This is Probably a Good Book, But The Guy Recommending It Is a Bit of a Fraud

I guess my headlines this morning are somewhat revealing of the glib sort of mood I seem to be in...

Reading the back story in The Real Deal last week, I happened upon a reference from the doyenne of residential real estate marketing herself,Louise Sunshine. Asked what book she was currently reading, she responded with Anna Klingmann's recently released book, "Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy."

The book is about, well, what this blog is supposed to be concerned with. Namely, buildings and brands. Quoting the inside front cover,

"In the twenty-first century, we must learn to look at cities not as skylines but as brandscapes and at buildings not as objects but as advertisements and destinations. In the experience economy, experience itself has become the product; we're no longer consuming objects but sensations, even lifestyles. In the new environment of brandscapes, buildings are not about where we work and live but who we imagine ourselves to be. In "Brandscapes," Anna Klingmann looks critically at the controversial practice of branding by examining its benefits and considering the damage it may do..."

You can order a copy of "Brandscapes" from Amazon here...

And, by the way, if you're wondering who the "Fraud" referred to above is: "c'est moi..." Why am I a fraud? Well, truth be told, I haven't actually read "Brandscapes" yet.

But, in all fairness, I just got my copy yesterday...

I'm Not a Blogging Guru, But These Guys Are...

It's a curious thing, writing a real estate blog in Philadelphia. I follow "emerging trends" in real estate marketing a fair amount and, almost without exception, alot of the innovation seems to be driven from Seattle and San Francisco. Recently, there was an entire conference for real estate bloggers in San Francisco. This post is from a video seminar, created as part of this conference. It features leading real estate professionals who maintain blogs, talking about how blogging has helped their businesses...

Real Estate Print Advertising Rule of Thumb Number 10: It's a Good Idea to Tell Your Readers Where Your Project is Located

Reading the Sunday Paper this morning, I happened upon a quarter-page six-panel layout featuring a number of different new construction offerings of various sizes. My friend, Tom, studied the ad above for "101" and quizzically looked at me and asked "Where the heck IS that project?" I'm passingly familiar with it and knew it was located in downtown Philadelphia, but, I'm wondering, how many people looked at it and had now clue where the project is located?

I'm guessing the lack of address is either an oversight or there's an underlying assumption that readers will know the project is in downtown. (But, even if that were the case, WHERE in downtown is still an important question to answer...) But, even if that was the rationale at work, both Tom and I noted that four of the six projects (three of which are highrises) are nowhere near Philadelphia.

Admittedly, there's no room to spare in a 3" X 3" ad but, one would think, project address is one "detail" that shouldn't be absent from that expensive little swatch of ad space...

Renderings: They Aren't Just for New Construction Anymore...

Yet another article in The Real Deal this month talks about a subject central to our business at Splat. Writing in the August issue, Lauren Elkies notes that the use of renderings to promote existing properties is increasing. There are several circumstances which have led brokers to commission renderings for existing spaces. Sometimes, the property in question is "raw space;" space which is open to custom configuration by the purchaser. In other situations, the unit suffers from poor layout decisions and the rendering is used to demonstrate how slight alterations to the floorplan will result in a more liveable space. Often though, the rendering is simply commissioned because the raw space is, well, just plain not very attractive. Elkies quotes Sharon Held, a Sr. VP at Corcoran, who notes, "I don't know why it hasn't caught on,..." "When it's empty, your eye goes to the worst wart..."

You can catch the entire article here...

Phinally, Philly Winning More Phavor in the Big Apple...

Can't afford to buy a Manhattan Manse but still want the big city resources that Long Island just can't offer? This article in the August issue of The Real Deal, notes that a partnership has been formed between New York based brokerage, DG Neary Realty and the Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation with the intention of promoting Center City properties to those working in Manhattan. Recently, a number of Center City projects, (such as Splat's client, The Residences at Two Liberty Place, have been introduced to the marketplace which offer amenities, luxury and lifestyle suggestive of what one might find in Manhattan. Obviously, some New York based "Phillyphiles" think our story is worth telling, which can only be a good thing for real estate in the City of Brotherly Love...

Can a Joke Without a Punchline Still Be Funny?

I'm going to depart from the customary "buildings, buildings, buildings" emphasis of Sitegeist today to talk about a local branding campaign that has gotten much buzz over the last couple of years locally.

I started thinking about the "I Hate Steven Singer" campaign when a branding newsletter passed across my desk. Steven Singer is a local jewelry store in the Philadelphia area, which has targeted its branding efforts to the 21 - 30 year old male demographic. The article extolled the success of the campaign, noting that the messaging spoke particularly well to its core audience and noting that annual revenues at Steven Singer have appreciated a healthy 15 - 20 percent since the introduction of the campaign.

Here's how the campaign has progressed, in a nutshell... According to this
Wall Street Journal online article. The campaign began "..with a radio spot featuring a man's voice saying, "I hate Steven Singer" and inviting listeners to find out why by visiting the store. Next came the billboards, followed by graffiti-style "I hate Steven Singer" stickers on store windows. The phrase also is still plastered on an array of promotions."

The official "byline of success" of the campaign is that, upon reading "I Hate Steven Singer," viewers have been compelled to go into the store to satisfy their curiosity or go online to learn more about the campaign and the store's offerings. Once at the website or in the store one learns that the "I" in the tagline is, in fact, a prototypical Steven Singer customer and the reason he hates Steven is because his girlfriend/fiance has made him spend lots of money there or the jewelry was an inadvertant cause of marriage and fatherhood.

