I was talking to a company this week that specializes in putting together one year marketing strategy action plans for customers.  We were talking about going to visit him in Regina Saskatchewan and he said just to let you know we do not have an office all our employees work out of their homes.  I thought interesting, my first thought was how does this look from a customers point of view that they work out of their houses as it looks like you are not established etc.  He quickly clarified that they use this fact to sell themselves more to customers as all his employees had worked for advertising companies with lavish office spaces and he felt that the client is paying for that space.

Personally I could not run my company with employees working out of their homes, I want my employees to maximize  collaboration and I like to have everyone in the office at the same time so if you need to talk to someone you can go to their office and chat.

But how many times have you walked into an office and said wow this is nice office space.  Do you think, if you are a customer, I am paying for this fancy space with higher fees.  I know certain customers feel this about lawyers.  I new a business man that always said “successful people want to deal with other successful people”, his philosophy was to have the fancy office, fancy car and other successful people would want to deal with you?

I think there is a happy medium, I think of our office, it is very cool and stylish space.  Not extravagant but very comfortable for our employees and our customers.  It does not scream out “we are wasting money on rent”.  Unfortunately, certain businesses like lawyers, accountants and financial planners feel they need to show the same style of office as others in their industry have shown for years.  I think these firms may have to change with the times,  generation Y took over the top spot from baby boomers in the work work force in 2010.

Not sure if Gen Y cares about fancy offices.  For our business its a little easier as it is normal to have a hip, stylish office space in a trendy area of town as that is what is generally seen from advertising agencies, branding companies and now online marketing firms like ourselves.  What do you think, is your office space too nice, not nice enough or just right?

This entry was posted by John McDonald on Thursday, January 13th, 2011 at 10:01 am and is filed under Online Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.