Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Future of Marketing

The Multistudio Kansas City office features artwork from the Bill and Christy Gautreaux collection. Pictured *Man Whisperer*, Keltie Ferris, 2009. Portrait of Bridget by Chase Castor.

By Bridget Lowe

Bridget Lowe is Chief Marketing Officer at Multistudio, a national design firm committed to harnessing the power of multidisciplinary design to address the most critical demands of our time. Expanding the practice of architecture, brand experience, city design, education design, and interiors to explore the possibilities of economic, social, and environmental change, the firm takes on a variety of projects, evaluating importance by neither size nor type but by impact.

I first fell in love with architecture thanks to a single brief interview I read in 2003, brief considering its impact on me and my life over the two decades to follow. It was a photocopied interview with philosopher and cultural theorist Michel Foucault titled “The Eye of Power,” a foundational text in the study of architecture, in which he discusses Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon concept.

It was in a literature course that I read the interview, as we examined London’s city streets in the 18th and 19th centuries, and how the design of the city contributed to the complicated, often tragic lives of many of the characters in the gigantic Victorian novels we were reading.

It was not Jeremy Bentham’s concept of the Panopticon that changed my thinking about space forever, but Foucault’s “reading” of the space in the interview. It created a foundation for me for understanding the power of architecture and designed spaces to shape people’s internal and external worlds in profound ways, transforming their relationships to themselves and to one another. Foucault, in his critique of the Panopticon, states in the interview, "A whole history remains to be written of spaces, which would at the same time be the history of powers…"

A sketch from poet Michael Burkard while at Syracuse Univeristy.

Long story short, I wasn’t a student of architecture, and I have never been a marketing student. I was a student of the humanities with a focus on poetry and poetics, and it is these areas of study that I have found to truly prepare me for my career within design, especially as our field engages with ethics in constantly evolving ways.

As my career has progressed, I have been consistently working to align my work more deeply with my own values and beliefs, a focus that is shared by many in the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts. A Fast Company survey of 2019 found that more than 70% of respondents said they were more likely to choose to work at a company with a strong environmental agenda, and over 10% would also be willing to take a pay cut to ensure their values were aligned with their employer’s values around sustainability.

Coming to architecture through other professional experiences, it is the framework of ethics that I find most generative and unique about our field. Architecture has always been a practice deeply rooted in ethics — the AIA has a formal Code of Ethics that is continually evaluated and updated, and the foundational AIA textbook has a large section devoted to ethics for the modern practitioner of architecture, which explores the concept through a historical lens as well as the lenses of philosophy, art, poetry, and design.

I think one of the reasons ethics are so central to our field is because architecture rests, like literature, within the realm of art. Art, more so than what is traditionally understood as “business,” is uniquely able to admit dialogue around ethics, to suggest possible answers to the questions which carry across time and humanity, and which resist easy answers.

While questions of ethics are embedded in our field, how can marketing professionals responsibly and authentically connect ethics with the work a firm does, or even more importantly, chooses to do? How can a firm’s portfolio be read as a text, an enduring statement on its ethics?

We understand our lives (and our careers — as one of many facets of who we are) better in retrospect. What I am able to see more clearly by looking backward is that the greatest strengths I bring to my career are those rooted in my unwavering interest in and commitment to things that naturally hold my deepest attention. With this in mind, I have synthesized my personal experience into four ideas for deepening the connection between marketing and ethics — a perhaps unlikely pairing — in design practice and in leadership.

Treat Empathy as More Than a Design Exercise

From Aristotle’s conception of ethics as living a good life (a self-focused mode of understanding ethics) to a shift toward more empathic modes that consider the self in relationship to a collective, ethics are continuously evolving and shifting in responsiveness to culture and environment, just as architecture does.

In philosopher and linguist’s Emmanuel Levinas foundational work Entre Nous: thinking-of-the-other, he identifies the essence of a human as something that cannot be reduced to utilitarian function. Levinas insists on a “total humanization of the Other.” This total humanization means each person is encountered as a full self, without negotiation, without compromise.

Bridget Lowe at her desk, by Chase Castor.

It is well-known that our societal and cultural values and behaviors shift as one generation ages and another comes of age. We also know that Gen Z is particularly aware of and committed to responsibility toward others in ways preceding generational cohorts have not centralized in the same way. Levinas writes, “It is this shattering of indifference — even if indifference is statistically dominant — this possibility of one-for-the-other, that constitutes the ethical event.”

This responsibility to others is evident in urban planning, placemaking, responses to climate justice and the climate emergency, community engagement, equitable housing, and multiple other facets of working within architecture that transcend the more immediately understood work of the architect.

Ethics have also converged with consumer behavior in the last decade as consumer spending has been steadily shifting in response to emerging demands for ethical transparency and a commitment to social responsibility from brands. Gen Z and Millennials are particularly focused on ethics and corporate responsibility as it relates to where and how they spend their money — and where they make money.

Consumer sentiment is often aligned with generational cohorts, which we have long understood to have collective sets of values that are distinct from the generations before and after them. In a 2018 McKinsey report on Generation Z, it was noted that, “. . . [I]n a transparent world, younger consumers don’t distinguish between the ethics of a brand, the company that owns it, and its network of partners and suppliers. A company’s actions must match its ideals, and those ideals must permeate the entire stakeholder system.”

