Inside Third & Bond: Week 22
Today the folks at The Hudson Companies try to put aside their worries about the economy and discuss all the marketing decisions that loom on the horizon. Our demolition is done, we’re revising the pile design, bidding out the plans to subcontractors, and negotiating construction financing terms. We’re gearing up for the construction phase as…
Today the folks at The Hudson Companies try to put aside their worries about the economy and discuss all the marketing decisions that loom on the horizon.
Our demolition is done, we’re revising the pile design, bidding out the plans to subcontractors, and negotiating construction financing terms. We’re gearing up for the construction phase as we warily view all the ongoing economic indicators. While we appreciate that condo sales are still strong and interest rates are way down, we don’t feel the least bit relaxed. And it’s at this juncture of a project, that we begin to turn our focus to the next big thing in our project planning…..marketing.
Marketing—the very word probably brings major eye rolling to many a Brownstoner reader…
…The eye rolling is no doubt a result of observing too many lame and transparent marketing efforts, whether it’s bad names (Le Bleu? The Avonova?), bad phrases (net effective rents?), and generic or inaccurate references to luxury residences with granite countertops.
Now that we have completed our interior and exterior models and renderings, we have enough of a sense of the project to begin to give it a personality. We will soon sit down with a marketing and graphics firm, who will be hired to develop, create and produce all the marketing materials we will need throughout the sales period. In our initial conversation describing the project, we’ll toss around some of the main themes we want to emphasize and begin to figure out what the main headlines are. Should it be:
ï‚· The up and coming Gowanus canal, home to artists, small businesses, home owners and Brooklyn’s first Whole Foods Market.
ï‚· Great location between Carroll Gardens & Park Slope, easy walk to the F, dine on Smith Street or Fifth Ave.
ï‚· Another fabulous development of the Hudson Companies
ï‚· Affordable condos for Brownstone Brooklyn
ï‚· A real green project, rated LEED-Silver
ï‚· Beautiful design brought to you by Rogers Marvel, the architects of the State Street townhouses
ï‚· Low-scale townhouses with interesting layouts, not generic, vanilla condos.
All of these headlines have plusses and minuses. Do we want to emphasize Whole Foods when construction has been delayed? (When we thought the supermarket was going to open by the time we opened our sales office, we jokingly said we could call the project Aisle 14.) Does it matter to buyers who the developer is? David was once on a panel of developers and stated his opinion that, unfortunately, buyers don’t really pay attention to who the sponsor is, how else to explain the ongoing sales success of sub-par developers whose prior projects are littered with construction defects? Every other developer on the panel strongly disagreed thinking that their brand mattered, but we’re not so sure. In the era of Richard Meier, you see architectural firms increasingly emphasized, although Rogers Marvel is not yet at the level of architectural celebrity (even though we love their work).
These headlines come into play as we begin to think about the project’s name, its tagline and logo. To use our last project as an example, the name was J Condo, the logo included a swath of the Manhattan Bridge, and the tagline was The Joy of Living in Dumbo. In this case we thought J Condo (named for Jay Street) would be memorable, easy to pronounce, easy to remember a web address (jcondo.com) and catchy in the single letter trend (W Hotel, M Bar). The logo reinforced the Brooklyn waterfront, and the tagline reinforced the J theme and the hip Dumbo location. Finally, the J logo was a long, vertical J which fit nicely in a Sunday Times column ad.
So what does this mean for Third & Bond? Well, like all expectant parents experimenting with names, good, bad, and just plain silly, we’re starting to play around (mostly with the silly)….
3B, The Gowanus just got Greener
3B is hopefully catchy, easy to remember, in a long tradition of letter/number titles such as T2 (movie) or L3 (Carroll Gardens condo). And then we squeeze in Gowanus & LEED.
Or,
Gowanus Green, Brownstone Brooklyn you can afford
Or,
111 Third Street, Beautiful, Affordable and Sustainable
Or,
Third & Bond, As Seen on Brownstoner, But Better Looking in Person
As marketing lay people, we find that the names we throw out among ourselves tend to be obvious and predictable and rarely end up as the names we decide upon. We’ll ask the marketing firm to develop multiple options, often pages and pages of names, which we pick from. And coming soon to a blog near you, we’re going to offer up some of the name finalists to an online Brownstoner poll.
We then need to think about what we’re spending money on to get the word out. We’ll have the brochure that will incorporate project renderings, a neighborhood map, information on the project and the development team. We’ll produce floor plans that prospective buyers can take with them. Beyond that, we’ll huddle with Leslie & Jim, our brokers at Corcoran, to determine which marketing materials will have the best bang for the buck. Should we spend our money on beautiful bridge signage for all passers-by to see? Ads on phone kiosks and subway station entrances? Movie ads at BAM and Cobble Hill Cinemas at those annoying pre-previews? Or it just may be enough to rely on the Times, the Times online and Corcoran’s web site. We shall see.
