If the first key to real estate success is location, the second is surely branding.
Establishing an indelible identity in a fiercely competitive environment is critical, and builders and developers from The Donald to the Dermot Company are doing everything they can to distinguish themselves.
Author andécorporate consultant Dave McNally says if you can make a name synonymous with positive, distinctive attributes, more than half the battle is won.
“A brand is a perception or emotion contained in the mind of another person,” he says. “Most people without knowing much about branding simply believe it is publicity and advertising. All that does is to help create awareness that a brand exists, but that in and of itself does not build a strong brand.”
McNally says, when it comes to real estate, what is most important is to deliver a consistent message of service and reliability.
That’s the approach taken by developer Bill Dickey, president of the Dermot Company.
“We want to say we’re the Dermot Company and when you are dealing with us there is a sort of expectation that you have when you do business with us,” says Dickey.
The company plans to focus more on the branding of its rental properties versus condominiums, and is acquiring 600 apartment units in six different buildings in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx.
“We will be calling it the Presidents Portfolio, and we will name the buildings after presidents – for example, the Kennedy, the Washington,” Dickey says.
Daphne Viders, director of communications at the Moinian Group, was hired more than three months ago by CEO Joseph Moinian to help create and elevate the company’s brand image.
“They realized there needs to be a cohesive message for everything and that the company needs to be recognizable within the industry as well as outside the industry,” Viders says. “We are going back and looking at all of our buildings and looking at when we acquired them and why we acquired them and creating a story about our organization and looking for ways to be able to tell that story clearly and ultimately sell that story.”
Viders says “the story” will be integrated into all aspects of the company’s marketing materials, from its brochures to its Web site.
The Moinian Group, whose holdings consist of more than 20 million square feet of commercial and residential properties, plans to implement its new marketing approach early this year. The company will begin sales on the Atelier, a 46-story, 478-condo unit development located on 42nd Street between 11th and 12th avenues, on Feb. 15. The project, designed by architect Costas Kondylis, features sweeping river and city views and stands in the shadow of Times Square.
“All of our buildings are named, you can’t go back and rename buildings, but we are looking forward to see how to do things differently and what type of strategy we can have in the future,” Viders says. “There is going to need to be a common denominator in every development. That will include color palette, standard copy about the organization, and the type of amenities we offer.”
While many companies are creating an overall brand approach for their organizations, the “hip” marketing tool continues to be the naming of buildings. SDS/Procida Development has had success so far with its “be@” line of residential properties.
“It started as a product and then grew into a brand, because we realized there was something there,” says Mario Procida, a partner in the company.
The first property, Boulevard East, located at 53 Boerum Place in Boerum Hill in Brooklyn was the starting point. The company used the property’s initials “b-e” (boulevard east) and turned it into a brand.
“We think it’s a hip product, it’s geared toward a target market in the 30s to mid-40s either physically or mentally. All of our properties really focus on common spaces that people enjoy spending time in,” says Procida.
The company followed its be@boulevard east project with be@clinton west located at 516 West 47th Street, which sold out in eight days. In the spring, Procida will begin construction on be@90 william street, a 115-unit building located at William and Platt streets, along with be@schermerhorn, which will be a 221-unit building on Schermerhorn Street between Hoyt and Smith streets in Brooklyn.
The Clarett Group has chosen to use a tag line as a distinguishing marketing tool to help brand its Chelsea House project, 63 loft-like apartments at 130 West 19th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The tag line, “The perfect Chelsea Pad,” is used throughout marketing material that is creatively placed within an artist notebook.
“We just thought it was a fun way to get people who are artists who would be living in Chelsea to think in an interesting way, so we created a sketch pad approach and we decided to use this in all the marketing for the building,” says David Perry, director of sales at the Clarett Group.
Of course, the most recognizable brand name in real estate can be spotted around the city in gold-plated, foot-high letters: “T-R-U-M-P.”
The Donald’s branding extends beyond naming all his buildings after himself, of course. Attempts by The Real Deal to reach Trump for this story were rebuffed because, according to assistant Norma Foerderer, he was too busy with the December finale of reality television show “The Apprentice” – another Trump branding effort that fellow developers have yet to match.