A while back I wrote an article called “Are You Using a Laser or a Flashlight to Solve That Marketing Problem?”.
In it, I argued that marketers often grab the wrong tool.
A laser is excellent when you already know exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. A flashlight is what you use when you’re still looking for opportunity.
The problem isn’t that companies use lasers. The problem is that they often point them in the same direction as everyone else—when what they really need first is a flashlight.
Today, everyone has a laser aiming at data centers.
Walk into almost any construction conference. Read the latest industry headlines. Scroll LinkedIn for five minutes. You’ll come away with the same conclusion: “If you’re not chasing data centers, you’re falling behind.”
While that’s an understandable conclusion, it really depends on the question you are asking. If you’re asking what’s hot in construction, well, yes, that would be data centers. But if you’re asking where are the most opportunities, you’d be wrong. Or at least, incomplete.
What Everyone Is Missing
The most recent ConstructConnect Construction Economy Snapshot recently came out and buried inside the report was a single sentence that received almost no attention:
“Opportunities abound for those not involved with data centers.”
That stopped me. Not because data centers aren’t important. They absolutely are (i.e., our sister company AIM (Accountability Information Management, Inc.) covers them extensively). But I stopped short because someone had finally acknowledged something most of the industry seems to have forgotten.
Capital doesn’t move in one direction.
Capital moves everywhere. And it move simultaneously. You just have to know where to look. One of our favorite guiding principles is this: “The more you look, the more you see. And the more you see, the better you know where to look.”
The Flashlight View
When everyone shines a laser at the same target, everything outside that beam becomes easier to overlook. Yet ConstructConnect’s own numbers tell a different story in this latest report.
Through the first five months of 2026:
- Hospitals and clinics are up 31%.
- Water and wastewater projects are up nearly 19%.
- Retail construction is growing.
- Military construction is up more than 60%.
- Government offices continue expanding.
- Transportation terminals remain strong.
- Bridges and roads continue attracting billions in investment.
- Laboratories are experiencing explosive growth.
While none of those markets generate the excitement of AI infrastructure, certainly all of those markets represent real revenue opportunities. And collectively, they dwarf data centers.
Those categories alone total about $191 billion in starts—and that’s before adding airports, parking structures, police/fire stations, dams and marine work, amusement projects, nursing facilities, and many other growing segments. ConstructConnect’s June Data Center Report says year-to-date data center starts through April were $49.5 billion. Even July’s updated report puts May YTD at $58.1 billion.
None of the opportunity markets dominate conference agendas. Yet together they represent hundreds of billions of dollars in construction activity.
That’s what a flashlight reveals.
Markets Don’t Buy Products.
People running projects buy products. Here’s where many marketing strategies quietly go off the rails.
Companies say they serve:
- Healthcare
- Education
- Government
- Hospitality
But those aren’t customers. They’re categories. Nobody wakes up one morning and says, “Healthcare would like to buy your pump.” Projects buy products. The market simply tells you where to begin looking.
The hospital expansion in Charlotte. The wastewater treatment plant outside Des Moines. The military maintenance facility in Texas. The airport terminal renovation in Nashville. These are real opportunities. Markets simply help you find them.
The Real Advantage
When everyone pursues the same opportunity, competition intensifies. Sales cycles lengthen. Margins compress. Marketing messages become interchangeable. And meanwhile, dozens of adjacent markets continue growing with far less attention.
This is called a Blue Ocean strategy.
- Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne wrote a book in 2005 called, BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY where they argued traditional competition-based strategies (red ocean strategies) while necessary, are not sufficient to sustain high performance. Companies need to go beyond competing. To seize new profit and growth opportunities they also need to create blue oceans.
Blue ocean strategy is based on the view that market boundaries and industry structure are not a given and can be reconstructed by the actions and beliefs of industry players. In other words, a category like “data centers” is just one way of looking at the construction market and, in fact, is the red ocean, not the blue one. Most blue oceans are created from within red oceans by expanding existing industry boundaries. In this case, it’s everything else besides data centers!
In other words, if everyone is fighting for data centers, create a blue ocean where there is less if any competition for your products. Companies need to go beyond competing. To seize new profit and growth opportunities, they also need to create these “blue oceans.”
That’s often where competitive advantage lives—not because the projects are bigger, but because fewer companies are looking for them.
Sometimes the best opportunity isn’t where everyone else is running. It’s where no one bothered to shine the flashlight.
Interline Was Built Around This Idea
This is why we built Interline. Not to tell manufacturers what everyone else already knows, but to help them discover where opportunity is quietly accumulating before it becomes obvious to everyone else.
At Interline, we’ve always believed that intelligence should narrow uncertainty—not narrow curiosity. The purpose of market intelligence isn’t to confirm what everyone already knows. It’s to discover what everyone else hasn’t noticed yet. A market tells you where investment is flowing. Projects tell you who is spending it. People tell you how to win it.
That’s a very different way of thinking than simply chasing the latest industry headline.
For example, in the last six months, retail projects in the planning stage are valued at $14.5B. Imagine that!
There are 96 architects we can identify, because in the planning stages, some of these projects haven’t even picked an architect. Six of those architects control project valuations worth$6M. They are:
- Speedwell Construction
- BB+M Architecture / BeachamBunce+Manley Architecture
- Cunningham & Quill Architects
- Kaas Wilson Architects – Minneapolis/St Paul (HQ)
- Michael Graves – Princeton
- Struere
There are 1,157 owners of these facilities averaging $4.7M. However, these nine owners control $558M in project valuations, and averaging $61M each!
- Publix Supermarkets
- Meijer Inc.
- Walmart Stores Inc.
- Sprouts Farmers Market
- Trader Joe’s Corporate
- InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)
- Hilton Worldwide – Corporate Headquarters
- Tesla, Inc – HQ
- HEB Grocery Company – Construction
Superior opportunities wouldn’t you agree?
Pick Up the Flashlight First
There’s nothing wrong with pursuing data centers. Many companies should. But you shouldn’t do it simply because everyone else is doing it. Following the crowd has never been a marketing strategy.
Instead, create yourself a blue ocean opportunity from those that rarely announces themselves with a headline. The flashlight finds those opportunities. Only then should you pull out the laser.
The best marketing doesn’t begin with focus. It begins with discovery.