Recently, SMPS HQ announced the 2023 Fellows Class and our very own, Michele Raftery was announced as an SMPS Fellow. As a Principal and Partner at 4240 Architecture, Michele’s roles are diverse—from leading the firm’s project pursuits, business and marketing strategy, research and development, office management and HR to managing visioning, analytics, and graphic design on project teams. Michele’s experience spans many regions, scales, and project types including: hospitality, multi-family, senior housing, commercial office, government, and higher-ed in locations as far at Hong Kong and project costs up to $500M. She’s passionate about learning and always eager to serve the profession to advance the quality and impact of the built environment. This life-long learning ethos manifests itself through listening platforms at home with her four children and service platforms beyond. Michele is currently serving as a Trustee for the SMPS Foundation and is a SMPS Colorado Past President (2016/17) and Leonardo Winner (2020/21).

Talk About AI Before Anybody Else in Your Firm
From SMPS HQ, a piece on key insights and ideas from the SMPS Webinar Revolutionizing AEC: Unleashing the Power of AI in AEC Marketing. 
https://www.smps.org/2023/06/16/talk-about-ai-before-anybody-else-in-your-firm/

Bold Brand 2.0 by Josh Miles is a refreshing read on rebranding/repositioning a company, so your firm can stand out amongst the sea of competition. The Bold Brand’s niche is the A/E/C marketplace; however, the bulk of the book is applicable to nearly any industry. Bold Brand 2.0 encourages a company to periodically distill its brand down to its core, then evaluate your brand on how it is reflected across the company’s ecosystem, to ensure the branding is consistent and coherent throughout. Moreover, it advocates evaluating a customer’s journey to identify opportunities, which can be a tedious exercise, but totally revealing.

We are surrounded by negativity and pessimistic outlooks everywhere we turn these days, without even having to look for it. On the other hand, finding engaging and inspiring material that leans on positivity takes a bit more effort. (Like filtering through the political and comparison garbage to watch dog videos on Instagram.)

If you missed Part 1 of this series, visit the SMPS Colorado Blog.

In the dynamic AEC industry, we're continually on the hunt for innovative strategies and tools that will give us a competitive edge in digital marketing. One of the key challenges I've faced has been sourcing a platform that consolidates all the AI tools available, especially those I may be unaware of. Today, I'm thrilled to share a resource that I've been using for a while, one that maintains a current, comprehensive list of all AI tools available—FutureTools.io.

Fostering Team Buy-In, Maintaining Motivation, and Finishing Strong 

As marketers, we face lots of challenges: inefficient proposal processes, difficulties engaging leadership time and attention, and fighting for department budgets, to name a few. I bet each of you has at least one thing you’d like to change within your department or company. Throughout my career, I’ve encountered my share of resistance to change across a variety of industries, including digital printing, advertising, and engineering. To understand more about why change is so difficult, I completed the Coursera series Removing Barriers to Change by University of Pennsylvania Marketing Professor Jonah Berger. This free online course discusses the barriers to change and how to become more effective in inspiring change with others and your organization.