Media&Marketing:How do you market something that doesn't exist? That's the challenge property developers face when they set about selling properties off plan. For houses in the sun, it's all about selling a dream and a lifestyle.
And as the property market cools down, developers are forced to dig deeper, spend more on advertising and grab some celebrity endorsements for good measure. Last weekend, sales reps for Oceanico Developments wrapped up a month-long advertising and PR campaign to promote two new developments in Portugal that cost the firm approximately €700,000. That's a big spend in such a short period of time and the most money Oceanico has spent on a marketing launch.
Most overseas property schemes are advertised in newspapers, but Oceanico also splurged on television and radio advertisements to market a scheme of 230 units in Vilamoura and another 250 units near Obidos, which is located an hour north of Lisbon.
Not a sod has been turned on either scheme. At the moment, the Obidos site is a thicket of eucalyptus trees while the 160-acre Vilamoura plot is a fenced-off wilderness. British buyers are reluctant to put their money down until they see some structures in place. In Ireland it seems, buyers are content to make their decision on the basis of architects' drawings and scale models. The Oceanico campaign's focus was the launch of the schemes last week in a marquee in George's Dock in the IFSC. In the tent, big flat-screen monitors recorded the progress of the property sales. Every lot in Vilamoura and Obidos was individually numbered in green and the colour turned red once a buyer had paid a deposit. The psychology is obvious: make your decision quick or the plot you fancy will be snapped up.
The advertising campaign was planned by DDFH&B and bought by Mindshare. It debuted on September 3rd in all national daily and Sunday newspapers; on television - RTÉ, TV3, TnaG, Sky and Setanta; and also on radio and in magazines. The result was that ads for these developments were everywhere.
An important part of the creative brief was a call to action inviting would-be purchasers to avail of pre-release prices. With 120 people pre-registering, Oceanico deemed it their best result ever.
Central to the marketing campaign was celebrity endorsement. Oceanico's Simon Burgess hired Diarmuid Gavin to design the gardens in the Moorish-themed Vilamoura scheme. Nicki Loker, sales and marketing director for Oceanico, says: "The celebrity factor is important. Having Diarmuid Gavin's name associated with Oceanico endorses our product."
The sales pitch is built around its golfing facilities and the developer has endorsement agreements with Nick Faldo, Christy O'Connor jnr, Pádraig Harrington, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley, David Howell, Lee Westwood and Retief Goosen.
Most of these golfers have bought Oceanico villas in Vilamoura, presumably on attractive terms. Oceanico can use their image rights in the ads for Vilamoura, which they have done individually and jointly with creative ideas based on the idea of "meet the neighbours".
Following the Dublin launch, the roadshow moved on to the Holiday Inn in Belfast before moving to Windlesham Golf Club at Bagshot in Surrey. The UK launch has been backed by another heavyweight spend, but radio advertising is not used in the marketing mix in England.
Interestingly, Oceanico doesn't favour overseas property shows. Says Loker: "At the property shows, we would be competing against some guy selling a one-bed apartment for €40,000 in Bulgaria. Visitors to those shows are very price -conscious. They'll come and ask us why we are more expensive and we'll explain about the benefit of buying in an established property market, but they're not interested."
Judging by the monitors at the IFSC, by the end of last weekend Oceanico had shifted around 150 properties across both schemes. Now comes the hard slog of selling the remainder.
