Over time, buildings come to resemble their occupants. It happens too slowly for us to notice. But in a time-lapse, they come aliveâshifting, warping, and growing. Furniture flies about, new roofs unfurl, the porch grows walls, and the garage grows a second story.
In this way, buildings adapt to our needs. We think of them as unchanging. But in fact, they learn and the best ones are built to be âhighly adaptiveâ from the start, says Stewart Brand, author of How Buildings Learn.
As I read his book, I thought gosh, this sounds like a website. Or a content program. Today, I share a few content operations lessons I think we can credibly draw from architecture.
But first, a primer: Buildings are made of layers
Each layer has a distinct function and adapts at a different timescale. Furniture is easy to move and changes often. Wallpaper, less so, and the walls, rarely. The fast-changing layers blunt the impact of shifting tastes and moods and protect the site. That site, in turn, provides a structure upon which all else can grow.
When the ephemeral layers are not enough, those changes penetrate to the skin and structureâthe occupants demolish a wall or add a new story.
Can we reimagine this as a diagram of your content program? I think we can.
Staring at this diagram, I actually do find it useful. It places those layers into a hierarchy, and clarifies the relationships. It suggests two forces shape our content marketing work:
1. Identities resist change and keep you recognizable: A brand works like mortarâyou can build upon it. If your startup decides itâs going to have a space theme, those rocket ships and planetary motifs form a unique architecture to which all else is affixed. This creates what we at Fenwick call a creative constraint: It helpfully narrows the cone of possibility to just what we need to focus on.
2. Content encourages change: On the opposite end, words, graphics, and ideas change rapidly. Daily, even. If they conform to that identity, they donât change too much, so the brand is palpable in everything. But itâs also highly responsive to the world outside. If a new group of buyers starts to react to your work and you start to write for them, thatâs positive change seeping in. Over time, it can influence the architecture.
This is how Salesforceâs mascot of a kid in a raccoon suit came about. A single designer invented it to make a developer conference more fun. People loved it. It became a pantheon of characters that are now at the forefront of Salesforceâs identity.
All very interesting, you might say. But how can I apply this to my job? Five ways:
1. Invest in an identity
Most B2Bs are built on a proverbial foundation of mud. The messaging is nabbed from a top competitor. The logo, literal. The color palette, a mere afterthoughtâand probably light blue. (Itâs always light blue.) And the mission? So empty it echoes: âTo exit, bro.â
Upon such a foundation all else slides. Thereâs no hammering in a new series of posts because they wash away with each new rain.
The best thing you can have for a content program is a highly considered foundation. One which imbues the brand with strongly defined enough person-like qualities that a creative can ask, âWhat would the company do?â and knowâinstantlyâbecause the identity is clear.
Take the HR and employee sentiment software ListenUp, for example. All the writing and design direction you need is in the name: Listen carefully, and depict things getting better. Listen, up.
Or take Gusto, the HR and payroll platform. Their brand is all about people. When a designer creates a thumbnail for a webinar, the on-brand thing is to introduce people by their name, not their title.
2. Make changes to the cheapest possible layer
âAs a designer, you should avoid such classic mistakes as solving a five-minute problem with a fifty-year solution, and vice versa,â writes Stewart Brand in How Buildings Learn. In content terms: Run your experiments on the cheapest possible layer.
If you are no longer liking your brand, experiment in the content, first. If you think you need a new website content management system (CMS), try manually updating the user experience to validate that hypothesis.
3. Assign people to their preferred layer
Everyone likes operating at different speeds. Let them. Some folks will want to move slowly and thoughtfully and while they make a frustrating production designer, theyâd be an adept brand-thinker. And conversely, someone who thrills in frequent experimentation might enjoy UX design more than brand work.
Content â Wants to publish new things continuously
UX/Ops â Loves to talk to customers, budding systems thinker
Technology â Likes to organize, creates order
Style â Wants to enforce what exists and teach others
Website â Loves elegantly simple and enduring systems
Identity â Loves to pause, reflect, and perfect
4. Conduct vigorous ongoing maintenance
âEvery building is potentially immortal, but very few last the life of a human,â writes Brand. Why? Because they donât get properly maintained. âNo maintenance, no building.â
Nobody ever maintains buildings or content programs like we should. Our brains arenât wired for it. Itâs difficult to explain to a boss why you should pause this quarterâs work to avoid some abstract future threat. But we must. If you arenât labeling and foldering as you go, that eventual audit will be a nightmare.
When Fenwick gets called in to assist with a content operation, it usually has termites. They never invested in an identity nor sought a true and unique informational advantage, and so produced hundreds of off-topic, under-quality assets, and itâs basically a teardown. They had a content system, but it was mal-adapted to its environment.
If you want an adaptive structureâif you want to be the team who has time to experiment with new tech as it emergesâcommit to a regime of 20% of time spent on maintenance.
Maintenance ideas:
Enforce a singular, searchable content repository
Label and organize graphics and templates as you go
There is a cathedral in Spain thatâs been under construction for 142 years. What interests me is that the architect Antoni GaudĂ planned the entire thing but left some frescoes blank. He knew the project would outlast him and wanted future architects to feel a sense of ownership.
This is why Stewart Brand praises brick buildings over the brutalist cement monstrosities that sprung up over the last fifty years. Cement is cheap and unyielding. Whereas brick is beautifully composableâyou can easily knock out new windows and doors. So too, well-maintained wood. Thereâs something about the simple, natural materials that let a building learn.
By analogy, leave some decisions up to your content creators. You want a tough âshell-and-coreâ identity that can withstand the elements, but it not be impervious to improvement. In the end, youâre trying to create a form to endureâwhich requires adaptation.
How to apply today's story
Have you ever diagrammed your own content program? Pause for 30 minutes today and try. What can you glean from how buildings learn? Is there anything you can do less of? Looking at Fenwickâs own, we spend almost all our time on identity, website, and style. We could publish more.
What weâve learned from our first writing class cohort.
Inside Fenwick
The team is producing a murder mystery for a client. I cannot wait to tell you about it soon. Clarissaâs designing and managing a Webflow website, Carinaâs fully rewritten our course landing page based on great feedback, Donniqueâs helping Peter get philosophical about chatbots, and one of our partners is building Amandaâs emails while sheâs on a beach in Thailand presumably drinking from a coconut with a tiny parasol.
Hey actually, a question for you: Fenwick has an archive of coming up on 10 years of content marketing material. We created a course. What do you think should we create next? (You can reply to this email.)
Coaching sessions
Playbooks
Live training scenarios
A LinkedIn Live interview series
More courses
In other news, kittens. (Yes, Carina crocheted a little cap.)
Worth reading
The cell is not a factory. When analogies constrain our thinking. Great long read. (Iâm really crushing on this magazine.)
The client. Sent to us by a client, so you know theyâre a keeper.
