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Architects Ask Public to “Look Up” This Primary Season

A group of architects is hoping to capture the nation’s attention this primary season by running TV ads on cable news outlets.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is tapping the potential of primary season.

This week the group announced a national advertising campaign that will include a series of TV ads that will run for 16 weeks during political primary coverage on cable news outlets. As part of its push, AIA is continuing its “Look Up” campaign, which focuses on the connection between architectural design and how people interact with the spaces around them.

“Architecture has the power to change people’s lives for the better,” AIA Executive Vice President and CEO, Robert Ivy, said in a statement. “This advertisement celebrates specific ways that new homes and schools, a homeless shelter, and a preserved concert hall benefit when architects are involved.”

Ivy spoke to Associations Now last year when the “Look Up” campaign first launched and said that it was largely a result of member request.

“Our members, 85,500 members, have asked for years for a national advertising campaign,” Ivy told Associations Now. “Three years ago, we conducted an extensive survey, one of the largest we’ve ever done—33,000 people we reached out to. We found that, by and large, the public and our collaborators admire architects, but they do not understand what architects do. Now, that’s a disparity: They like us, but they don’t know what we do.”

The three-year, multiphase campaign started with a social media push in which AIA shared a 90-second video that garnered more than 12 million impressions. Ivy said the three-year duration of the campaign will hopefully allow for enough time to raise the public’s awareness of architects’ roles in society as well as answer questions.

“Throughout this campaign we are trying to illustrate how architects partner with home and building owners alike to make their ideas and vision a reality, and to generate greater awareness for the impact that architects have on spaces that are used on an everyday basis,” AIA President, Russ Davidson, said in a statement.

(iStock/Thinkstock)

Katie Bascuas

By Katie Bascuas

Katie Bascuas is associate editor of Associations Now. MORE

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