Drawing on our work with developers, building owners and public authorities, we help design teams market their practices in the best possible light to their clients.
On this page we talk about how we can help establish relevant marketing strategies and tailor new business presentations to meet individual client aspirations. We also talk about the architectural competitions that we run.
Marketing strategies :
A business plan will identify who you want to sell what to and why: a marketing plan is simply a way to explain how to achieve these aspirations. It outlines the activities, actions and milestones for the outward facing people in the practice. It will address new business targets but it will also consider the wider issue of building a reputation.
Colander does not offer a PR service but we do help practices behind the scenes, creating marketing briefs for in-house teams or for external agencies.
For those who do not want hands-on help with marketing, we run a number of in-house training courses that show practices how to define and instigate their marketing aspirations:
New business presentations :
We run architectural competitions and regularly work alongside client organisations. This means that we have seen a lot of architects make presentations – some good and others not so good.
Drawing on this experience we help practices prepare and improve their new business presentations: reviewing written proposals and sitting in on presentation rehearsals, offering comments on format, delivery and content as appropriate.
To find out more about presentation reviews, please contact: info@colander.co.uk
In addition, we run a number of training courses that help practices develop the skills required to go out and win work.
Submission documents that win
Presentation skills
Presentations to win work
Networking and relationship building
“Caroline is an excellent communicator. A skill underpinned by her intelligence and sensitivity. I worked on a large masterplan bid where this skill created real value. She identified the client's objectives and helped to convey those clearly to a varied group of specialists - and ensured that those specialists' responses were framed in such a way that their value was immediately clear to the client.”
— Matthew White, Partner, Make
Architectural competitions :
Colander designs and manages bespoke architectural competitions. We pride ourselves on tailoring each competition to meet the aspirations rather than the needs of our clients, while respecting competitors’ business integrity and design talents.
We are keen to reduce the amount of waste in our competitions and aim to create competitions that are fun and worthwhile for competitors – whether they win or lose.
INVITED COMPETITIONS
Many of the competitions that we run are by invitation only. We help our clients identify a long list of possible competitors and create tailored competitions to enable them to then select a winner.
We will not allow our clients to ask shortlisted competitors to undertake site-specific design work without payment.
OPEN COMPETITIONS
We also run open competitions, including those that are subject to the OJEU process. We will ensure that all practices on our database are informed whenever an open competition is starting up.
If you would like us to know about your practice and its work please complete the form at the bottom of the competitions page on this website. We will add you to our database.
For information about the competitions that we are currently running please go to our Architectural competitions page
"We recently participated in a selective and competitive interview for the provision of Masterplanning services for Dulwich College which was organised by Colander. The brief and the organisation of this competition was exemplary in terms of the clarity and concision of the project parameters and needs. It makes the whole process of consultant appointment so much more effective when the client requirements are so clearly expressed and defined from the outset."
— Aidan Potter, Director, John McAslan & Partners
“Colander worked with Stock Woolstencroft initially to review the way we present ourselves but ended up helping us to review our strategy and look more deeply at our aims and objectives. As industry experts they understood exactly what we were trying to achieve and, more importantly, our market.”
— Tracey Bishop, Stock Woolstencroft