Creative marketing firm
Braun/Allison is BC Homes Magazine’s
pick for Marketer of the Year; partner David Allison opens up about their winning approach.
To hear David Allison tell it, homebuyers today want it straight. People in the market don’t want to be talked down to. They are informed, connected and engaged. They access resources on the internet, and social media has taken the concept of word-of-mouth to make-or-break levels. A couple of negative Tweets and just watch the sales of your condo development plummet.
What does this all mean in a recovering-recession era? Developers can no longer rely on a snappy headline to sell a project. It’s a “brave new world” for marketing residential real estate, says Allison.
Who’s he? A co-owner, along with Marcus Braun, of creative marketing firm Braun/Allison, which focuses 90 per cent of its attentions on residential and resort real estate clients.
He’s also a pretty cool guy. Scheduled to meet him at the historic, green-domed Sun Tower on Pender Street — Braun/Allison is treading into commercial real estate marketing with this project — Allison waits for me patiently on the steps of the heritage building. He’s chatting on his phone, but ends the call as he spots me and greets me warmly. We ride up the small elevator together to the 15th floor, which appears to be the homebase for selling the revamped commercial space, an endeavour based on the philosophy that Braun/Allison has developed for its residential properties — something they have coined as “sell the truth.”
We exit the elevator to the top floor, and it’s pretty stark and clearly still under renovation, but there’s a long conference table ahead of us with white chairs. On the table, Allison has lined up several documents to show me. To say he’s detailed and organized would be appropriate. His lineup includes a portfolio of Braun/Allison’s past work, and a copy of Allison’s how-to guide on marketing residential real estate in the new economy, which is, sure enough, called Sell the Truth.
The plainly titled book is what has me the most intrigued. I ask him to explain how this notion of truth-telling plays into the so-called “brave new world” of marketing.
“Before the recession, we were in a rut,” he says. By that he means, “Things were going great [in residential real estate marketing]. So all you needed was a fancy brochure … In fact, in those days, you could scribble something on a lamppost and you’d still have a lineup to buy.”
But with the recession came along a market dip, buyers became hesitant, and marketers could no longer rest on their laurels. “It was no longer enough to show a clever headline. That was no longer enough for people to make a half-a-million dollar purchase.”
Evolving trends
It wasn’t just the recession, though. Allison says there were five other social trends developing simultaneously that together created a “megatrend,” leading the firm to zone in on this strategy of telling the truth, and nothing but the truth.
“The first trend is an overall cultural demand for authenticity. People are tired of make-believe. They have a desire for something real,” says Allison. As an example, he says they don’t want a Tuscan-styled villa on the West Coast; they want something that feels authentic and true to its roots.
Perhaps as a result of trend no. 1, there is a real desire for information — trend no.2. “They want to know where their coffee is grown and if the coffee plantation workers have been fairly treated … If the environmental policies of their homebuilder are sound … If the clothes they are buying were made in sweatshops,” according to Allison. Companies now have to work on a full-disclosure basis.
And then they want to be able to talk about. The third trend then is? Consumers want dialogue. “If a company isn’t quick to respond to an email or a call, consumers get annoyed,” he says. In our hyper-connected world, consumers want immediate response and answers.
Which brings us organically to the next two trends: people just don’t trust traditional advertising the way they used to with its over-the-top hype; instead they are depending more on social media and peer groups.
“Traditional media is still important, but in a different role,” he says. “It used to be enough to say a home had stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. Now, people want to know about the neighbours and demographics. So we must take a much more contextualized and journalistic approach.”
Allison calls this marketing journalism. That’s no oxymoron. What it means is the marketing messaging goes beyond a one-liner to tell a story full of facts and information, crafted in a storytelling manner.
Lessons from the Block
Braun/Allison showed off this strategy in its 2009 marketing campaign for the Block, a community of 32 urban townhomes near Vancouver’s Main Street. The project, by ParkLane Homes, was built in an emerging neighbourhood that aimed to attract a young, creative professional target market. Although the developing nature of the neighbourhood could have been a strike against the project’s sales potential, that wasn’t its biggest problem; the real challenge was the townhomes were being launched in the toughest real estate environment in decades. “For the Block, we rethought our entire approach to real estate marketing. We crafted a campaign rich with real information,” according to Allison.
For the central tagline, instead of pulling on emotional strings, Braun/Allison came up with a straightforward, honest description of the product. It read simply: “32 Big Vancouver Townhomes off Main.” Clear and to the point — and in keeping with the core premise of Sell the Truth. Its visual design reflected this simple line, with straightforward block letters, and a bold black and orange colour scheme.
Beyond the frank tagline, print ads and brochures told a candid, humorous story of a young professional couple — the target demographic. Showing the seemingly giant-sized man and woman hitting their heads on the ceiling of a miniature-sized condo, one ad shouts: “Face it. Your condo is too cramped.”
And when dealing with the issue of the transitioning area, Braun/Allison didn’t try to hide it. Instead, it celebrated it by launching a photo contest, encouraging people to take snapshots of the neighbourhood. “We wanted to make it a little less scary, less of a mystery, and make it a little bit cool.” And definitely worth trading in a tiny 500-square foot condo for the townhomes’ spacious design.
