On the 21st of November 2019, The Office Designer.com launched its pilot event program called TOD Talk. The workshop entitled What Makes You Unique is about Social Selling and Personal Branding for Architects and Interior Designers. It was held at The Assembly @ SPACES 140 Robinson Road and the fabulous canapes and drinks were provided by Pickleville bar and restaurant.
Advocacy to the Interior Design Profession
The workshop was attended by Architects, Interior Designers and Industry professionals from various firms and market segment in Singapore with around 120 guest witnessing the birth of a new platform that aims to focus on giving more respect and recognition towards the design profession as well as to have a unifying platform for the commercial interior design industry in the region.
Our Founder stresses the need for the designers to fight for its right to charge fees in the midst of customers’ exploitation towards the Interior Design profession. Our goal is to create awareness through events and campaigns to at least minimize if not totally eliminate the practice of design misuse in our industry.
The Office Designer

The workshop started at 7:15 pm with a brief introduction to The Office Designer given by Ms. Paula Andrade a community volunteer and followed by a short advocacy speech by our founder Arch. James Paul Pilande which stresses the need for the designers to fight for its right to charge fees in the midst of customers’ exploitation towards the design profession. Our founder’s goal is to create awareness through events and campaigns to at least minimize if not totally eliminate the practice of design misuse in our industry.

The Workshop
Crafting the Right Message to your Target Audience
The first speaker is Mr. Jimmy Crangle, he is an author of a best-selling book entitled 52 ways to get more customers (without Google or Social Media). Jimmy talked about sending the right signals to your customers and how you can achieve this with little help from what we are currently using now. For him, the key is how to craft the right message that your customer can resonate with.

Social Selling for Architects and Interior Designers
The next speaker is Arch. James Paul Pilande, our Founder and Principal Designer of commercial interior design and build firm ARID Builders Pte. Ltd. James explains to the audience the significance of social selling on Linkedin and how it helped him to market and survive the company for 8 years in a foreign country. The in-depth explanation of the 3 basic requirements for social selling coupled with visual examples of its procedures has captivated the audience’s interest and engagement towards this very informative topic that has become the key talking point of the event.

Career Branding for Design Professionals
Our final speaker is Arch. Joan De Leon Tabinas, immediate past-president of the United Architects of the Philippines Singapore Chapter. Ms. Joan has just recently completed her Master’s degree in Sustainable Design from the National University of Singapore. In her talk, she emphasized on the 10 Strategic Approach on how to shape and manage your career brand. Ms. Joan was able to touch on the key points of her topic and has left the audience in awe of her presentation ability to get the message across.

A Highly Engaged Audience
Even after all speakers have completed their respective talks, the majority of the audience has stayed back to wait for the Q&A portion which was mostly directed to Mr. James Paul and the topic of Social Selling. The super-charged audience started asking questions and was diligently answered by all the speakers.

The Q&A was followed by a night of networking and the feedback towards the event was extremely positive. Some even commented that they have learned more about the topic of Social Selling on this free event than those paid ones. Clearly the audience was satisfied and this edition of TOD talks wrapped up a hugely successful event at 10 pm with all smiles from both the audience and organizers.


Encore
Due to insistent public demand and for those who are unable to catch this event, we will be having three separate TODvlogs covering the different topics in full on our YouTube Channel. STAY TUNED!

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