Realty ads lack class, top creative agencies reluctant to serve the sector-II

Track2Realty Exclusive: In one of the classic example, one of the advertising agency recently came out with a creative idea of suggesting the name of the project as 1947. The spacious luxury flat’s advertising was suggested to be played around the concept of freedom—from space crunch, parking mess, traffic snarls etc. with the tag line “when every lips had one word freedom this apartment was conceptualised”. Result: the agency was asked to get out of the hangover of being ‘creative’ or leave.

This raises the fundamental question as to whether the realty advertisements have any critical linkage to the overall brand philosophy of the company. Or is it just sheer expense to sell the project? Kamal Khetan, CMD of Sunteck Realty asserts that for brand communication, it is clearly performance that paves the way at every step that they take.

He maintains that if it is a listed entity then it is of utmost importance to maintain transparency with the governing bodies. Well defined philosophy enables the company to being recognized as one among the top listed real estate players.

The key aspect of brand communication is establishing, maintaining and sustaining the trust that the stakeholders have reposed in the given company. Constant and timely updates whether project or financial performance form part of the standard operating procedure for the company.

 “At Sunteck, we believe in observing minimalistic advertising spends. Any project communication goes through the routine process of first conducting a market research followed by campaign building based on the insights and followed by the campaign execution across collaterals. We have always maintained a focused and targeted approach and thus we reach our audience through our channel partners. We undertake channel partner initiatives and support them on ground. Our focus has been to undertake on ground initiatives much more than Above the Line Spends. The PR machinery serves the purpose of an endorsement and we channelize our efforts in communicating to the media about the projects,” says Khetan.

Devang Varma, Director, Omkar Realtors & Developers agrees that project advertising has the limitation of communicating a limited outlook of the brand whereas brand communication encompasses the overall communication canvas.

“Innovations are evolving over a period of time. Marketing communications function has laid stress on innovation and creativity while dealing with our stakeholders and public at large. For example, in second half of 2012, we unveiled our widely acknowledged OOH campaign – Mumbaipedia which was a very witty and creative take on colloquial terms prevalent in every day usage in Mumbai. It also included a witty take on subject matter associated with “Life in Mumbai”. Another innovation was a highly creative radio campaign for the launch of our luxury housing project in Malad East in Mumbai,” says Varma.

Girish Shah, VP, Marketing & Sales, Godrej Properties maintains that consistency and coherency at every touch point and engagement with the brand is the key to success than mere innovations. According to him, for Godrej Properties the brand values, tone and personality across projects or brand remains the same.

“Unlike other developers we believe in engaging with customers when he is the most receptive, ergo and hence we invest a lot in consumer engagement programs like theatre, golf, polo, art and music where in we get to interact with consumers,” says Shah.

Manoj John, VP, Corporate Planning & Strategy finds a reason for stale and repetitive advertising when he says real estate advertisements especially print media (where the highest amount of ad spend is concentrated) is very akin to car segment. Most of the car print ads would feature the car most prominently; all the other elements are just part of the setting or creating the environment in which the car is portrayed.

“Even when the target audience looks at the ad, his attention is almost always concentrated on the images (exterior shots, interior shots or of specific highlights of the particular model. Any other composition of print ad does not evoke interest or attention. The same goes for a real estate proposition, all that matters is the look of the building or the interiors of the apartment….well that is how the customers receive visual communication,” says John.

The developers by and large maintain that it is quite a task to break the accepted mode, and come up with a different visual representation of the product ‘my home’ or ‘my office’. Of late, some of the realtors have experimented with the campaign which uses emotions to represent the character of the apartment with no visual representation of the building. But by and large realty ads have been lacking innovation and aesthetic attraction in terms of the taglines, background colours, imagery used on the boards to create thoughtful campaign with crisp copy.