The results speak for themselves. The townhouse development sold 55 per cent on opening weekend and was completely sold out nine weeks later. “And we gave no special offers,” he says. In fact, the prices went up as inventory declined. The Block also won three Georgie Awards® this year including Marketing Campaign of the Year.
According to Allison, the biggest role traditional print media has today is to drive traffic to the website. Every time they placed one of the Block’s print ads in the newspaper, they saw a spike on the website.
And online is where Braun/Allison continued the story. A website should feel more like a news source than a brochure, according to the firm. It should provide links to third-party information sources and be continually refreshed with relevant, truthful information, including blogs. You could say a print ad or brochure is the teaser, but it’s the online environment where the consumer is sold. The Block’s website, says Allison, gave buyers everything they needed to know to make a decision.
Online is where that fifth trend comes into play — social media like Facebook and Twitter. With existing estimates of nearly 50 per cent of all eligible Canadians already on Facebook, there’s no denying that companies need to be reaching their consumers in these ways. “Think about this; CBC gets excited when two million Canadians watch a hockey game, and here we’re talking almost half the country’s population, roughly 15 million people,” says Allison. “CBC on its best day ever is still only a fraction of that. For a marketer to ignore Facebook, it’s crazy. And all the growth lately online is from moms and grandmas.”
Social media is also a great market research tool. In the old days, Allison says they would sit around the ad agency, and hire expensive market research firms and conduct focus groups. These days, that research can be done with a few clicks. “I call it ‘digital anthropology.’ You just poke around the internet, and it just takes time, there is no cost. It’s a new way of doing old things,” he says.
“It’s a brave new world,” he adds. “We combine the best of the old with the power of the new.”
So, to sum up, all these five trends mixed together, accelerated by current market conditions, created a “perfect storm,” says Allison, “and our answer to that is to ‘sell the truth.’”
Allison pauses for a moment and wants to assure me that he’s not being immodest. He gives as much credit to the Block’s sales success to the development and sales companies themselves. A successful marketing campaign must be a “meeting of the minds of a great development company with a vision and a great sales company, and our role is we’re the creative people. We added our little piece of the puzzle.” says Allison.
International results
The Block was the test case for Braun/Allison’s sell-the-truth philosophy, and they didn’t wait long to apply it again, this time in Phoenix, Arizona. A developer came to Braun/Allison and asked for the firm’s help in selling a tower called One Lexington in downtown Phoenix. “Phoenix is one of the hardest hit areas in terms of real estate value drops. This new tower was selling in the worst recession and environment possible,” explains Allison.
Again, Braun/Allison applied the same principles that saw the Block succeed. The campaign focused lots of attention on the website acknowledging the ups and downs the projects had faced because of the recession. Then it took its approach to traditional print media to such a high standard it would be an insult to call the final product a “brochure.” “We basically created a magazine,” says Allison. It had extensive amounts of information on not only the tower, but also the community, and its amenities, people and lifestyle. “We sold 30 homes in the first 30 days. A really great month there for them is four to five sales. So that’s a 600 per cent increase!”
Commercial foray
After seeing the success of their methodology with residential real estate clients, Braun/Allison wondered why commercial real estate was still being sold by fax flyers. “We put a challenge out there — who’s going to be the first [commercial] development to try our method,” says Allison.
And that’s why we’re currently sitting on the top floor of the Sun Tower. Being redeveloped into creative office space by owner to Phil Kim and real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield, Braun/Allison has come in to help brand it.
In the same way Braun/Allison approaches its work for its residential and resort real estate clients — which have in the past included 1180 Homer in Vancouver, the Shore in Tofino, Vista Place in North Vancouver, Limoncito and Marisol in Costa Rica, Tower Ranch in Kelowna, Links in Port Coquitlam, Red Point in Squamish and Kettle Ridge in Naramata — Allison says his goal is to take the marketing of the Sun Tower to the point where there is a waiting list for the building.
He couldn’t do it without his team at Braun/Allison, however, including partner Braun, and their staff of graphic designers, writers, operations and client relations managers, and a vice-president of strategy and results, who measures the success of their campaigns and continues a relationship with the clients even after all the creative is complete.
While keeping tabs on the past, Braun/Allison also has its eye on the future. Allison, who’s now working on a sequel to his book tentatively titled Marketing Journalism, notes that mobile device marketing is no doubt the next wave, as is a special feature called augmented reality, where the view through your mobile device is augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. You will be able to see that future building before it’s even built.
“And that’s only just the beginning,” says Allison. “Now, instead of being in a ‘rut,’ doing the same thing, everyday I’m learning something new.”
Five trends in one
According to David Allison of Braun/Allison, five social trends have rolled into one “megatrend” that, in this recession-recovery era, leavie residential developers only one option when marketing new projects — sell the truth.
- Consumers are searching for authenticity.
- People want more information. About everything.
- Consumers expect dialogue.
- Traditional advertising is working less effectively.
- Social media networking sites have become mainstream.
BCHM