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 Survey: What has been a surprise finding of the survey is the fact that radio, a medium of the past that has reinvented itself in recent years, is a very powerful tool to capture the home buyers’ attention. 62 per cent of the home buyers’ even recall the radio jingle of the projects and that is too high a dividend for the top-of-the-mind recall value of the brand. However, the rate of this interest translating into buying decision depends on a number of other factors.
Track2Realty Survey: In this mismatch of segmentation, actual buyers are neglected in holistic branding of the company. However, it is the consumers who play a huge role in determining the credibility of a brand. It is not just the word of mouth publicity, or the lack of it, that is the reason to keep the promise to the customers; rather it also saves money to do crisis management against the negative campaign.
Track2Realty-Agencies: RBI has asked banks to link the disbursal of home loans to stages of construction to protect the interests of buyers and contain the fallout of “innovative” housing financing schemes.
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 Survey: Is a buyer ready to pay premium for the brand reputation of the developer? Majority of the brand conscious buyers’ say ‘NO’ unless the big brand has offering to match the high price and differentiate the product. In the high-end category, 40 per cent of the buyers are ready to pay a premium.
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.