The report and survey found that 70 percent of Gen Z respondents, “. . . try to purchase products from companies they consider ethical,” and about 65 percent, “. . . try to learn the origins of anything they buy—where it is made, what it is made from, and how it is made.”

McKinsey concluded that this shift was, “. . . transforming the consumer landscape in a way that cuts across all socioeconomic brackets and extends beyond Gen Z, permeating the whole demographic pyramid.”

Think Like a B2C Brand

When we are speaking in terms of demographics, we are usually referencing B2C marketing rather than B2B. But thinking as a brand rather than a professional services category is a quick mental shift that can have a cascade of positive impacts in refining a firm’s value proposition and offerings in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Critically, people respond to brands. It is the power of a brand that inspires and invites. Companies do not elicit emotion — brands do. If a brand is clear, strong, and artful, it will also be better prepared to engage in the rigor of decision making around ethical questions.

The AEC industry collectively is an industry of professional services (vs. goods or other categories) offered to other businesses, fitting the business-to-business (B2B) marketing model. B2B marketing is full of acronyms, complex insider language, and feels decidedly unromantic, technical, cold. The other foundational marketing approach is business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, in which goods are offered directly to individuals making purchases.

Multistudio Kansas City Exterior. Photo by Michael Robinson Photography.

B2B marketing strategies trail B2C marketing strategies. Why? Because individual consumers’ preferences are reflected in more immediate ways, as their purchasing decisions are more direct, are centered to meet their individual or familial needs (which are easier to define than the needs or desires of large groups), and because their financial transactions are constant versus isolated, long-term decisions that take months or years to arrive at.

Multistudio Kansas City Interior. Photo by Michael Robinson Photography.

All of this means B2C marketing is faster to identify trends, shifts in values, and a sense of where a culture is headed through arts, culture, entertainment, music, sports, and fashion. B2B decision making is heavily layered, a return on investment must be abundantly proved, and financial investments are incredibly significant and impact the lives of many, eliciting a different level of responsibility.

Admit the Role of Beauty

I approach my role within marketing more as a creative design process than a technical function — and I believe a new approach to marketing within architecture and design is not only possible but especially critical as today’s marketing leaders are doing more than ever before — shaping firm strategy, articulating a firm’s values, harnessing the latest research and technological advances, and evaluating opportunities through new lenses to create a portfolio that is in essence a direct communication about what a firm believes.

I believe this approach is necessary because architects are uniquely beholden to a concept nearly impossible to quantify (and even problematic within our field): beauty. Poet Joseph Brodsky famously stated in his 1987 Nobel Prize acceptance speech Aesthetics is the mother of ethics.

The AIA Handbook states that, “. . . the core, defining work of architects — the work that differentiates them from all the other contributors to the safety of the built environment — goes beyond ethics and into aesthetics.”

If we take aesthetics as our starting point, we will remain in the realm of art, an insistence more vital than ever as technological advances change our relationship to creative process and practice.

Why write a poem if you could just speak or write directly? Why the pages and pages of Shakespeare, when the content of his plays can be quickly summarized, its thematic elements clearly defined in a single paragraph? If architecture’s fundamental purpose is to provide human shelter, why make it beautiful?

In this way, architecture, distinct from the collective AEC industry but alongside its engineering and construction collaborators, has a unique responsibility to explore these questions and interrelationships.

Connect Internal and External Commitments

While ethics and aesthetics in relationship to everyday firm activity may sound overwhelming at first, ethical decisions are being made in a constant iterative process every moment of the day; they can be monumental even when they are tangential to the built realm. Recognize these moments as often as possible.

Empathic design thinking can be practiced in everyday life. Care of one’s architectural peers through professional mentorship is even included in the AIA textbook's section on ethics, highlighting the increasing importance of internal firm organizational decisions and what is loosely referred to as firm culture.

We know that for design to be inclusive, access to the profession and retention of diverse talent must be prioritized. The role of Human Resources and leadership in creating work environments that are willing to question past practices and introduce new ways of being an architect are more vital than ever, especially in relationship to access to the profession and care of people and talent within a firm.

Deloitte’s most recent biannual CMO Survey from March 2023 supports this connection. Conducted with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business Professor Christine Moorman, this year’s survey found that marketing executives “. . . continue to overwhelmingly think that ‘having the right talent’ contributes most to future organic revenue growth.” Firms that make the direct connection between care of people and the financial health of a practice are firms that empower HR to truly lead and are better prepared for the future.

Outside of a firm, our governing bodies also play a significant role. The NCARB very recently eliminated the rolling clock policy for the Architect Registration Examination (ARE), a decision that can be categorized as belonging to the realm of ethics, specifically related to access to the profession and the socioeconomic realities that underpin who can become an architect — which has an obviously direct and massive impact on the built realm as we know it.

The decision to eliminate the rolling clock was made after analysis of it “. . . showed that the policy disproportionally impacted women and people of color and continuing the policy would hinder progress toward equity in the architectural profession.”

We are fortunate to have this lens with which to examine the work we do at the ready — not every career path offers this. And we are fortunate that those in our field who are dedicated to the work of ethical guidance, through the AIA and elsewhere, make their collective advisements directly accessible to all who practice, creating generative prompts that allow for consistent evaluation and reflection, a map upon which to imagine a set of new realities.

Ethics, interestingly, are not rules. They are invitations.