And after we’ve decided when and where we’ll be advertising, we’ll turn to the tchotchkes that will be given out to visitors to our open houses. We don’t like to underestimate the pleasure or power of tchotchkes. They get press, stick with people (in memory if not possession), and they give the kids of prospective buyers something to argue over while the parents imagine where the sofa could go.
On larger projects we go a little wild with lots of fun stuff since the economics of a large project enable you to be a kid in a candy store filled with all sorts of stuff: baseball hats, mouse pads, customized labels on water bottles and chocolates, coffee mugs, and beach towels. For this project, we won’t have the marketing budget to go all out, but you can be sure we’ll have some limited tchotchkes something environmentally sensitive no doubt. Maybe a canvas shopping bag for trips to the new Whole Foods, or organic chocolates. Or maybe something practical like a tape measure. Or maybe we’ll just hand out CDs with the entire anthology of Third & Bond Brownstoner postings! (See, this is why we need our marketing team.) In any case, there are a lot of decisions to be made between now and the launch of marketing, and plenty of opportunities for you to give us your comments (hold the eye roll, please). Let the countdown to the organic-chocolates-with-Brownstoner-readers’-comments-printed-on-the-recycled-wrapper begin!
Inside Third & Bond: Week 21 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 20 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 19 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 18 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 17 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 16 [Brownstoner]
Inside Third & Bond: Week 15 [Brownstoner]
From our lawyers: This is not an offering. No offering can be made until an offering plan is filed with the Department of Law of the State of New York.”
I agree re “Third & Bond” IMO, using the word “Bond” brings, for the men, a reference to James Bond, and for women, Bond no. 9 perfume, and perhaps for both sexes, Bond Street in London – all good, classy images 🙂
“Third & Bond” = total class – simple, informative. Don’t do a Dorothy, you’ve got it all right at home.
unless you are marketing to hipsters I would avoid Gowanus in the marketing campaign, as well – focusing on “smith & fifth” says CG and PS without having to say you will, actually, be living in Gowanus
So what does Corcoran do to earn their commission? When i sold my house with them they had professional photos taken, nice brochures made and floor plans drawn. Do they pay for the website, advertising, sales office, model unit build out, etc? or is that on the developer too? If this project will have roughly $35 million in sales (47,000 sq/ft x 750), that is a $2.1 million commission assuming 6% (i realize this could be negotiated down). At least $1.1 of that goes to corcoran, how are they earning that? shouldn’t they be spending at least 10% of that on marketing? For that kind of money wouldn’t it be cheaper for you as the developer to hire an experienced director of sales, rent a sales office, advertise weekly in NYtimes, hold broker events to court them and offer all brokers 3%? that can’t cost more than $1.1 million? Unless corcoran is doing all fo the above as part of their commission, in which case it just costs slightly more but you receive the exposure of their website. Have you guys considered that approach?
I want one of those 🙂
12:37–We pay for all the marketing costs. As soft costs go, we spend far more on architectural & engineering fees. For brochures, we’ve spent as little as $10K and as much as $40K. We’ll save money on floor plans on this project since there are only 5 primary floor plans to produce. We’ve currently budgeted $75K to produce (not design, that’s a separate cost)all our marketing materials, from brochures and floor plans to bridge signage, stationary & baseball hats. We’re currently making T-shirts: “Third & Bond…Endorsed by Mrs. Limestone” You can pick them up at the same place they make those Brownstoner sweatshirts.
I’d wouldn’t mention the word Gowanus.
To us long term residents – it is the name of the canal and the highway – not a neighborhood and certainly not at the location 3rd and Bond.
I’d highlight how well these new homes integrate into the Carroll Gardens neighborhood – meaning low-rise townhouse and very ‘neighborhoody’.
As a marketing professional, I agree that “third and bond” has become more then just the cross streets of the brownstones, but has evolved to become the building’s brand identity. As Mrs. Limestone mentions, it’s sleek, fashionably sounding, and mysterious yet memorable.
All you need is a simple tagline, like the “Gowanus just got greener,” “Welcome to the Gowanus” or “stylish homes, sustainable design. simply living.” to identify your key selling points.
How much do you spend on marketing and does Corcoran chip in? if you pay for all of it, does Corcoran’s commission go down? and is it based on a certain price psf? other than financing is it your largest soft cost?