folks who are undergoing a new website or a branding exercise.
We're talking digital here, but you're going to get a lot of bang for your buck by investing in this, because not only are you going to show it on your digital channels, you're going to work it into your proposals, your brochures, even job site signage.
I mean, anything that is related to AEC marketing can typically be enhanced by high quality visuals.
You're not going to make that choice all the time, but to have those present day photographs in the hopper, it just is going to give you so many more opportunities and avenues to explore when you think about conveying your brand both digitally as well as through other channels.
And Kyle, to your point, to answer when a photo might look dated with the clothing and all that, that's why it's super important to coordinate these things, have a plan, how you want to represent your firm, your culture, make people wear neutral colors, certain colors.
I call it always timeless, we have timeless fashion, so just kind of give hands to your, to people how they can present themselves that day, you know, you're not taking photos on daily basis to show that.
So dedicate some time to spend, it is an investment and just make it look the best possible.
And it's the same when when a quality of an image does not meet the project, it's just it's a waste of all these years of investing in this work and working hard to get to the final results.
So I think for all clients that we work with, it's very, very important to do that last milestone, invest in your project that little extra and provided more with professional photography for the architecture and then your firm every few years, not necessarily even every year, every two to three years, five years even, invest in that.
It just keeps it up to date.
You're showing your work, your people, and you're just competing on those fronts because we're very visual people today more than ever.
After the pandemic, we spend even way more time behind our screens, so we're constantly bombarded with hundreds of millions of visuals.
I think, I can't even say how many per day, but we're really, we're constantly navigating through one visual to another.
So like you said, anything that doesn't look good, it's gonna stick out.
So you're saying like wear your tie-dye sweatshirt, like wear your Stranger Things hat, like hold up your iPhone up to your ear because a few years from now is gonna look totally timeless and no one's gonna know the difference.
Please don't.
I was even saying five years being like giving you time because with everything happening around us, like two years is a long time now.
Things are changing within two to three years.
It's drastic changes.
So photography is also not cheap.
It's an investment.
So there are ways to consider how you can do it, plan it in a way that you can maximize on this investment and how you can use it.
So there are tricks here and there or tips, how do you think about it?
Ask people, there are a lot of resources to help you and then when you're working with a photographer, make sure that they give you those hints.
They work with you.
So it is the best photography you can have.
You get more mileage from your investment.
And even though it is your firm's writing a check to spend, I don't know, $2,000 or $5,000 to have some brand photography or photos of your people working in their environment, you know, that kind of thing.
That's what we call brand photography for professional services, you know, where you don't have a product per se, but it's your people that are really that element.
That amount, it pays dividends.
I actually almost can't think of another thing that is so valuable.
I'm sure after we're done recording, I'm like, oh, yes, of course, here's this other thing that's quite valuable.
But one session, $2,500, getting 25 to 50 images, you know, varies across the country, of course, and the licensing fees.
But you then have this whole library to put in all kinds of places and to help tell stories and to you never know where it might need to show up on a front office screen or in an invitation to a retirement party.
I mean, all these things for your business.
So I can't imagine that you would go wrong.
Maybe the thing is selecting the photographer or the videographer who's doing that work and making sure you're getting someone of really good quality.
Yeah, that's a great point.
And it's almost like you can't even quantify the cost of like the frustration of your team rolling through like the same seven folders of old photos and pulling their hair out because nothing's right and it doesn't sing and it doesn't look right.
And as someone who has spent a ton of time in Photoshop, manipulating poor quality or older photos to try to put lipstick on them to make them up to modern standards, you can do a pretty mediocre job with a lot of effort.
But at the end of the day, you're still going to spend a lot of time and money and energy and you're still going to know the difference.
There's no hiding it no matter how hard you work, no matter what tricks you know in Photoshop, you can do OK, but it's never going to really fool anybody.
100 percent.
Don't overspend time fixing something that doesn't look good already.
So you're just adding more frustration to it.
And it's just like you said, Kyle, it's going to stick out even more sometimes.
So it's very, very important to invest in photography.
And, you know, if you don't have the right photo, just plan on getting those photos and just do it for your marketing folks.
They're going to be like kids in a candy store.
