Track2Realty Exclusive: Placement stands as the fifth P of branding. The built environment in branding is all about heightening the customer’s experience and amplifying the aura of brand’s essence. Hence, the branded environment, the moment of truth, is where it must live the brand by staging immaculate detailing that engages all senses of the discerning luxury consumer.
Track2Realty Exclusive: When it comes to the first P, that is Performance, the brand is measured at two levels—product level and experience level. At the product level, it must satisfy the functional and utilitarian characteristic as well as deliver on its practical physical attributes. It must stand up to the expected quality or design excellence ingredients like creativity, exclusivity, craftsmanship, precision, materials, high quality & innovation.
Track2Realty: The much debated Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2012 (LARR Bill) was cleared by the lower house of parliament in the first half of the Budget session. This crucial Bill that seeks to replace the antediluvian Land Acquisition Act, 1894 with a fresh legislation wherein the component of compensation for resettlement and rehabilitation of the project affected families is added.The Bill covers land acquisition including for infrastructure and industrial developments bringing in government, quasi- government and other.
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 Survey: The question is what shapes public perception as far as brand premium of a real estate company is concerned? User experience and word of mouth publicity is what matters to them and advertising is nothing more than a medium to know about the new launches.
Track2Realty Exclusive: One mistake that the Indian realtors have been doing is to go for a cheap and easy way to establish brand recognition is through technology, especially popular mediums like blogs, Facebook and Twitter, which help them build relationship with their clients.
Track2Realty Exclusive: In one of the classic example, one of the advertising agency recently came out with a creative idea of suggesting the name of the project as 1947. The spacious luxury flat’s advertising was suggested to be played around the concept of freedom—from space crunch, parking mess, traffic snarls etc. with the tag line “when every lips had one word freedom this apartment was conceptualised”. Result: the agency was asked to get out of the hangover of being ‘creative’ or leave.
Track2Realty Survey: 70 per cent of the Indians who have either bought a house or are planning to buy believe brand reputation only amounts to the developers’ past projects. More than that, 78 per cent maintain the track record of timely delivery of the project is the best way to judge the developers’ brand.
Track2Realty: Citing the inordinate delay in obtaining approvals for projects that is stalling growth of the real estate sector and also the economy of the country, Lalit Kumar Jain, Chairman CREDAI and CMD, Kumar Urban development Ltd, urged the Union Government to form a high power realty committee to accelerate big ticket realty projects worth between Rs.200 Cr and Rs.1000 Cr.
Track2Realty Exclusive: It seems misleading realty advertisements and promotions are not just Indian market specific but a global trend. While the Indian developers are being asked to stop misleading ads, misleading news with realty/marketing companies’ employees as potential buyers has been reported in other parts of the world.