Branding | Hollingworth & Associates
Building A New Brand – The Brief
Seadragon’s MD founded a property consultancy in January 2006 specialising largely in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe, which became renowned for producing detailed market intelligence and research. The brand was designed to build this fledgling company’s credibility quickly using Caroline’s knowledge of the industry, and her recognition within it. A strategic integrated marketing and PR campaign was created within 3 short months, built around achieving a strong PR strategy that included writing editorial, reacting to comment pieces, establishing the company at exhibitions, sourcing speaking opportunities, and most importantly, finding property products that moved H&A into the mainstream marketplace and got buyers interested fast.
“I’d been producing marketing materials and research for other property investment companies since 2003. Everything I read sounded contrived and sold dreams rather than provide a 360 degree perspective on the reality and complications of buying here and abroad. My approach for my own brand was to provide research that would allow buyers to make an informed decision using unbiased market intelligence. I wanted to avoid the cliched blue skies approach and serve up some realism.”
H&A also distinguished itself in the marketplace by ensuring that all aspects of the deal with a developer was sewn up before a property was marketed, and any information that couldn’t be acquired through the company’s due diligence process was flagged rather than ignored, which was often common practice with many property marketers.
H&A’s information was presented in a pragmatic, non-salesy style designed for clients to make up their own minds about which properties they should be investing in. Caroline brought her journalistic skills to the company, which meant carrying out as much due diligence as possible on every property, including visiting every development, ’interviewing’ all the developers, taking pictures of the property from all angles for the marketing materials, and vetting the local area. Local lawyers, accountants, banks, furniture stores, and letting agents were also be sourced.
The Result
H&A sold properties in Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Hungary, Montenegro and Turkey. And because of this researched-based approach, Caroline was often invited to speak about investing in property abroad in the national media. Read a comment piece in The FT here, for which Caroline provided a great deal of the research, and a feature in Hot Property Alert that launched the company to property investors . H&A also came runner-up in the AIPP‘s’ Most Transparent Marketing Campaign 2008.
Marketing materials and publicity included: brochures, flyers, features, advertorial, exhibition stands, merchandise, info packs, presentations, in-depth country reports, press exposure wherever possible, comment pieces, and of course, a website. Also high quality CGI production for off-plan property. See examples of H&A’s marketing materials here.