Like we have the benefit or the privilege of working with so many different clients.
So we often get that folder of here's your 50 or your 100 or whatever brand new photos for your campaign or for your website or for your advertising.
And it's like, yes, we have it.
Instead of searching for something that isn't there, I'm going to find what I need and I'm going to be able to flex my creativity and just like really elevate this entire thing.
I mean, it's going to have knock on effects throughout the entire project or the entire process.
Like you're going to feel it.
You're going to see it.
I'm working on a project right now, just just kicking it off.
And one of the biggest recommendations is to get rid of all the stock photography.
It happens to be a 50 page document that is, it's all the worst kind of stock photography because it's really too shiny and clean for construction.
I mean, at least now there is some good stock photography where it feels a little more genuine.
And in this case, we could actually use something like that because it's not specific to one client per se.
Yeah, I was going to toot my own horn and say like, I am a master of finding free stock photography that doesn't suck, but that's probably not something to be all that proud of.
Well, I think it's a good little chime in comment.
So how does videography play into this?
Well, as I just learned from having watched the Fablemen's, you know, video is just a bunch of photographs arranged in a sequence and run through a machine at a very quick rate, say like 24 frames a second or something like that.
But obviously, I think everything that photography does, video can also do, and it can also do quite a bit more from the storytelling perspective.
We're talking about a medium where we can include audio, we can include the voices of the people who are in your firm.
We can not only tell a story visually, we can literally tell a story.
So we're seeing a lot of more appetite for video in a lot of projects, and I think that it becomes appropriate in a lot of ways.
It's once again, unbelievably efficient in its ability to tell a story in a quick amount of time.
Even if it's just a montage on a website for 60 seconds, you can show what your office looks like, what your people look like when they're working together and collaborating.
You can show a clip of machinery or materials or building going down on site.
You can show how clean and professional your job sites are.
There's just so much that can be conveyed.
It's another thing that we think is a great investment for a lot of projects.
One thing I noticed from, you know, especially in AEC, in the AEC world, we have a lot of technical content.
And I think video comes here very, very handy because you want to tell the process.
sometimes the process is more than more important than the end result.
You know, the building is there, it's built, you know, but there's so many, many hours into doing where we got there.
So documenting that process is very important.
And if it's a very technical concept, technical research and whatever the team was working on, hard to convey even in words sometimes, video is there to tell that story very efficiently.
That could resonate to a much larger audience.
And people like seeing people, like I said before, and this is one way to introduce your firm in a more personalized way and really convey very technical concepts that your clients would appreciate to hear directly and understand from you what you're doing, why you're investing so much time into X to deliver this service, and why the service matters.
So these are very, very technical concepts.
And to write about this, you're automatically excluding a lot of people from reading this content, and it's only appealing to engineers.
But when you ask the engineers in a video, and tell me more about this in a way that we can all understand in simpler words, then you're appealing to a much larger audience.
And I think video is very handy when it comes to that, which photography does not necessarily do that.
We've mentioned this in other podcasts too, but it's worth mentioning here as well, that video is showing up in awards submittals.
So that's a place that not exactly totally the digital marketing realm, but it's related.
So if you're capturing a video for anything to tell the story of your project, you might be able to use it in an awards submittal.
And then also more and more in proposals themselves.
So Fadi, to your point, that is something we're just on the verge of having that be more interactive in the proposal round itself, or maybe bringing things to the interview.
So tons of use for video if you start getting in the habit, exercising that muscle of recording and getting people comfortable in front of the camera, then you can use it for all types of different marketing objectives.
Absolutely.
I mean, in the last few years, the amount of awards programs that we're asking for video as part of the submission has doubled if not more.
So there's that need for video for all sorts of award submissions.
And I think the pandemic made that even more kind of a need.
So that's part of telling the overall story for the project.
Well, there are countless ways to check the box on getting photography and video and other visuals for your marketing, and anywhere from the iPhone in your pocket to super high end professional teams going out to the job site or whatever.
Kyle, you know, what are your thoughts on kind of that whole spectrum?
Yeah, the way that I like to think about it is sort of in a tiered form where you can go quick, easy and cheap.
You could go in-depth, expensive, more comprehensive.
