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Lessons in Hospitality Branding—For Multifamily

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Branding.

Guest Post by Stephanie Shore, Director of Marketing and Brand Development, Bozzuto (formerly with Marriott International and Hilton)

Lessons in Hospitality—For Multifamily (1)-03

Multifamily branding and marketing could take some notes from other industries—like hospitality. In hospitality branding, the critical focus is the guest experience; customer loyalty and maintaining brand reputation are the keys to success.

Each of these principles can be easily, almost seamlessly, applied to multifamily.

At an apartment community, the resident experience is the key to retention—and that’s why you work hard on your branding, your marketing, and your resident services—to bring it all together so they renew their lease (AND tell their friends).

Before we get much further, let’s break down the hospitality experience, and what it really means to create exceptional guest experiences.

Understanding the Hospitality Experience

THE KEYS TO HOSPITALITY

The key components of hospitality branding are as follows:

  • Personalized Service
  • Attention to detail
  • Creating memorable moments

These each mean something a little different. 

Personalized service means you receive emails with a personal greeting; welcome cards in your room; and plentiful spa treatments, dining options, and room service items that are available to your guests.

Attention to detail means every single component of your guests’ experience matters. Cleaning the remote. Making sure that order gets to them on time. The TV isn’t too small. The bedding is noticeably soft.

Creating memorable moments is getting an inside track to what your guests want most. Understanding their desires leads you to bringing them the solution—while they’ve barely uttered “Do you have….” Short of reading minds, it means you’re anticipating their every need and making sure that experience wows them.

 

REAL-LIFE HOSPITALITY EXAMPLE:

For Exceptional Guest Experiences: The Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton is synonymous with service. Arguably the best known in the industry for their standards of exceptional service, The Ritz-Carlton has founded its brand on the principle, “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.” Its Three Steps of Service are instilled in all team members, from front desk to housekeeping to management, and guide all guest interactions to create a noteworthy guest experience:

  1. A warm and sincere greeting. Use the guest’s name.
  2. Anticipation and fulfillment of each guest’s needs.
  3. Fond farewell. Give a warm good-bye and use the guest’s name.

Applying Hospitality Branding Principles to Multifamily


But how can multifamily properties adopt these principles to get improved resident satisfaction and thereby boost resident loyalty?

Use hospitality as the inspiration for your branding and marketing:

  • Equip your teams with training so they can serve your residents better.
  • Execute a brand strategy (think: brand messaging, brand differentiators) to deliver an excellent experience.
  • Make sure that brand is carried through every element of the customer journey, from the website to the tour to the resident experience.

But, it might be easier to show you with a few examples of stellar branding, amenity, and service.

REAL-LIFE COMMUNITY EXAMPLES:

1331

1331 in Washington D.C. is conceived to exceed expectations, and enables a lifestyle that is unattainable at any other residence in D.C. The level of service at 1331 is similar to a world-class hotel. Every need has been anticipated, beginning before a resident moves in with the Move-In Concierge to Away-From-Home Services assisting with pet or plant care while they are out of town to on-site event planning. The menu of options even extends beyond the building itself, through exclusive partnerships. Residents of 1331 enjoy access to Salamander’s spa, fitness center and restaurants, as well as catering and events. Those on the Penthouse Level receive elevated access to Salamander and an additional selection of personalized services to create an all-encompassing services experience.

The Barrett & The Claude at Chevy Chase Lake

At both The Barrett and The Claude at Chevy Chase Lake, your experience is everything.

That’s why, in addition to the world-class design and amenities, both apartments offer exceptional services for residents. Available services at The Barrett and The Claude include concierge services, Away-from-Home services, in-home customization services, grocery delivery, room service, a garage care center, exclusive retail partnerships, monthly fitness programming and events, and the Bozzuto Welcome Home commitment.

Heron at Water Street Tampa

Heron offers you every modern comfort to streamline your life and enhance your experience. From a state-of-the-art fitness studio to a green-roof viewing garden to direct access to the Tampa Riverwalk. A bike storage room even has a repair station equipped with tools so you can get back out onto the Riverwalk in no time. Life at Heron is enhanced by the bespoke services offered to residents; the24-hour concierge helps to coordinate a variety of personalized home care services for residents’ comfort and convenience, including pet care and housekeeping recommendations.

Branding Strategies Inspired by Hospitality

Hospitality is hyper-focused on branding. With good reason. A strong brand identity creates differentiation, highlights unique characteristics, and emphasizes the values of the hotel brand.

The same goes for a community. A brand that communicates why it exists through its storytelling (throughout its marketing) creates a more compelling emotional connection than any run-of-the-mill “Lease Today for 1 Month Free!” offers could ever manage.

