Without investing in a smart strategic foundation, your master-planned community brand could miss the opportunity to identify its true competitive edge. Of course, all creative elements associated with your brand — logo, color palette, fonts and messaging/tone — should ladder back up to, and pay off, a cohesive brand. But without a thoughtful strategy at the core, you may be creating a look and feel that doesn’t resonate with your ideal customer and won’t be as well differentiated from the competition as it could be.
In part one of our series, we focused on How to Name Your Planned Community. In this blog we offer a few thoughts on how to anchor your brand in an effective overall strategy.
Who will love what you have to offer?
To attract the people who will appreciate your offering, you first need to understand what they value and what they care about. Insights around your customer and their particular needs and passions go a long way towards strategically positioning your branding to appeal to them. Rolex is a master-class example of creating an aura of distinct exclusivity around its watches as status symbols and knowing its audience will eagerly shell out the requisite cash to be a Rolex owner. Because it was originally marketed in the early 20th century as the ultimate in precision timekeeping, it was often advertised as the preferred watch for pilots, presidents and famous athletes. In today’s digital world, when analog timepieces have become more anachronistic, Rolex remains at the forefront of the high-end watch category as a prominent accessory of the luxury lifestyle — its watch designs, branding and intentional retail scarcity have changed very little in the last century. The deeper your understanding of your customer, the stronger your community brand.
What are you offering, and where?
Consider your community’s location and amenities, and how your offering compares to what your competitors talk about. For example, if your community is situated near a lake, are other communities all playing up lake amenities in nearly the same way? Perhaps your brand strategy includes elevating an aspect of your surroundings not currently being messaged. Finding that differentiating perspective while focusing on what your customers care about can help your messaging stand out in a crowded market.
What is your unique offering? Strategically showcasing the key selling points no one else can claim in your look, feel and messaging will drive the point home with your target audience. In the luxury automobile sector, Porsche stands out from the competition because they were able to carve out a distinct niche in a crowded category: the “Sports Luxury” segment. All Porsches are sports cars — even their newer line of SUVs — and for nearly 50 years, their brand positioning has consistently touted its racing roots and claim of being the most reliable sports car in the world. That strategy has stood the test of time. To this day, Porsche remains the world’s most profitable car company and its iconic logo is an instantly recognizable symbol of a posh, sporty, luxury lifestyle. What does your brand stand for ?
Are there outside factors to take in to account?
We’ve touched on being wise to how competitors near your community are marketing, but it’s also smart to take a strategic look at other factors at play in real time. Are there certain localized catchphrases, iconography or themes to play off of or avoid? Is the area famous for anything that might resonate with potential homebuyers if you included it in your branding? Do focus groups and research reveal any trends in the area, like an uptick in demand for upscale living, or a certain demographic settling in nearby? Wild card factors like these may influence the strategy that will work best for shaping your brand and reaching desired audiences.
Making your branding stand out starts with a thoughtfully developed, research-based strategy. This will give you a solid foundation on which every part of your brand — design, logo, messaging hierarchy and more — should be built. The more purposeful you can be in connecting with the right audience with a compelling placemaking story and look that uniquely appeals to them, the better your chances to drive demand, and, ultimately, sales.
Need help building a strategic framework to guide your community’s branding? Let’s chat. Reach out to Barbara at barbara@wickmarketing.com or (512) 479-9834.
