Track2Realty Exclusive: Brands in general and luxury brands in particular are scaled up on the 8 Ps—Performance, Paucity, Persona, Public Relations, Placement, Personal Touch, Pedigree and Public Figure. Bhawna Modgil tries to scale up the Indian real estate on the given 8 Ps to measure how each of the metrics of branding has been redefined by the developer; not to customise it to the Indian sensibilities but to satisfy their ego, misplaced conviction of brand positioning and assuming sales calls as the branding ROI.
Track2Realty wonders and lists what is the global norm of branding and what is followed in Indian real estate.
Scaling up real estate branding is not that easy, especially when the realtors themselves never scale their success or premium on brand parameter. It is a sales-driven marketing and ROI has no direct connection with the long-term brand building of the developer.
While many other industries have faced such initial dilemma with respect to their marketing expenses and learnt the long-term benefits of branding against short-term objectives of sales with the trial & error method; real estate for some strange reasons is yet to adapt effectively, swiftly, and more importantly, meaningfully with the desired objectives of brand positioning vis-à-vis its sales goal and branding objectives.
This strategic dilemma of brand positioning is all the more confusing with the luxury segment of the asset class where every other project appears to be a copy cat of the rest. Nikola King and Paul McGowam theory of resting branding on the 8 Ps may vary industry to industry or even in real estate one asset class to other, but despite of variation in the degree of significance, it is the interplay among them that makes a brand. Can the Indian real estate be judged on the given 8 Ps of branding?
After all, the theory of Nikola King & Paul McGowam is no different than Joseph Giacalone in his ‘Marketing for Luxury Goods’. Both the respective theories may describe brand in terms of its super luxury quotient, basics of brand stand true for each brand per se.
When it comes to the business of real estate, the theory is all the more relevant since even the affordable category of housing is being pushed nowadays as ‘affordable luxury’. If the Indian real estate is selling all that is luxury, why not scale it up on the metrics of luxury brands?
…to be continue