VISUAL BRANDING

Branding’s more than a logo. But that’s certainly part of it. Brand visual identity can (and should) be used to convey the uniqueness of the community itself: its interior design, its level of service, its features and amenities.  Typefaces can help carve out your identity—for example, serif fonts can feel more elevated and refined, while sans serif fonts can lean into a more approachable brand feel. Color palette can be used strategically as well: High-contrast neutral colors  can feel more elegant than, say, bright, deeply saturated hues. Unique visual identifiers like design elements and imagery can aid these basics to solidify brand recognition.

Marketing Strategies Taken from Hospitality

When you know your ideal customer—guest or resident—you can attract them based on what you know about their motivations, pain points, preferences, and overall lifestyle. For someone with a dog, you can offer on-site grooming and a grass-filled, shaded dog park. For someone who works from home, you can ensure your messaging talks about flexible desk spaces and high-speed internet.

EMAIL DRIP CAMPAIGNS

Targeted marketing campaigns ensure that your messaging reaches the right audience at the right time—email drip campaigns are a great tactic to ensure your messaging is sent throughout relevant stages of the customer journey. Automation makes this kind of campaign even more frictionless. For example, if a prospect signs up for a tour of your community, you can automate an email that follows up confirming key details, and perhaps pairs brand messaging with any applicable concessions. Hospitality brands are great at this—always staying on top of their guest messaging with incentives to book another stay.

SOCIAL RAPPORT

Additionally, hospitality brands are highly active online: social channels are another lever to tell the brand story, while websites feature inspirational photography and clear booking capabilities. Communities can easily do this with desirable photography, a thoughtfully designed site, and clear calls-to-action. 

Pro tip: Dedicate sections of your website specifically to service. For example, creating special callouts for your Penthouse(s) shows your dedication to deliver on those top-notch services, and differentiates your community brand from competitors.

All in all, every community and hotel we’ve shown conveys the high level of service at the property—starting from the earliest point in the customer journey. 

When everything’s done in the service of the resident and in the service of the guest—the goals for multifamily and hospitality aren’t all that different. To create a successful community, keep your residents happy, and keep residents at the heart of everything you do – it’s what hospitality brands do, and it’s what we try to do in every Bozzuto community. 

Branding for East Coast

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Branding.

Multifamily Marketing East is the premier East Coast multifamily marketing event. Held in Baltimore, Maryland, it’s exclusive—invitation-only. This year it’s free for invited attendees, and includes access to all the sessions, plus breakfast, lunch, and refreshments during the conference. (Does branding for the East Coast get you as excited as we are?)


Why are we so excited about it? Two reasons:

  1. Zipcode Creative is sponsoring Multifamily Marketing East.
  2. Zipcode Creative helped brand this BRAND NEW conference for multifamily.

 

So you might say we’re a little invested and a LOT EXCITED!

Why’d we get involved? We know that there are a lot of multifamily conferences. They end up being in California, Las Vegas, and Texas—and plenty of others bounce around all over the country.

But what if there was a conference for multifamily that was on the East Coast, where the BULK of multifamily housing actually IS?

A few quick stats for you, reader:

→New York State has the highest number of existing homes classified as multifamily: 52.5%. Close on its heels are two other East Coast states: Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

We agree: It was time for an East Coast multifamily marketing event.

The Vision Behind MME’s Branding

Our expertise in branding, specifically for multifamily, led us to an opportunity to brand MME. We took our process, and we channeled it through the vision and purpose of MME to get the attendees we most wanted to attract.

VISION


The creators of the Multifamily Marketing East conference wanted to see a conference that was made to give everyone a voice and was more about passion over profit. Together, we envisioned an upscale retreat, not a huge, wild party with more entertainment than education and heard-it-before, recycled content.

PURPOSE

Multifamily Marketing East was made to bring people together, around good food, good drinks, and fun, intimate events. The content offered will be thoughtfully designed, and the tables will be set up to foster new relationships and solid networking.

USING MME BRANDING TO ATTRACT MARKETERS

We needed to convey the message that MME 2024 was built differently. We wanted to bring in multifamily digital marketers, and invited mid-level management up to senior level executives.

Branding is obviously our jam at Zipcode Creative, and so we were tapped to attract marketers with branding—this would help solidify trust in MME, even as a new venture, and would help portray the vision and purpose of the conference through its logo, colors, and messaging. And while it’s a little different than apartment brand design, we followed a similar process.