And then obviously there's going to be a middle ground and a lot of room in between those two extremes.
I think on the quick, easy, cheap side, you're still going to get a lot of bang for your buck.
If you hire a professional photographer to come out for a day or a half day, you're still going to see a lot of really good results.
I like to think of it as like a floor razor.
A lot of weaknesses in your marketing are going to be eliminated pretty quick by having strong visuals.
You're going to be able to apply it throughout your brand, and you're going to see a lot of impact pretty quickly.
Having things be so quick, you kind of get like one shot at it.
So it can put a little strain on your logistics, getting your team together.
It's kind of like get everybody together, make sure we nail the timing, make sure we nail what we need to get and we're moving on.
It can be a little rushed that way.
But other than that, it's a very adequate option for a lot of firms.
Yeah, I mean, you have to start from somewhere and this is very, you know, it's a good investment and there's always a good return for these types of investments you do for your firm and just start with it.
And once you do it, it just becomes a practice.
And from there, you learn from the first time, first time might not be a perfect execution.
You learn from it and then you do it better the next time.
And then you just become more and more efficient with it.
But it's a crucial and very, very important investment for your firm, for your work.
It just shows and it really adds value.
Okay, what if you have some more money to spend?
How do you plan that?
How do you justify it?
If you want to go all the way and invest some time and money in this, I think the main benefit you're going to see from that investment is sort of a brand differentiator where other firms might not have such in-depth assets.
They're not going to have the photography.
They're not going to have the videography that you have.
You're going to have opportunity to tell much deeper stories with a larger investment.
So we're talking like multiple videos on multiple topics.
You might have a video for the home page of your website.
We're also starting to see more experiential use of video in the marketing material.
So like for a website, for example, you might just land on a page and where you're typically looking at a gallery of photos, maybe one or two of them are moving.
Maybe it's a time lapse.
Maybe it's folks walking through a job site in slow motion, but it just adds another layer to that experience that a bunch of flat images can't provide.
And when we're talking about creating videos to tell these stories, you can do a company overview video and tell a very quick, cohesive story about your company very quickly, showcase the firm culture.
You could do a recruiting video where you have people speak about their experiences working for your firm, maybe what it was like changing from one firm to the next, and how things are so great at their current position, what makes the firm different, how they value and treat their employees, or really any other specific stories or case studies that is unique to your firm.
We worked with a group who had archival documentation of every single project they had ever built over the almost 100 year history of their company.
And when we walked into that room and saw the care and attention and the legacy that was being presented in this room, we were like, this is instantly a video because literally nobody else has this but you.
Like, this should be something that is screamed from the rooftops.
And I would encourage folks to look for those special, unique stories to push out into the world.
And to your point, Kyle, I think when you have a story like that, that's when it really makes the most sense to invest in that.
Yeah, that's a good point.
And sometimes, you might not have the story there yet.
So just be careful when you need it.
Don't overdo things.
Don't try to think so hard.
If it doesn't work for you, it's perfectly fine.
If you don't have that type of content yet, you might be working towards it.
So it doesn't mean you have to have this so that you're competing now.
No, it's really what is true to you, what is authentic to you.
So if that helps your story, it adds more value, then definitely it's worth investing.
But if you don't see it and you are the best person to judge based on your content and what you have, if it's something you want to invest more in and be true to yourself, to your brand, to your company and what works for you.
Yeah, if the story's not there, don't tell it.
I think that's great advice.
And that kind of leads into, well, okay, you don't want to do the quick and cheap option.
You don't want to do the more time consuming, more expensive, more logistically challenging, expensive option.
Maybe that's when you consider the more middle tier option, where you find that balancing act between the two extremes.
You could still develop maybe a single video.
Maybe instead of one half day of photos, you do two photo shoots.
That's another thing to your point, Fadi.
It's just know your own firm, know your own people, and you'll be able to find that balance, and you'll be happy with the time and energy that you put into it.
I'm gonna throw something out there that we haven't talked about, so let's see what the answer is.
But just, I feel like maybe listeners would appreciate putting some dollars towards these categories.
You said that...
Oh, don't make me do that.
I know.
I mean, they're not gonna hold you to it.
makes me nervous.
