How sales and marketing leaders move beyond surface-level claims

Many of our clients tell us, “We just need to get our messaging right.” Our research shows that audience and message clarity are among the top five challenges for built environment marketers.

This webinar addressed building more targeted, resonant, and sustainable marketing communications. We’ll explore how to define your audience with greater precision, craft messages that go beyond surface-level claims to create meaningful connections.

The built environment industry is mature and rapidly evolving, with consolidation, shifting work patterns, expanding product categories, and rising digital expectations, requiring brands to proactively pivot toward future growth rather than relying on legacy models.

Most companies underinvest in marketing and misalign their budgets, focusing on bottom-up tactical spending (such as showrooms, imagery, trade shows, and sales support) instead of strategic priorities like customer experience, digital tools, positioning, and long-term innovation.

Growth requires aligning strategy and budgets using a multi-horizon model, balancing core business optimization (H1), emerging opportunities (H2), and transformative innovation (H3), supported by modern marketing systems, a proper funnel, and long-term investment in positioning and customer experience.

Experiences are hard to define. Sure, we can describe them: good or bad, memorable or bland, rated on a scale from one to five. Many people are exploring the frontiers of the experience economy with increasing intensity: customer experience, user experience, employee experience, learner experience, and so on. Yet human experience, which is a product of our consciousness itself, remains elusive. The full article is available here, on our blog.

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

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People have opinions. We like to question things, whether we say it out loud, under our breaths, or keep it bottled up inside. It can be harder to know where opinions come from, or where they might lead us.

In our minds, we employ a version of the scientific method: We observe, ask questions, create a theory. We’re not always rigorous about it. The data aren’t incomplete and we don’t always test our hypothesis. We don’t reflect on the evidence. Suspicion about motives leads to conspiracy theories and confirmation bias deepens our resolve.

To make a bigger difference, we need to find the right problem. Work to get out of our normal opinions, bias, and culture. Follow a process and look for guides. Our opinions are vital, but we need to know where we are and how we got there in order to map where we're going. The full article is available here, on our blog.

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

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Customer experience management is about balancing the needs of customers and organizations. The work often starts with walking in a person’s shoes to better understand their point of view. People are complicated, and serving them well isn’t easy. CX systems can become complex, but the right ingredients can make for a better recipe.  The full article is available here, on our blog. 

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

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Recently, Peopledesign's president, Kevin Budelmann, was invited to be a guest on the On Branding Podcast, hosted by Arek Dvornechuck, a brand design expert based in New York and focused on branding and logo design. Arek interviews Kevin and the two dive into the second edition of our book, Brand Identity Essentials.  Listen to the episode to hear Kevin and Arek dive into the essential process of building a brand.

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

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Built environments are places made by people that support human activity and part of everyday experience in our modern world. Physical, digital, or hybrid experiences are part of what’s next. The future may echo the past but is forged in the present.

Maturing concepts in digital design are a helpful source of input. As we better understand user behavior and experience, the fields of UX and interaction design offer a new foundation for the built environment – both physical and virtual. The full article is available here, on our blog. 

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

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Education is at a crossroads. Students, parents and everyone else feels it. One way to innovate is to unbundle and repackage offerings into new categories where people derive the most value. It can be hard to think this way given how we typically think about higher education, but it’s already happening in nearly every other industry.

In the coming years, or perhaps months, many higher education institutions will be pressured to make important choices about their future, helping to reframe the ways we advance our skills, networks, and thinking. The full article is available here, on our blog. 

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

Join us in the conversation - Sign up for our newsletter to get updates so you can register for the next Office Hours call.

Last week, Kevin Budelmann was invited to be a guest on The Tom and Bob Show. Kevin joins Tom DeWitt, Ph.D. the Director of CXM Michigan State University and Bob Kiple, MBA, a retired General Motors Global Customer Experience Strategist for interviews and discussions about topics in the world of customer experience management. Tom and Bob also serve as leaders of CX of M, Michigan's Association of Customer Experience Professionals.The conversation in this episode focuses on the importance of human-centered design and its particular importance during the COVID-19 crisis. 

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

Join us in the conversation - Sign up for our newsletter to get updates so you can register for the next Office Hours call.

Why do we talk about customer experience? Customers have had experiences since there were customers, so why is CX a topic today?

The concept of designing experiences is not new. It’s been around since the 1980s as an extension of product design. In the last several decades, product designers increasingly have considered the user as ideas about ergonomics and usability emerged. Considering the user – or customer – experience is inherent to any design endeavor.

The customer experience discipline continues to grow and change with emerging technology. Past or future, macro or micro, CX innovation will emerge from a better understanding of what is possible and what people really need. The full article is available here, on our blog. 

Peopledesign is a design innovation firm helping leaders navigate change. Office Hours is a time we've set aside to discuss ideas we're thinking about and issues we experience first-hand with customers about business value, brand perception, and service design.

Join us in the conversation - Sign up for our newsletter to get updates so you can register for the next Office Hours call.