Branding for East Coast: Branding Development Process

RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY
The best way to get to know a brand? Ask a lot of questions. So, when we worked through the brand questionnaire, we asked fun questions like, if MME were a ______ (drink, car, celebrity, song—take your pick) what would it be? Taking those answers plus the rationale behind the choice informed where we would take the branding and why.

For example, the celebrity MME’s founders chose: Tom Hanks or Jennifer Lawrence. They’re down-to-earth and manage to take complex roles and make them easy to understand. In the same way, they want MME to be friendly, approachable, and distill complicated ideas into helpful resources.

UNDERSTANDING THE REGION


After we sifted through the brand questionnaire, we immersed ourselves in the look and feel of the east coast region, to deepen our understanding. The preferences of east coasters and the regional style not just of the east coast area, but the region of Baltimore began to take shape.

When we create branding for East Coast apartments or communities, we take a look at the local flavor. For example, Virginia is relatively colonial. Upstate New York, New Hampshire, and Maine—cape cods and coastal vibes (and probably lobster, if we’re talking local flavor.) A more industrial, yet historical feel is perfect for Boston. And then we get tropical (and sun-faded but still bright colors) if we’re in Miami. And Atlanta is the heart of and soul of good ol’ Southern hospitality.

The East Coast is about as diverse in associations and assumptions as the North, Central and South bits of California—in views, vibes, and architecture. It’s absolutely not one conglomerate that has one identity—and that’s why looking deeper into the specific area can offer up some entirely unique branding opportunities.

Creative Approach

THE PROCESS


As we moved toward Baltimore and homed in on the location of the conference, we began to get more granular with the location—just as we would with developing apartment branding.

CONTEXT IS KEY


The Pendry – The MME conference will be held at The Pendry, a luxe waterfront hotel in Baltimore. So we looked carefully at the architecture, colors, and style of the hotel, to keep every piece visually connected. To amplify what the space looks like, we leaned into the venue, with imagery of the Sagamore Pendry. We used filters to stylize for the brand vibe and the map of Baltimore became a prominent style piece in which we truly celebrated location. Additionally, the color palette was a more fun, vibrant play on the brick buildings of Baltimore, and the yellow found in Maryland’s state flower, the black-eyed susan.  All of this was dovetailed into the brand for MME. Plus, with the hotel being on the water, we added in both classy and fun elements.


Baltimore – The greater Baltimore area, the downtown skyline and a birds’-eye-view of Baltimore’s street grids both functioned as an additional visual motif.

MME-Branding (1)

Time of Year – Given that the conference is in May, positioned at the very start of summer, we wanted something cheerful, so we chose the aqua color for the MME’s classic logo. For each year, we may choose a different set of colors, and for 2024, we went with corals and burgundy, with a mustard to create contrast.

Additionally, the four corners of the MME logo function like a compass, with the directional arrow pointing East. The sharp corners give a feel of modernity while the angled letters inject a bit of playfulness.

The branding development process to create the Multifamily Marketing East conference was a labor of love—not unfamiliar, but still exciting to execute. Recognizing that regional branding is vital in the multifamily industry, we took the surroundings and allowed them to infiltrate the brand for MME on the surface and beneath it. The East Coast is where the United States began—it’s full of history and knowledge from those that came before us, and is the perfect place for the next gamechanging conference for multifamily to take place.

Learn more about Zipcode Creative’s branding projects and process.

 

The Power of Your Apartment’s Brand in PPC Advertising

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Branding, Marketing.

Pay-per-click digital advertising is essential for multifamily marketers to promote their apartments on social media, websites, and, most notably, Google as the primary search engine, with targeted advertisements incorporating text, images, and videos highlighting a property’s appearance, units, and amenity features.

Digital ads aim to increase a community’s online visibility and brand awareness across multiple platforms toward renters genuinely interested in those apartments, as that helps improve the quality of the traffic to the community’s website and, ultimately, increase lease conversions.

Hey, I’m Michael from RentVision, an apartment marketing company that helps thousands of communities like yours get better-qualified leads with an automated pay-per-click solution called Predictive Advertising (shameless plug!).

While we’re not branding experts like Stacey and her team at Zipcode Creative, we believe that multifamily marketers who care about owning a strong, cohesive apartment brand can create a powerful online search presence that wows renters and benefits leasing by prioritizing PPC ads in their marketing strategy.

Your brand empowers your digital ad campaigns and overall online presentation, allowing you to leverage your property’s appearance, logos, color scheme, and more to resonate with prospective renters and keep your apartments in mind throughout their search. Let’s look at what combining brand and PPC advertising can do for you:

Strong Apartment Brand + Apartment PPC = Trust

Let’s start with the big picture. It’s sometimes easy to forget that choosing which apartment to live in is a life-changing, financially impactful decision for your renters. 

