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TRANSACTIONS INTERACT BUSINESS GROUP OFFICIALLY JOINS RDG PLANNING & DESIGN RDG Planning & Design, a nationally recognized multidisciplinary design firm, has acquired Interact Business Group, the country’s premier authority on strategic business planning for public safety training facilities. The acquisition transforms a decades-long successful partnership into an integrated company offering business planning, feasibility studies, and the design of public safety training centers. “The RDG+IBG collaborative partnership is built on a highly integrated teaming experience we’ve developed more than 20 years serving public safety clients
across the country,” said RDG Partner Frank Buono. “Our combined experience and knowledge will allow our clients to have the best of both worlds to better serve their communities.” RDG and its predecessor companies have been collaborating with clients to create meaning together since 1965. The firm’s Public Safety market has completed more than 100 public safety training center planning and design projects across 19 states, supporting more than 3.2 million training hours annually for the nation’s public safety- first responders. Operating for more than 25 years, IBG is recognized as the national authority in strategic business
planning for public safety training centers and has completed more than 78 public safety training center strategic planning projects in 25 states. IBG’s team of experienced business planners will continue to collaborate with public safety jurisdictions and design firms working in the public safety sector. “The need for innovative, thoughtful, forward-thinking training for law enforcement, fire and EMS is clear in cities throughout the nation. We look forward to working together to create training facilities that provide enormous value to first responders and their communities,” said Buono.
assistant, a peer, a co-worker from a different department, or a professional mentor. Talk them through your structure. What are their struggles, confusions, and questions? Is their impression that of a well-thought-out arrangement or more of an escape room experience? If you detect cracks in your foundation, it’s always advisable to look to the pros. On This Old House , Tom Silva lays out some basic steps for foundation repair that could be applied to our marketing: 1. Chisel away as needed from the inside and the outside. For marketers, chiseling away will take the form of deleting or archiving old materials and files. It is important to establish guidelines to differentiate between what materials are just plain old and what materials are core to your work. Old files can be deleted and will make accessing your most recent work faster. If you don’t want to delete, archive. But if you archive, you should revisit your archive at a pre-determined date or interval. Maybe those files really can be deleted. Conversely, if you find you are copying files from the archive repeatedly, you can always bring those materials back into the core. 2. Mix up your new material to fill any gaps that are left. With old material out of the way, gaps in your marketing foundation may be evident. Spend time evaluating what is missing and creating new materials to fill the void. 3. Prepare the surface for the new material and apply. Before initiating your changes, be sure to prepare yourself, your team, or your entire organization for what is to come. Then, apply your changes. Save the quirky and teetering for the movies. In marketing, it is time to re-build it well. Jane Lawler Smith, MBA, is the marketing manager at Derck & Edson, LLC. She can be reached at jsmith@derckandedson.com.
JANE LAWLER SMITH, from page 3
solid base, now teeters a Tim Burton-esque quirky creation or perhaps a fantastical monstrosity. How long can such a structure stand in the real world? Is it time to shore up or replace your marketing foundation? Going back to the field of construction, the answer may be yes. Bowing walls, leaks, cracks, and crumbling mortar – these are all signs that foundation work might be necessary. If a second or third floor is desired, often the original foundation cannot bear the weight so it simply must be rebuilt. Likewise, in marketing, there are signs too. Consider these questions: ■ ■ Are there signs of weakness? ■ ■ How long does it take to drill down to the files you need for a promotional or proposal effort? ■ ■ Is it just as easy to locate new files as go-to files? ■ ■ Is it equally easy to find project files and data from the various stages of project design as well as from final constructed reality? ■ ■ If there are multiple people on your marketing team, do you all save files according to the same conventions? ■ ■ If someone from outside of your marketing team needs to find a marketing resource, can they? What have you added?
■ ■ Office locations ■ ■ Target markets ■ ■ Geographical territories ■ ■ Service offerings
One way to gauge the health of your marketing foundation is to invite someone from the outside in – an intern, an
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THE ZWEIG LETTER JUNE 6, 2022, ISSUE 1444
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