But I feel like we have worked with enough of these professionals, done it ourselves, whatever, we could at least give some ROMs, right?
Yeah.
Because, I mean, I've thought of this, as Fadi was saying, if there's not the story, don't make the investment, because it is an investment.
It is.
I mean, on that high end side, I mean, easily, you could spend $20,000 with a great photography team in a minute.
In a minute.
Exactly.
It could be more, for sure.
And it depends on kind of like the ultimate goal and length of that and, you know, number of locations, all that business.
But that's not nothing, right?
Absolutely.
And if you're talking multiple videos, multiple supporting images, multiple photo shoots plus head shots plus culture photography, I mean, you could see a video and photo package go as high as $40,000, $50,000 even more easily.
I think when we're talking the quicker and the more affordable option, that's where you can start talking about, I think you mentioned it earlier, like $2,000 to $5,000 for a photo shoot.
Depending on the size of your firm, you might walk away with a suite of head shots, a suite of culture photography.
You might even be able to get somebody out on a job site to take photos of your crew.
So think of it that way.
And the more locations and the more shoots you have, it will exponentially grow in cost, but you can get your foot in the door under $5,000 very reasonably.
Yeah, that's good to know.
And it can be, you know, if you're planning your marketing budget or just thinking about your resources in general, good to know what these things cost, right?
So if it's new for your firm or new, you're trying to for the first time to get approval from principles to invest, start on that smaller, cheaper end of things.
It's okay to use your iPhone to take a video for an award submittal in the beginning.
Yeah.
And then you can graduate up from there.
So that's kind of what I took away from you both kind of sharing those those tiers and where to start.
Yeah, and like Fadi mentioned, just get the ball rolling, start to show some results, start to get some deliverables out there.
In our experience, once you do have those photos and those videos completed, they're pretty undeniable.
When they're done professionally and well, and you can still do it for a pretty reasonable cost there, it's gonna bring more interest and energy into creating more of those opportunities down the line.
And the best people to help with this whole process, thinking what is the right photography or video for your work?
Your good friends at Middle of Six.
Exactly, or your marketing people.
So just make sure you're working with the marketing folks and they're doing all the recommendations because they are the people who are going to direct this process.
And their input is very valuable.
And they can direct basically where the story goes and how it's best to tell the story.
And we're here for that, exactly, Kyle.
So but make sure, you know, I'm talking for smaller firms that might have a very small marketing team.
Just make sure they are part of this whole process.
Marketing team for a small firm?
That's like, I love it.
Very optimistic.
Hots of marketers, marketing teams of one out there, you know, trying to figure out how to get this to work and how to get people to say that they'll sit in front of the camera.
So we know that photography, videography is really important for storytelling.
You've decided you have a message, you want to communicate to your audiences, you have a good story to share.
Once that strategy is set, where do we start?
Yeah, I think we're talking here more about how to execute these visuals and make them come to life.
So I think you want to decide how larger effort is going to be.
Obviously, you're going to want to get dollars on a page and make a decision, sign off on a certain scope with your videographer, with your photographer.
But then from there, we're talking getting dates on calendars, getting your people together, letting people know that we're going to have a photo shoot on this date where you're branded polos, where you're business casual, whatever is appropriate for what you're trying to accomplish.
Make sure that branding and dress code requirements are communicated.
Let people know if they're going to be on video.
sometimes we expect people to do something like this and get on a mic or get in front of a camera.
And if they're not given a fair amount of warning, you can get a little bit of a deer in the headlights situation.
So high level, it's just communication, communication.
That's how you're going to manage these projects.
Yeah, I might also recommend, because I've had this question before, so we might as well talk about it here, right?
What about photo releases and video releases?
It's actually pretty important to have.
And I start with thinking about putting this into the onboarding process.
A lot of firms will already have this built in, Middle of Six does.
If you don't, maybe talk to your folks in HR, other people who might be able to put this into, a new employee comes on board, they sign the photo release, or at least it triggers the conversation to find out that that person maybe is not comfortable being photographed, and then you know, and that can be passed along to marketing to make sure they're not accidentally posting social hour photos on social media of that person who wouldn't want to be photographed.