To feel confident about their selection, they must trust that your apartments meet their preferences and deliver the resident experience you promise.

Of course, your brand tells your community’s story by describing to renters how your apartment features and lifestyle benefit them and how they differ from your peers. Your brand, if done correctly, is a means by which you instill trust in renters. 

However, for your community’s brand to help renters develop more trust and impact leasing performance, it is best to pair it with a strong digital advertising strategy.  

Knowing initial impressions are huge, imagine someone’s reaction when, at the beginning stage of their apartment search, they go to Google looking for a community like yours. They see an ad for your community that ‘pops’ off the top of the search results page (and top rankings in the organic and local listings). 

You can gain that opportunity by pairing a strong apartment brand with pay-per-click advertisements targeting specific or relevant keywords your typical renters search for online.

That authoritative presence in Google establishes a strong level of trustworthiness that will make renters feel more confident about pursuing a lease in your community.

It also helps renters to feel better about selecting your apartments when you actively show you care about your community’s overall online presentation and make it easily discoverable with advertisements across Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Tik-Tok and other large PPC platforms.

From their perspective, they equate the care you put into your marketing presence to you also caring about their needs and living experience.

Plus, the more exposure you provide renters to your community’s name, colors, property images, and other assets of your brand online in photo or video display ads during their decision-making process, the more familiarity they gain in your community. And the more familiar they are to your apartments, the more they begin to trust that yours is best for them.

Establishing trust is the power you have when you put effort into your community’s brand and pay-per-click ads.

Apartment branding drives specialization

Communities intentionally curating their brand’s presence typically have a better definition of their ideal resident and thus develop messaging and a visual identity that resonates with those renters. 

This is what we mean by specialization—your brand makes you, well, you. You’re telling renters, “You can trust us to provide the lifestyle and resident experience you’re looking for.” 

A great apartment brand that achieves this specialization also elevates your PPC campaigns because, truthfully, many apartments are the same. 

Believe it or not, your community isn’t the only one with a pool or Pelotons in the clubhouse. While those are features you’d undoubtedly want prospective residents to know about, they don’t move the needle for everyone.

Prospective renters will choose to rent an apartment from a community that appears to know and understands their needs above amenities like a stationary bike. That is, in essence, the foundation and purpose of your brand, and utilizing such a brand throughout your marketing strategy—especially in your PPC campaigns—will drive home to renters the story about how your apartments meet their specific needs.

That is how your apartments, though they may be similar to other properties, stand out apart and above the competition in PPC advertisements.

Apartment PPC drives leasing performance

Since you’re also a multifamily marketer, and your ultimate objective is to generate leads and leases, you must also leverage your community’s brand to get it in front of renters at critical stages throughout their apartment search. 

That’s why PPC advertising is essential. You gain little from your apartment’s brand if it’s difficult for renters to discover it.

Every renter goes through three stages during their apartment search:

  1. The ‘Awareness’ stage, or “Hey, I need to move out and find an apartment.”

  2. The Consideration stage is when you say, “Okay, here are a couple of apartment communities available that meet what I’m looking for.”

  3. There’s the ‘Decision’ stage, where one final community has emerged as the favorite. At that point, the renter will contact the community and begin the touring, applying, and leasing process.

PPC advertisements drive visibility for your apartments throughout each distinct stage. 

Sometimes, you can expedite someone’s selection process with a powerful combination of targeted ads and strong apartment branding that meets the right renters at the right time. 

But since everyone’s leasing journey varies in time, you must also consider that you’ll need PPC campaigns running on multiple platforms simultaneously to maintain visibility and push more qualified traffic to your community website. 

Ad-Examples

Getting started with Apartment PPC campaigns

Now, we’ve gone long enough describing the positive impact of combining your apartment’s brand with pay-per-click advertising that you’re probably wondering, “Okay, so how do we actually do this?!”

Beginning (or just optimizing) a PPC strategy for your apartments is pretty hard, so I want to share a couple of other helpful resources that go into further detail and make the process seem less daunting:

Start there to get more depth into starting with PPC advertising. But while we’re here, let’s go over a couple of easy tips to remember as you combine brand and PPC into your apartment’s strategy:

  1. Know what search terms people use to discover your community’s website.

You can use Google Search Console for free to see what visitors to your website searched for in Google to find your apartment community’s website. This will help you establish a list of keywords to possibly target in your PPC campaigns. One tip is to avoid using branded descriptors in keywords you would target; truthfully, you won’t get many renters searching terms like ‘upscale apartments with chic amenities in downtown Denver’. However, those descriptors, like ‘upscale’, would be more effective in ad copy. 

