The Beaver Has Been Banished...

When I first began writing "Sitegeist" a couple of months ago, one of the first stories I ran dealt with the very risk-taking and risque branding completed in Manhattan for the new construction project "The William Beaver House." The Beaver House used a fictional mascot (a beaver, of course) who was emblematic of the quintessential Beaver House resident. He was a globe-trotting successful entrepreneur who liked to spend time with the ladies. The entire site was suffused with cheeky irreverance and, to read it, one got the sense that the project was built for a very well defined demographic.

A week and a half ago, I was meeting with a Manhattan sales prospect and we logged on to the Beaver's website and -- gasp -- the entire branding for the project had been reworked (see homepage above.) Gone is the fictional mascot (except for an iconographic representation in the lower left corner of the homepage) and gone is the messaging targeting the jetsetting, swinger demographic. The website now has this pristine "precious metal" look and is much more traditional in selling the value of the project.

All this begs the question: How seriously do developers really take this whole notion of "branded architecture?" If one buys into the current thinking, projects are being developed these days with the notion of creating distinct and definable brands. Thus, if a project was aimed towards a young successful set of globetrotters, one would include amenities that spoke to that demographic. How then, is it possible to just change the branding of a project without changing the design or the amenities? This seems to be what the Beaver House is doing. I guess the market will decide if any of this really matters...

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.