MarketScale Manufacturing

Creating a unique and special experience each time an individual interacts with your brand can be a great way for a company stand out. Whether it’s on the road at trade shows or at home in the corporate office, Rebecca Grefrath, Marketing Experience Coordinator for Clarus, always seeks to make every interaction an unforgettable one.

“We usually try to personalize the visit as much as possible,” Grefrath says of the times when the company welcomes visitors to the headquarters. “I think that personalization goes a long way and really hits home with people.” A recent study by Frost & Sullivan really drives this point home. According to the study, customer experience will overtake price and product as the top driver of business by the year 2020.

Planning and executing the Clarus booth at trade shows is another integral part of Rebecca’s job. She says these shows are another opportunity give people a personalized and special experience. One of the ways they do this is by having an artist draw “Clarucatures” of visitors to the Clarus booth. This means that visitors walk away with a drawing of themselves on Clarus glass to remember the experience, but that’s not the only benefit. “For 3-5 minutes we have a person in our booth space that’s getting their face drawn on a piece of our glass that we can talk to,” she says. “We get an opportunity to meet them...and then they’re walking away with our product all at the same time.”

It's the holiday season! With Thanksgiving putting a little pressure on everyone's schedule, we figured this was the perfect time to give you, our audience, a charcuterie board of previous MarketScale AEC content. Plenty of one-time podcasts on our AEC publication haven't gotten the love they deserve, so we wanted to infuse them with the holiday spirit and showcase three AEC podcasts that encapsulate some of the most important trends, troubles and talents in the industry. Enjoy a dive into the growing success of the pivot door in the United States, the ecological struggle of Japan's construction industry, and what an interactive city of the future may look and feel like.For Thanksgiving week, we showcased three MarketScale AEC podcasts that encapsulate some of the most important trends, troubles & talents in the industry

As data usage continues to grow across all industries, the need for efficiency increases exponentially. That trend is having a profound impact on the construction side of data centers. On today's podcast, our host had a chance to speak with Hector Moreno, the Director of Business Development Data Centers for Fibrebond. They discussed a few challenges on the construction side of these mission-critical buildings, the varying rules that each state develops, how environmental factors are a basic part of design, and a relatively new approach to deployment of a custom solution.

"If you look at where the larger data centers have been built, in the last 10-15 years, they've been built in areas where there's been an abundance of energy," Moreno said. "These larger companies that are building these data centers... they set up their business plan based on their energy consumption and what they can pay for it. That's one of the main criteria for selecting a site."

This is The MarketScale AEC Show, hosted by Daniel Litwin, the Voice of B2B. Your weekly B2B kick-back for the best thought leadership in the industry, bringing you education, information and inspiration.

On today's episode, we're focusing our features on the mindful, greener future of sustainability and community in AEC, from concrete innovation to sand use to aviation. We'll dig into the possibility of green cement helping curb notorious emissions. We also hear from Eric Peterson, Principal Architect & Head of Aviation for Alliiance, exploring the most exciting trends and the most damaging pitfalls in airport architecture. Finally, we host a podcast panel with Nelson Wills, Vice President of Business Development for Element Designs, and Steven Strickland, Director of Construction Management for FDH Infrastructure Services. The two spark discussion on the disappearance of usable sand in construction, and what the future looks like for sustainable sand use in the industry.

On the first episode of The MarketScale AEC Show, we look to both the past and the future to track AEC's coming trends, rising stars and established professionals. We get our dose of industry news, as well as a recap on Orgatec 2018 from MarketScale's Creative Director Josh Brummett, a conference in historic Cologne, Germany focusing on what's next in office design. We also get an interesting development in AEC's race to find the answer for sustainable housing, not only in the states but globally. Could compressed hemp blocks be the answer?

Our two features on today's episode act as frames for impassioned leaders in AEC. On one hand, you have Graham Walker, President & CEO of Fibrebond, who's fighting tooth and nail to bring a spark of business, industry and community to Shreveport, LA. On the other, you have Jonathon Kemnitzer, co-founder of KEM STUDIO. An architect and industrial designer through and through, Kemnitzer's KEM STUDIO represents the pinnacle of the modern studio, finding power in synergy and details.

What does it mean to be a "modern" architect that's ecologically conscious? No need to string this one out, the answer is pretty simple: it lies in the materials. Some of the simplest and most gorgeous materials for interior design not only meet the aesthetic need for a visually enticing and comfortable environment, but they lead to more sustainable final products.

