It Ain’t Bragging If You Can Do It….Years ago, one of our customers had this as their brand positioning statement. They were in a highly competitive industry and had enjoyed tremendous success. Both the company and its clients valued success and winning. The brand positioning aligned the values of the company with prospects and customers, resulting in loyal brand ambassadors.

We don’t often blow our own horn at Image 4 — we prefer our clients’ success to speak for us. However, we are very happy to share with you that we’ve just earned our fifth and sixth Fab50 Awards in five years. It ain’t bragging if you can do it!

Fab50 is the event and exhibit industry’s premier award. Sponsored by Event Marketer Magazine, this independently-adjudicated competition recognizes the top 50 exhibit design and fabrication firms in North America. Project submissions are graded by a board made up of designers and end-user marketing professionals — people just like our clients. Other winners include very large firms from around the country, producing extremely large-scale designs — think the Detroit and Los Angeles auto shows.

Since one of our core values is Continuous Improvement, we always spend some time reviewing the other winners, their projects, and how we measure up. Image 4 is in good company. We think one of the reasons we’re so consistent at delivering at such a high level is our great staff and processes. Another reason is our integrated approach to projects. Our success is rooted in design thinking.

Image 4 concepts, designs, fabricates, and installs the majority of our projects as an integrated program. We have the benefit of interpreting our clients’ needs and dreams, and bringing their projects to life. By practicing design thinking, we approach our clients’ needs with a 360-degree perspective, building success into the project from our first meeting. By understanding the desired outcomes, and absorbing the success metrics of the program, we can design success into the project from the very start.

One way we do this is by taking nearly the opposite approach of the RFP, and for good reason. In our experience, most RFP’s are disjointed, difficult to understand, have no success metrics, and the projects often deliver sub-par results when built and delivered.

Imagine that you, as a Marketing Director, contracted a firm to develop your brand positioning. Then, you hired a PR firm to present you to your prospects. You then hired an SEO firm to optimize your search, but they didn’t understand the brand strategy or the PR program. Next you contracted a freelance designer who has probably never designed in 3D, to create your major sales platform at a show. Then, you issue a nation-wide RFP looking for a fabricator — who has no idea of your go-to-market program, your brand positioning, your other communication or sales initiatives. The cut-outs, overlaps, and tremendous costs in managing and aligning all these inputs is a serious disadvantage.

Amazingly, about 30% of our customers are converted to our process from exactly this experience. Once we invest the time to become a partner, to truly understand the critical business development plans, budgets, limitations and opportunities, we can holistically design a solution that supports the plan, is streamlined in development and deployment, is likely less costly in money and time, and presents your brand precisely as you need.

Each of our Fab50 awards recognizes the seamless integration in fit, form, function, presentation, and above-expectation outcomes of our program model. We’re tremendously proud of that, and of contributing to improving our clients’ businesses. It’s all a part of the Experience.