So that's like a little thing that is a tidbit in there that you want to check the box on.
So that might be a kind of how you get started piece of it, and an important part.
And if you don't have that as part of your process, you can just print out a generic photo release from the internet and bring it on the job site as the photographer is going around and taking pictures of people and have them sign off on it.
It's pretty easy conversation.
Yeah, it's a good practice to do that for sure.
And just I think in general, it's good to have that in your bucket because when you're on a construction site and taking photos, it can be people are in certain situations.
So you do want to make sure that you have a photo release and you're okay to take photos on that site.
And same applies to your firm.
Just making sure everyone is comfortable is very important and that will reflect in your part of your firm culture.
So just let everyone be on the same page when you're doing that.
So and the bigger the firm, it might be a more challenging task, but I think it's also a conversation and just let everyone be more comfortable in what you do.
To jump on that point, I totally agree.
I would also mention just articulating the reason and the strategy behind the visuals and why it's happening could be very helpful when getting your people together.
You have a lot of really busy people.
You might have people on a job site.
They might not understand why they're being pulled away from their day to day or why their work is being interrupted for this.
The more proactive you can be with communicating the thought behind it, the strategy, why it's being done, how it's going to help the firm, how it's going to make you different in the marketplace.
I think that could go a long way to smoothing those edges out and making everybody comfortable.
And usually, from my experience, rarely people oppose that.
So just make sure people know and they'll appreciate they're part of your firm.
They want the best for where they work and they want to get new work.
So that's all part of the process.
You also don't want to forget the review process, the real final sign off on all your photos and video.
And if you were taking any images out on a job site, this is really, really critical.
It's important to have it reviewed by the safety director and possibly some other, a wider group of people, because different people will see different things.
Even if everything was done completely safely on a job site, which it probably was, sometimes it's not very clear visually that that safety harness was hooked in or something like that.
You can't really see the safety glasses from that angle.
You know that they're on that person, but we want to make sure that there's no questions.
So as someone who's spent a lot of time working with general contractors, this is a step that is so crucial.
Make sure people sign off.
Then as a marketer, you are not surprised when your whole beautiful campaign gets changed up because someone wants to pull a photo for a safety issue.
Because when you work in AEC and everybody say it with me, safety is our number one priority.
Boom.
Well, guys, I think that wraps up that topic on the power of visuals in digital marketing.
It was a good overview of why it's so important to bring in these visuals.
And if you need any convincing of your leadership team of why to do it or how to do it, maybe this is a good episode to share with them.
It's very doable.
Any parting thoughts?
Yeah, Fadi, you could have never told that this was your first podcast.
You're gosh darn natural.
I born podcaster.
Want to believe you.
I want to believe you.
You do great.
Any parting thoughts?
Other things that you want to share before we wrap this one up?
I would just say dive into creating your own assets, whether you engage with a professional or you take it more in house.
Just make it a habit to start snapping photos.
Focus on the unique parts of your firm, whether it's your people, your culture, the capabilities or the process.
If you decide to do it in house, it's completely fine if that's where you are and where you want to be comfortable with your investment level.
But at least give it a bit of a bigger step and buy that camera because it's going to make a whole lot of difference when you use an actual camera versus a phone photo.
So at least for the culture events, for you know, headshots and so on, it's going to show.
And today you can buy a camera for a very decent, reasonable price and it is going to show.
Definitely you will see it on a larger screen, on your websites, in your proposals.
That's going to make a huge difference.
So if you take their out of in house, at least invest in a decent camera.
That's my only advice.
See, this is how I know you're a podcasting professional, because I believe that is what we call a tease for an upcoming episode of The Shortlist featuring Fadi Asmar discussing photography.
Let's go.
All right.
Well, thank you both for being here, Fadi.
Great job today.
I'm so glad that you got to be introduced to our audience and they get to meet you too.
Kyle, thanks again.
As always, you get to be in every episode somehow magically.
You got it.
Thank you.
Everyone have a good one.
Have a good day.
Have a good week.
Bye.
The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six and hosted by me, Wendy Simmons, Principal Marketing Strategist.
Our producer is Kyle Davis, with digital marketing and graphic design by the team at Middle of Six.
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The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.