One of these materials is glass. It's definitely not a new product; its first human iteration is over around 5000 years old. It's a material that is everywhere, meets our needs, and has so much cross industry appeal. It's a preferred feel and look for Food & Beverage, it's on our high-end communication devices, and is an important feature in transportation. In interior design, it's not only a visual trend that inspires employees, but it's sustainable as well...though it hasn't caught on in every market. According to a recent MarketScale education technology study, only 7% of college classrooms have a writable glass surface. How can designers and executives encourage more integrated glass solutions into their environments?

Our guest today, Nelson Wills, Founding Partner at Element Designs, explains why, especially with a potentially unstable climate in the next decade, simple choices like glass in buildings can make all the difference. "Glass is all around us, it's arguably one of the safest materials known to man," Wills said. Wills details the recyclable properties of glass, how it can insulate and generate energy, and how it prevents destruction of natural resources. With a glass industry that has grown over 30 percent in interior applications over the past decade, Wills thinks it's time for everyone to get on board.

Another material less ingrained in human history than glass but just as practical is aluminum. It's elemental properties give it even more recyclability than glass, and its high strength-to-weight ratio has made it an exciting building block in industries like Pro AV and Entertainment. "When we compare it to steel, it's a much more economical and friendly material that has a lot of the same broad range of applications," Wills said. "It has a high recycled friendly and an economical price point."

One of aluminum's biggest and most impactful applications comes from the transportation industry, where it's low weight has reduced emissions and improved fuel efficiency. Wills joined us on the podcast again to discuss aluminum's power in commercial architecture, and how anything from window and façade systems to sunshades can cut operational costs for a building, saving the Earth and business owners' money at the same time. "Let's use materials that are unlimited from a resource stand point and are completely sustainable," Wills said.

This is Glass is in Session by Clarus, an AEC Podcast on MarketScale hosted by Daniel Litwin.

There's a surprisingly magical, and yet simple side effect to writing things down. People who describe or visualize their goals are anywhere from 1.2 to 1.4 times more likely to meet them. It comes down to the science of externalizing ideas and helping your brain encode those ideas more effectively. So how can you and why should you, as a business owner or executive at your company, encourage something as simple as writing things down in your workplace, something that will get your employees more involved, collaborative and thoughtful?

Our guest on today's podcast, Jamie-Clare de la Chapelle, Content Marketing Coordinator for Clarus, breaks down just how crucial it is to remember the psychology in writing when designing your workplace. "It helps you be a more critical thinker, and it improves your creativity just because you're writing things down. That's so irreplaceable," de la Chapelle said.

De la Chapelle explains her journey into educational psychology, and how landing at Clarus couldn't have been a more perfect fit to educate AEC professionals on the benefits of writing. On the verge of publishing her CEU titled "The Psychology of Writing Things Down and What It Means for Design," she details more in-depth the science that makes writing so much stickier than typing, how seamless design techniques can not only empower but encourage writing, and how she's helping educate the AEC community on best practices. "We need it to be collaborative, we need it to be convenient, we need it to be comfortable," de la Chapelle said.

"They're doing a lot of natural light studies and studies on where people are sitting within their space," said Brittney Ricks, VP of Brand & Marketing.Collaborative technology is changing the work place, and has been for a while now. 61 million Gen Zers entered the workplace this year, and with them came a technological expectation, having grown up with interactive, responsive tech. However, the magic isn't necessarily in the wires and software. Combine this with another work environment shift: the growth of co-working spaces, which are increasing at a rate of 16.1% annually. By 2022, employees who work in co-working spaces will have gone from 2017's number of 1.7 million to 5 million.

Lately it seems that the flashier the concept, the more it's talked about in general. The real challenge in that is that concentrating solely on "high-level concepts" can sometimes come at the expense of basic knowledge.

On today's podcast, we spoke with Assistant Professor Anthony Vanky of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University. We discussed the importance of basic thinking skills, the pitfalls of "balkanization" on a university level, and if splashy projects do more harm than good in the long run.

"If you think about the debates that we had in rebuilding cities in the 1960s, here in the United States: we mowed down entire neighborhoods for the grand vision. And what was missing in all of that," Vanky said.

"It's the local knowledge of that coffee shop that was actually a community anchor. It was the neighborhood structure of how people interacted, therefore had community. So, a lot of times now, as technology is becoming more and more pervasive and more and more in our everyday conversation, and we're starting to embed this in cities, we're going back to that high level without some of that deeper thinking sometimes," Vanky said.