Welcome to the New Doors Blog

Welcome to the inaugural New Doors blog post. What I am right now is a lone voice talking into a vast, deep and dark void. The void is a metaphor for the lack of academic inquiry and captured expertise in the area of professional design services (PDS) marketing.

PDS firms such as architects, engineers and graphic designers have been slow to embrace integrated marketing communications strategies. Success in these industries tends to be passive, letting the “work” speak for itself with differentiation revolving around an iconic name and a highly published and awarded portfolio.

In a globalised world, competition is increasingly fierce and technology based trends are forcing traditional business models to change and evolve at a rapid rate. It is my belief that the successful PDS firms of the future will be those that take a proactive approach to the development, implementation and measurement their own integrated marketing communications strategies.

It is true that after 10 years of experience working within and for PDS firms and having embarked on a Masters thesis on the subject, I have amassed a plethora of my own opinions and theories on how best to approach their marketing and business development. However, far from pitching myself as the expert of experts, I intend this blog as a forum in which marketing professionals and business leaders in the PDS industry can share experiences, debate ideas and generally improve their knowledge and capability within a collaborative environment. I therefore encourage comment and debate and would love to hear from anyone who is interested in being a guest blogger.

Via this blog, I hope to act as a bridge that connects the professional design services with current and applicable marketing theory in a palatable and at times entertaining way.

See the menu on the right of screen for the latest posts.

Alicia Brown