Customer Story: HWO Architects
Creating spaces where people want to live and thrive is the primary goal of HWO Architects, the London-based architecture studio that’s keen on making a difference in a highly competitive market. Between HWO and its clients, developing sociable residential schemes is a quintessential part of reforming neglectful and innovation-blocking attitudes in the housing sector.
As part of our Customer Story series, we had the pleasure of chatting with Nicolas Khalili, Founder and Managing Director of HWO Architects. Nicolas shared with us how they use Issuu to deliver digital brochures in a meaningful format, which helps them get discovered by important decision-makers and serious developers.
Welcome, Nicolas! Can you share with us how you first discovered Issuu?
As a medium size firm, we are very keen on making a difference through the use of technology. One of the things we noticed several years ago is that brochures kept going out of date because people don't necessarily want to have them in a physical format anymore. So, we were looking for a software or platform that would enable us to get the brochure look in a digital format, which ultimately led us to discovering Issuu.
How has your content marketing changed since you began using Issuu?
We were able to build a wide audience with Issuu due to how easy and effortless it is to share our digital brochures across different channels. The main thing we really like about it is the page-flipping effect that gives depth to our brochure’s content. Issuu is, in a way, our social media marketing tool. It’s so simple to upload, change, re-upload documents, and send out the materials. Giving people the option to download our brochures is another feature that makes Issuu a powerful tool for our digital marketing strategy.
What type of content do you share most often?
We use Issuu to share digital brochures showcasing new projects for our clients, which we link to our website. Any potential client that is serious about hiring our firm will appreciate this format. The flipbook effect gives way to expressing our expertise and detailed thought process through bold visuals.
Aside from Issuu, what other tools are in your content marketing toolbox?
We also use InDesign to create content with a set format that we reuse on every portfolio or brochure we publish. We found that it’s less confusing for our audience to expect the same format every year than to change it every time we send out a new publication. We always start with a bright-colored introduction in order to grab the audience’s attention. Then, we apply the set formats to actual projects, where we typically aim to keep people engaged with the most interesting pictures we can find.
What kind of impact has digital publishing had on your organization and on the success of your marketing efforts?
We really like it. The reality of it is that it helps you build a wide audience, which also happens with Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – but, on such platforms, your followers are ultimately trying to sell you something. People want to put themselves in front more than they're not. For us, Issuu is a healthy way to control what we put out there. We have a publication page on our website that directly links to our various publications on Issuu. We love Issuu because it gives depth to our content and makes it easy to get our annual brochure in front of our audience.
HWO Architects chooses Issuu for:
Flipbook Brochures: HWO creates and publishes brochures with Issuu as a meaningful way to present content to readers who are interested in diving deeper into the topic.
Social Capabilities: Using Issuu as a social channel enables HWO to share in-depth information with its audience and fosters a place to search, research, and get inspired.
We’d like to thank Nicolas for taking the time to share how Issuu helps strengthen HWO’s digital publishing strategy!