Advertising Property: Creativity and Innovation rising high

For over the last decade or so advertising in the property market in India has been becoming increasingly vibrant; I had written a post on this subject (see Selling Property Creatively) earlier but I felt an update was necessary. In the past print ads of properties presented only bare facts that the prospective buyer needed to know and usually carried an architect’s illustration of the building, ads of this type can still be seen but increasingly several property developers have been going beyond presenting basic facts and are addressing the various other needs of today’s buyers; thus making ads increasingly creative and innovative. However some developers’ ads merely carry stock images with cleverly written copy in the name of creativity; but there are developers who realize the importance of brand building in order to secure a place in today’s competitive market.  This article is based on ads seen in Bombay, I am sure that the story will be more or less the same in the other major cities of India also.

According to Wilfred Fernandes, Founder and Director at Young, ad agency for the Ekta World, innovation and creativity in advertising properties has

Selling Property Creatively

The other day I happened to see an advertisement for a property, it was featured on the jacket of The Times of India, Mumbai edition. It prominently showed a pizza delivery scooter, the box fitted on the scooter had “Express Packers and Movers” written on it, the ad continued overleaf. The advertiser was Nirmal Lifestyle; the ad was for, as they call it, “India’s First Fully Furnished Designer Homes”. The idea of showing a pizza delivery scooter was to convey that you need to carry very little with you when you shift to the new homes that Nirmal was providing. The ad was truly attention grabbing thanks to the high standard of creativity.

Advertising for real estate has surely come a long way. In the good old days developers did not need to advertise their properties, they only had to rely on word-of-mouth and network of brokers. There was practically no effort on the developers’ side to sell as they do now because homes were always in heavy demand; there was virtually no competition. Way back in the mid 1980s I happened to see an audio-visual presentation for a new housing complex in suburban Bombay, the target audience being Indians working in the Gulf countries. That was the first time I saw serious efforts being made to actually sell flats; competition had set in this sector.