How to Win American Idol, Get Rescued, and Network Easily
As I was thinking about how to explain storytelling for marketing architects and designers, new seasons of American Idol and The Voice began.
If you want to know how important storytelling is for creative professionals, you need look no farther than these popular TV shows.
They are perfect examples of how storytelling defines the difference among equally talented performers. It’s not talent, it’s empathy that influences voters.
The viewer’s emotional connection to contestants comes from carefully crafted life stories that producers unfold with each performance. By the end of the competition, the audience feels like they know the performers, and also feels a responsibility to vote for their favorite.
This is exactly the situation architects and designers face when they make it to the final selection for a project. When a decision must be made among equally qualified professionals, the winner is the one who is most memorable. The one who connected personally.
Q: If a picture is worth 1,000 words, why are there captions?
A: Because, photos alone, only speak for the photographer who took them
Most architects treat their websites as online galleries. They invest in professional photography, put projects into common categories, and provide facts of the project – who it was for, purpose, and square footage.
Professional looking at best, but not memorable. Making your work memorable requires context and a human connection.
We are wired to engage with stories. Good stories actually change our brains – hormones are released, eyes widen, we lean in, we empathize.
Right now, I’m looking at my extra-large, gray, long-haired, declawed, young, neutered male cat. Those were the facts I fed into Petfinder a few years ago. The photo posted wasn’t great. It showed him lounging on a 25 lb bag of cat food.( Yes, he’s cross-eyed.)
It was his story, not the facts or the photo, that made it personal:
“He was left outside the small-town shelter on a sub-zero, winter night in a tin box that was too small for him. A note on the box said “allergies,” not even his name."
That powerfully tragic image burned into my brain and broke my heart. I called the shelter, filled out the application, got a reference from my vet, called the shelter again, drove over 2 hours to get him, and paid four times the average adoption fee to bring him home. In a beagle-sized carrier. With lots of treats. No regrets. Best. Cat. Ever.
I know what you’re thinking, that’s easy – mistreated abandoned animal stories turn everybody to mush. But design? Buildings? How do you make those stories connect?
You focus on stories about people using the building, not the building itself.
Several years ago I was hired to write about the design of each school in New Haven’s school construction program. Whatever distinctions the projects had at the time have faded and blurred over time.
Except this one. This grammar school in an economically distressed neighborhood was mandated to serve the students and the neighborhood by including in its redesign, a full-time medical and dental clinic. Open during and after school hours, the intent was to provide parents easier access to wellness and preventive care for their children. The hope, also, was that residents might see a doctor before becoming seriously ill if healthcare was easily accessible for people without transportation.
The power of school design to improve the quality of life for an entire neighborhood is a compelling, human story.
So, what’s your story?
This is easy. You have a story – or stories – for every project you've ever worked on – in or out of school. Transformational moments, happy accidents, change-order nightmares, and the ones where you even surprised yourself. You just have to think about them. Write them down. Understand the points they make. What they say about you.
By intentionally collecting your experience "stories," you will have answers and examples to any questions you're asked – at professional meetings, client interviews, committee presentations.
When you present your work in person, you have to talk about it. People actually say, “tell me about this one.” They want context. They want a story. It’s logical, then, that readers are asking the same question when they see your project photos and facts online.
In person, you have two choices. You can wing it and try to come up with something on the spot, or prepare your stories in advance. Decide the points you want to make, and pick the projects that lead to those points. This is another form of intentional marketing.
For networking, especially, having a succinct, memorable story that answers the inevitable, “how did you get started?” or, “when did you decide to become a ________________________?" [designer] [architect] [beekeeper], solves two problems.
First, you know what you want to say and the point you want them to remember.
Second, preparation gives you confidence.
Preparation also gives you questions you can ask others. For introverts, having questions to get conversations started or keep them going, and stories to help answer questions asked of you, can reduce the stress of networking.
Good stories have a formula, an optimum length, and a point. In addition to stories about your projects, you should have what branding and marketing books call a “creation story.”
That's a pretty pompous phrase (like so much marketing jargon) and sets us up to think our stories need to be grand and impressive when the whole point is to be human and relatable.
By knowing someone’s story—where they came from, what they do, and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed.
– PAUL ZAK
Your work doesn’t speak for itself, you do
If you’re not convinced that storytelling and making a personal impression is essential in setting yourself apart from other architects and designers, I want you to do this:
Choose 3-5 firms similar to yours and go to their websites.
Look at their homepages, side-by-side, on your monitor. If you remove the names and logos, can you tell the firms apart? How?
Assuming professional photography, what do the photos tell you? What do you want to know? What would prospective clients want to know?
The Steps to Good Stories worksheet is just the beginning of many exercises and courses we’re designing at ArcheIntent to help architects and designers think and talk about themselves and their work in human, relatable, and memorable ways.
Good stories help you sell without selling and build a strong network naturally. If you think that makes sense, join others who think like you do and are ready to get started.