It's all very cheeky, irreverent and sometimes sexual. If you buy into the popular wisdom the campaign succeeds because it cleverly reaches the "guy" demographic who, truth be told, would probably rather be spending a few grand on any number of other things besides jewelry for the missus. And, although you can't argue with Singer's claims of great ROI on his advertising dollar, I've always had a few issues with the campaign.

Just out of curiosity, for instance, I stood outside Steven Singer's store this morning and asked ten randomly chosen folks if they knew what the slogan meant. My responses basically broke down into three categories. Six people had absolutely no clue what the slogan meant. Three folks told me that the slogan refers to the fact that "the competition hates Steven Singer." And, lastly, one was able to correctly explain the tagline.

The lack of understanding about the meaning of the slogan is one of the problems with the campaign, perhaps. I asked Jami Slotnick, a partner at the Philadelphia/New York Marketing Firm, Munroe Creative Partners what she thought of the campaign and she expressed a couple of concerns. The first concern raised was, at the time of the campaign's rollout, there may not have been enough brand penetration for the client. In other words, instead of asking "WHY is Steven Singer hated," folks were asking "WHO is Steven Singer?" Secondly, there seems to be a "delivery failure" issue with the question itself. None of the non-billboard print signage that one sees around town tells people how they can find out "who" hates Steven Singer and why. The billboard signage does have the web address listed, but it's questionably legible at sixty miles an hour.

The net result of this is that there are a whole bunch of folks around Philadelphia who have heard the ubiquitous slogan but don't have a clue what it means and, possibly, who Steven Singer is. One has to wonder if the initial "teaser" campaign asking the question could have been followed with a campaign that gave a more clearly expressed "call to action," telling people what they could do to find out who Steven Singer is and why is so loathed.

In the end, of course, the client's net happiness and perceived return on investment is really all that matters. In that regard, the buzz on the street is that the healthy growth in sales over the last couple of years is a clear indicator of success. Of course, that healthy growth has probably come with a pretty big price tag. The most prominent media outlet for the store's advertising is the Sirius-based "Howard Stern" show. I can't back this up with facts but, I'm guessing, that advertising on Howard don't come on the cheap.

A Plug for Inman News...

I'm not sure how many real estate marketing people are subscribers to the Inman News site, but, after spending many hours on their site, I've decided to give them a plug. Inman is a clearinghouse of articles and information related to real estate marketing and technology. Earlier this year, they ran a series of articles on the embrace of various "social media" techniques -- blogs and online social networking sites -- and how these communications methods are being used professionally by real estate agents or marketers. Although there have been no empirical studies done, one well-recognized positive consequence of an agent or development writing their own blog is the increased exposure the entries give to search engines. In other words, the more you blog, the higher your page rank on Google or Yahoo searches. The entire series of articles is here, but you'll need to be a paid subscriber to read them...

Oh Condo, You're So Fine; You're So Fine You Blow My Mind...

A friend sent me this article, which appeared in the New York Times this past weekend...The article talks about the efforts in many new real estate projects to tie the identity of a project directly to a "theme song." As someone that has creative directed a number of web and video projects that were soundtracked, I can attest that choosing music is one of the thorniest and most scrutinized aspects of rounding out the identity for a new development. At any rate, I thought the attached was thoughtful and might be of interest...

Hey Baby, wanna go back to my POD and...

Manhattan is a funny real estate market. Usually ahead of the curve on real estate phenomena that later become standard in smaller markets, the New York market is currently spearheading a trend in kitchens that, in many ways, seems to reverse another longstanding trend in kitchen design (that also probably started in New York...)

I'm talking about the "high-end-everything," "industrial-Thermador-this" and "Viking-Range-that" phenonmenon. Ya know, the one that allows the six and seven figure dual-income households (who seldom cook) to rest assured knowing that -- when the caterers come -- they can make it look like the Gazpacho and Branzino were whipped up right in the couple's kitchen.

For years, the industrial aesthetic that these appliances featured -- usually coupled with exotic granites and Italian glass tiles -- heralded that the kitchen was a place of honor and beauty. But a recent trend in New York seems to be closing the door (quite literally) on the developer's love affair with the kitchen.

Recent projects in Manhattan, most notably Jade Jagger's "Jade" project in Chelsea, have taken the attitude that dishwashers, ranges and sinks are not items whose presence should be celebrated in the Manhattan condo. In fact, they should be hidden from view, when guests arrive. To that end, kitchens and (many) bathrooms at Jade are built back to back and feature wraparound doors, which -- when closed -- box both rooms off in smooth, lacquered panels. These core elements, called "Pods" at Jade, are reminiscent of the jewelry boxes for which Jade is well known. As she notes, "The beauty... (of the pod)... is that, when you close it, it is clean and finished. It is quite a beautiful object in the center of the room, ..."

Jade is not the only project in Manhattan that's boxing up the kitchen, though. Previously, I wrote about The William Beaver House, which -- similar to the Pods at Jade -- feature "attache kitchens," which have panelized systems covering the kitchen from view. Just last week, as well, I toured Core Development's Legacy project on the Upper East Side and -- in their model condominium -- they too had boxed out the kitchen as a discrete, cubist mass with retractable sliding door elements. Not literally a "pod" but a first cousin,in terms of spatial form. (The model at The Legacy, by the way, was gorgeous...)

So, will New York "pods" be showing up in other urban markets anytime soon? (Or, have they already?) I'm not aware of any making their way to Philadelphia yet, but, it does seem to complement the modernist "luxe loft" concept that champions clean lines in (sometimes) tight living spaces...