Investment propertyWhat"s In A Name? Just About Everything, Say New Home Marketing Experts
When you go to the grocery store and load up your cart, chances are you"ll purchase the same brand names every time. You may spend more on the cereal with the well-known brand name on it, but you tried the store"s generic brand that is supposed to be identical and it just didn"t cut it with your kids. It stands to reason that we tend become more comfortable with a product when we know what to expect each time we purchase it. Then we become creatures of
habit, so to speak, stepping outside those boundaries only occasionally to try something new.
American homebuilders sell products that would be hard-pressed to compare to a box of cereal thrown into a shopping cart. They do, nonetheless, need to pay attention to becoming consistent in what they stand for in homebuilding.
Sure, they could change the venue each time, building something new and radically different in one area and putting together the conventionally boxed homestead in another. But will that help the buying public become aware of what they stand for when they speak the name "XYZ Homes?" Sometimes it"s difficult for builders to want to label themselves as the creator of a certain genre of product just because they fear the loss of keeping all their options open when markets change. But traditionally speaking, many marketing experts agree that "branding" is one of the best steps a company can take towards projecting an image the public can recognize, hold onto, and identify with when looking to buy.
Some builders have successfully branded themselves, understanding that they must keep a keen consumer focus on their market - the same way clothes, car, and appliance manufacturers do. For instance, years ago, when I heard the name Del Webb, I thought first and foremost of casinos. When so much was published about the massive Sun City retirement area in Phoenix, I began to shift my focus a bit, knowing it was still Del Webb, but thinking more about great weather and golf in retirement in a place where the sun always shines. Now, of course, there are Sun Cities all over the country, but we tend to think the same thing each time we hear the name - active adult retirement homes in golf course surroundings. This is no fluke, as you may have already figured out. Marketing geniuses know that we are comfortable with brands we
can instantly size up, no matter where we go.
It was said by R.E. Blake Evans in a recent BUILDER magazine article, "A brand is not your company slogan. Nor is it your logo, jingle, or ad campaign. Webster"s defines a brand as a "class of goods or services identified as being the product of a single company."" Branding carries with it, however, the responsibility of consistency - in quality, a certain level of amenities no matter where a product is displayed, and a continuous commitment to that standard.
Advertising can be a great source of support to having a brand identity, but it cannot replace the physical achievement it supports. Evans points out that a brand becomes more than just the company"s product; it becomes the company itself. Builders don"t have to be huge corporately traded entities to become brand-name identities. Local branding is just as effective, if not more effective, than projecting some national image, because buyers love to identify with home-grown companies, taking pride in their purchases from a local builder.
One such historical example in the Sacramento area is Robert C. Powell, who built a master-planned community in what he perceived as an up and coming suburban Sacramento area some 15 years ago. Powell"s peers believed that the location he chose for a huge expanse of single family homes, cluster homes and townhomes had a mediocre reputation for desirability. Many new to the area at the time would agree that Sacramento itself had only "pockets" of consistently beautiful neighborhoods. Powell must have picked up on the confusing patchwork quilt of neighborhoods offered at the time he dreamed up his new "Gold River" community, because what ensued was to become one of the most successful developments to ever hit the state"s capital.
Powell"s concept was simple, but elegant and almost excruciatingly consistent. A neighborhood took shape with sprawling mostly single level homes with massive floor-to-ceiling windows, an open beamed contemporary minimalistic tone to the architecture, home fronts that pleasingly matched one another among the huge native oak trees, and a series of undulating biking and hiking trails throughout the neighborhood. Because he figured he needed to attract the better-heeled buyer, he provided security patrols in little Jeep-type vehicles. He also included front yard landscape maintenance and exterior painting in the homeowner"s fees, and developed some of the heftiest Codes, Conditions and Restrictions ever seen in the Sacramento area, to govern the neighborhood and maintain perceived property values. Parks,
schools and daycare facilities, as well as a health club and commercial center, were all part of the plan. Naysayers notwithstanding, home buyers for this new-concept Sacramento neighborhood began spending considerably more on new homes in Gold River than anywhere within a ten-mile range of new homes in other, more readily accepted areas, adding expensive and lavish upgrades to them to boot. Since then, Robert C. Powell Communities became identified with the type of architecture they consistently used and the types of meticulously-planned neighborhoods they produced.
Would everyone want to live in a Powell neighborhood? Gold River and communities like it have their own beauty and certainly consistency of image, but the sameness of the homes and regulatory atmosphere is not everyone"s cup of tea. The shoe fit for many, many homebuyers, however, who have seen their property values escalate and remain stable even through economic dips. And the neighborhood still looks new, since it is kept in its pristine state with careful exterior maintenance and mature landscape care. This is branding at its best - Robert C. Powell Communities" homes, no matter whether new or 15 years old, may be forever thought of in the same, identifiable way, giving public meaning to the concepts he used in homebuilding and neighborhood planning.
Branding undoubtedly takes risk-taking in the homebuilding industry, but it is ever so much more calculated than it was when Powell first forced his concepts on the Sacramento market. Demographics and marketing experts with detailed data about market trends abound; builders are finding that the investment in feasibility studies to develop a "niche" brand and stick with it may be just the ticket to developing a distinctive persona in the industry.
A thorough assessment of how a builder wishes to be identified may take some intense strategic planning on the builder"s part, involving design trademarks, always-included amenities, a recognizable selling style and an indelible, well-studied "sense" for location of their product. Once this is established, it must be shouted from the rafters to every person involved in the creation of the product and the community, from the highest executive and investor, to the guy who installs the drywall. Support comes in the creation of a distinctive advertising and signage campaign, but also through public relations and community involvement. It also comes from the builder defining itself by how different it is from its competition, and how consistent it is in portraying its unique, easily explainable image.
The homebuilder who goes to this kind of trouble in creating its own name brand cannot rest on its laurels once success through brand-name recognition has been established, however. It must constantly add to the image as the market demands change, making its additions in subtle keeping with its original concepts for a distinct identity. Only then can it grow with the fabric of American life, and only then will potential homebuyers know to look for that builder"s homes wherever they go, just like they throw the same cereal into the shopping cart whether close to home or during a stay at
grandma"s house.