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Branding that makes brokering better

By Maggie Hawryluk

Citi Habitats last week announced plans to re-brand the brokerage with a multi-media campaign that aims to spin the company’s most successful year ever into an all-out assault on the senses.

From a new ad campaign and corporate logo to a redesigned Web site, radio spots and a sweepstakes promotion, the brokerage wants to reinforce its impressive record with a prolific promotion that will put its name firmly among the city’s powerhouses.  Citi Habitats will partner with WCBS radio to make featured announcements during New York Yankees games against both the Boston Red Sox and the Mets and it will produce “corporate collateral” to spread the word among the masses.” This has been a benchmark year for our firm,” said president Gary Malin.  “For 2007, we had nearly $1 billion in closed sales volume while maintaining our position as top rental firm in Manhattan. Now, in announcing our re-branding, we are acknowledging the outstanding efforts of our agents and the services they provide by focusing the majority of our effort on them.” Indeed the campaign’s slogan will be” More Brokers Per SQ FT.” While perhaps not quite up there with “It’s the Real Thing” (Cocoa Cola) or “I’m Loving’ It” (McDonalds) the philosophy is on a par with the industry leaders who have cornered the market not only through market dominance, but through clever and calculated use of branding as a marketing tool.

Halstead Property scored a blockbuster hit in the ongoing battle of the brands earlier this year when the New York City brokerage secured a big-screen product placement deal in the movie “P.S. I Love You” starring Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. The star of such mega-hits as “Million Dollar Baby” and “Boys Don’t Cry,” played a broken-hearted real-estate broker in the tear-jerker that brought in big box office bucks for maker, Warner Bros. And Swank’s onscreen job as a Halstead employee had the up market firm seeing stars.

"The film performed well in the theaters. To associate yourself with an A-lister is the best way to be placed,” said Matthew Leone, marketing manager for Halstead parent, Terra Holdings, who arranged the silver screen deal — a first for a Manhattan firm. Halstead scored the premier product placement — which included a nameplate close-up, and a sandwich board and folder during an open house scene, both emblazoned with the firm’s logo and signature green — through a simple phone call. A product placement firm reached out to Leone when the company was looking to feature a well-known Manhattan firm in the movie. After some deliberation, the Halstead marketing team decided the placement would be a positive step and, in preparation for their star turn, sent a slew of ‘corporate collateral’ to the movie producers, from customized business cards and a nameplate, to Halstead logos, umbrellas, tote bags and the officialnew-hire welcome kit.

The company made a “minor investment,” according to Robyn Kammerer, vice president of communications at Halstead, in creating the customized materials for Swank’s character, but the placement was ultimately free.  And Halstead walked away with their first big screen debut, being featured in two scenes.

"We made sure it was a film we really wanted to be in. Once we heard who was going to be in it, we were onboard,” said Gerald Makowski, director of marketing at Terra Holdings. At a time when real estate firms are looking to establish themselves as more than just sources to buy homes, but rather lifestyle brands, appropriate placements make all the difference. And the lure of such big names as Kathy Bates, Harry Connick Jr. and Lisa Kudrow — who also starred in the film — was enough to convince Halstead to audition for the part. 

“We only go with shows that a smart, savvy New Yorker would connect with. That’s our target audience,” Leone said, adding that Halstead has received several placement offers for TV shows in the past, some of which they’ve turned down for fear of how it would reflect on the brand.

The brand’s platform is “How Real Estate Gets real,” one of a slew of slogans that have become part of New York’s real estate vocabulary in the past few years as more and more firms use branding to boost business, In 2006, Corcoran was among the first of the Manhattan behemoths to use the strategy to redefine its image; in this case easing itself away from the name and personality of its founder with a marketing strategy focused on lifestyles. The Corcoran tagline is “Live who you are” and the brand focuses on understanding a client’s individuality.

According to Christina Lowris, executive vice president of marketing and advertising at Corcoran, the effort has served its purpose well. Lowris points to Corcoran Web traffic as an example of the campaign’s success. Before 2006, the firm’s Web site received one million unique visitors. Today, 3.5 million people visit the site every month. Even pretenders to the residential throne, such as DJK Residential, have shaken up the status quo in recent years with new partnerships and branding initiatives.  A buy-over by the giant SIRVA Relocation in 2005 gave the firm —previously known as DJ Knight — extra muscle to flex in a campaign that focused on beefing up its residential brokerage business while continuing to grow its relocation arm. But sometimes establishing a brand doesn’t always mean a boom in business. Michael Simon, president and chief executive officer of Century 21 New York Metro, has gone to great pains to build an individual brand for the firm in Manhattan. 

Though Century 21, which came to New York almost two years ago, is one of the most widely recognized global brands, with branches in 44 countries, New Yorkers aren’t easily impressed by such facts.  “What I stressed at Century 21 was that, though the national branding is high, the benefit in New York is really half of the value we should be getting out of it,” Simon said. “You have to be New York in order to be successful. We had to get away from the national and bring it closer to home. We had tore-focus in New York to focus on the neighborhoods.”  Rather than advertising on massive billboards, Century 21 has brought its “Gold Standard” —which was developed a year ago— to the streets with construction site posters and man-on-the-street giveaways. 

While some firms look to be fresh and new, Brown Harris Stevens, which was founded in1873, looks to project themselves as up-to-date, but established. And they are extremely protective of what they represent.  “We are a high-end real estate firm and we are branding ourselves as that,” Hall F. Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens, said. “We are very controlling of our brand. We’ve been using the same typeface for all of our materials and we watch it very carefully. “We have a very distinctive, traditional typeface and strong and bold logo,” he added.  And with such an investment, both in time and money, for a distinct brand, firms have every reason to be protective. Aside from creating a meaningful logo and choosing that perfect shade for a signature color, firms are also careful to make sure daily decisions are made with that persona in mind. “A brand is more than a logo, it’s the people who represent it,” Kammerer said.

Post Date: 5/14/2008

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