Sure Juraj, I don't think I can get through it in one or two sentences tho' I should also point out that I am not directly in sales or marketing. When we started Neoscape, our plan was to do renderings/animations for the AEC industry (this was 1995) for the most part we were selling a service that was not yet commonly used, the only competition we had was with hand renderers. We were not the first, but most of our clients were un-familiar with our services.
Over the years we added more breadth of services (interactive, design), our clientele and industry stayed the same. As the industry matured there were many “this is the end of the outside renderer” moments, as happens now, every generation of the tools is marketed as being SO EASY, that our clients would chide us by telling us that our services is going to be obsolete. I have relayed the story before but we had a client (an Architect) say in an off-hand way “I need to take a weekend and learn this stuff”, meaning he was going, over the course of two days, become an expert 3d artist and renderer. This displayed the lack of respect he had for us as professionals and our craft.
We started to see that many treat renderings as commodities, and were willing to get low quality renderings for cheap and throw them away after their intended use. We knew that we could not compete with low-cost providers, and we needed to establish ourselves as creative partners, not just a provider of renderings, or films, or websites, etc. Also along the way it became clear that we would be best off if we had a place at the decision making table.
As we had opportunity to work on larger projects and providing a greater breadth of service we became much more savvy in the industry and realized that we had all the tools needed for full campaigns, we still do almost all production in house, but on occasion we have been in meetings with a potential client who will ask, who we use for renderings, and when we say we do them ourselves, they don’t believe us.
One piece of advice we had early was “sell new services to old clients and sell old services to new clients” this is mainly what happens as we organically grew to encompass more skills and breadth of service. When it comes to whole campaigns, such as, naming the project, positioning the project, identity, developing a marketing plan, renderings, film(s), print collateral, marketing suite, super graphics (building wrap), website, interactive tools, VR, and soon AR, it can get huge, and very drawn out, but the more one is in charge of, the more freedom (and hopefully the larger the fee), which will allow for a better outcome in the end, for the client and for us.
As for the Verizon, or Ketchup, we have done some projects that are outside the Real Estate market, most of those projects are out-of-the-blue opportunities, our reputation is within this industry, and our contacts, our example projects are all primarily with the built environment, there are some related industries we have had the luck to work in, (furniture, industrial design, building products, etc.) but most of those contacts came to us through our primary industry.
Nils Norgren, Neoscape
