By: Mahie Khan, Child Guest Editor on Children’s Day
Track2Realty Exclusive: Print advertising, television commercials, outdoors and, of course, events….real estate has done all that it takes to reach to the customers. However, what matters the most has been neglected the most, observes Track2Realty. It is the social power of the buyers and the online reputation management of the developers that will be the game changer in the year ahead.
Real estate sector has been exposed to a variety of branding solutions, some within the box and some outside it. No other industry has seen the advertising budget growing as fast, not even the FMCGs, as ASSOCHAM study suggests. The subdued consumer had also not been very vocal till recently, even in the wake of delay and default in the project since the prize on offer has been the dream appreciation of the property.
However, while the era of too fast appreciation is getting over and the power of the social media increasingly gaining ground, developers are suddenly facing the new challenge of dealing with the anti-brand movement in the cyberspace. This is a space that they never thought of investing in till now.
In Bangalore the buyers of a residential project, fed up with the delay and unresponsive behavior of the developer, came together to form a Group on Facebook. This was initially not noticed and then preferred to be ignored. However, as more and more number of aggrieved buyers started joining over the social networking site, the company opened the channel of communication with the buyers.
It followed up with over weeks of sometimes acrimonious conversations, escalating from customer care to senior executives of the company. Finally the Group creators on Facebook were sent legal notice.
It only added fuel to the fire. From there, it snowballed to become front page news in major newspapers and a raging thread on Facebook/Twitter. Thousands of people were soon accusing the developer of Big Brother tactics and all the realtors could do was listen to a conversation over which it had no control. In the end, the developer simply withdrew its case, and was forced toaddress the concerns of the aggrieved buyers.
The collective power of opinion over Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn forced the developer to invite them for a discussion and take the corrective measures.
…..to be continued
