Track2Realty Exclusive: A great challenge in real estate branding is the local versus national market. 90 per cent of the realty brands have local presence and not pan India. Most of the projects are linked locally like Prestige with Bangalore or DLF with Gurgaon.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Once a promise has been defined, all the customer touch points need to be mapped. Everything from the website to marketing collateral to what the CEO says about the company to how the telephone is answered at corporate headquarters should reflect the promise of the corporate brand.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Media perception is not much different than public perception in developing brand. It depends on how media plays down. 50 per cent of the media is honest in promoting actual brand worthiness but few media also carries planted articles or on the contrary, prevents negative articles in exchange of media barter deals.
Track2Realty Exclusive: So if there is a real estate brand in India that wants to fully realize the benefits of branding to drive its business forward, what is the way forward?
Track2Realty Exclusive: In realty business, brand is an additional value the consumer is prepared to pay compared with an ordinary product yet fulfilling the same purpose. If a brand is not able to offer the consumer better advantage that the competitors, it will turn into a commodity.
Track2Realty Exclusive: A brand is the idea or image of a specific product or service that consumers connect with, by identifying the name, logo, slogan, or design of the company. Branding, according to me, is a double edged sword which grants an advantage of building clientele, loyalty, trust etc but also burdens the shoulders with an added responsibility and obligation to defend the ‘Brand’ so far created persistently.
Track2Realty: The 3C Company has aligned with Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, the world’s leading luxury hospitality company to present Northern India’s first Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences. The strategic partnership between the two companies was sealed with an exclusive agreement for 25 years, thus ensuring that this would be the only Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences in Delhi NCR for the agreed term.
Track2Realty Exclusive: As the country faces problems over land acquisition, events around the issue have been tarnishing the image of India’s built environment. Across sectors — real estate, infrastructure and construction events have not been conducive enough to create a good environment for investments. In addition, fragmentation and irregularities within the market, instances of fly-by-night-operators duping the consumers, an absence of regulation over transactions and developers have given a bad name to the environment.
Track2Realty Exclusive: It is generally believed in the sector that CSR can not be a brand driver the way other branding efforts are being evaluated in terms of ROI. Diipesh Bhagtani, Executive Director, Jaycee Homes, says that CSR alone cannot be the catalyst for brand building; there is no case study as such. CSR is seen more as a responsibility towards the society rather than a business promotion activity.
Track2Realty Exclusive: Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a new concept in the Indian real estate and companies are going through the learning curve. Some are adopting it with greater amount of conviction, while for others it is an emerging necessary evil.