  1. Use your display campaigns to highlight your community’s best offerings.

Your photo and video display ads are the time and place where you want to highlight the very best of your community. Your clubhouse, exteriors, Pelotons, and pool are great features that look great in your PPC display ads; don’t overcomplicate. That said, highlighting those features in your ad campaigns is fine as long as you’re using those things to drive traffic to a website that lets interested renters see the inside of your units. That content moves the needle for renters more than anything as the space they’re ultimately going to live in is essential information they need. 

  1. Have your apartment’s logo, name, and brand visuals in every display ad campaign.

Then, in your display ads, be sure they’re designed to feature your apartment’s name, logo, and brand visuals (even if the primary item displayed is the inside of a unit). This builds recognition for your brand—which sticks in renters’ minds throughout their search in a meaningful way.

  1. Utilize Google Performance Max Campaigns.

Lastly, one easy way to get started with PPC is by utilizing Google’s Performance Max Campaigns feature. Performance max campaigns do a lot of the hard work for you because they use whatever creative assets you give Google (photos/videos of your units, amenities, property, logo) and find the suitable variation of text/visuals that produces the most clicks and traffic to your website on both Google’s Search and Display networks (a.k.a. basically the whole Internet)! Google’s Performance Max Campaigns are excellent options for communities with great visuals and branding.

Conclusion

Ultimately, investing in your apartment’s brand and PPC advertising enhances its online presence, cultivates trust, and drives leasing performance, making it an indispensable component of your marketing strategy. 

AIM 2024 Guide: Get the Most from Attending, Multifamily Marketers

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

Multifamily marketers, the 2024 AIM (Apartment Innovation & Marketing) Conference is almost here! In Huntington Beach, CA, it’s one of our favorites to attend—and to sponsor. Heading to a conference is definitely a big chunk of your marketing budget, so it’s best to plan ahead, make your schedule work for you, and prioritize the things you need to see and the people you need to speak with.

And, as much as the CA coast is basically heaven, the pull of magical multifamily collaboration is only slightly stronger than the scent of the salty air. (Or is that In-N-Out we smell?)*

With that in mind, we pulled together our top topics, speakers, and sponsors we think you should add to your own list. It’s just our opinion, but we figured it’s at least a starting point for you!

With multiple sessions happening at the same time, you’ll want to stay focused on what you need to hear most. We went with marketing topics, because…that’s our jam! Without further ado:

AIM 2024 Top Topics

The AIM Conference (besides being fun!) is focused on helping attendees do their work better, helping make apartment living more valuable to residents.

This year, AIM 2024 falls on May 5-8, and has a big focus on customer experience, AI, innovation, and ethics. We also noted a few sessions on pulling inspiration from other industries—sounds like a win!

Here are our top topics at AIM 2024, broken down by day:

MONDAY, MAY 6, 2024


Breakfast Roundtable: What Multifamily Can (and Should!) Steal from Single Family — and Vice Versa

7:45 AM – 8:45 AM
Speaker(s):
Benjamin Burns, Vice President of Digital Marketing Amherst
Brianna Massas, Director, Digital MediaIrvine Company Apartments

Brian Miller, Director, Partner Experience and Engagement, Zillow Rentals

Discussion on:

  • How multifamily can think outside the box
  • What Multifamily is getting right
  • How Multifamily could do better with single-family industry strategies

Why It’s Our Pick:
We’re always harping on about pulling inspo from somewhere else. Keeping an open mind is key for growth.

Opening Keynote: The Investment Case for Branding and Customer Experience: Hotelier Lessons from Hampton by Hilton

1:10 PM – 1:50 PM
Speakers:
Shruti Buckley, Senior VP & Brand Leader, Hampton by Hilton
Michelle Moriello, GID/Windsor Communities, VP, Digital Marketing

Expected Takeaways:

  • Investing in branding in a real estate context: How Hampton Inn uses brand as a marketing differentiator, and how Hilton uses quantifiable metrics to induce owners to invest in their brand standards;
  • Making customer experience tangible: defining, limiting and proving out a desired customer experience – hard and soft items, training, value, feedback mechanisms;
  • Creating multi-stakeholder support for ongoing investment in brand and customer experience (and knowing when a company is off-track)
  • Market segmentation as a path to understanding how to create real value that is perceived and appreciated

Why It’s Our Pick:
Again, parallel industries have a wealth of knowledge that multifamily hasn’t quite tapped into. Investing in solid branding could be a huge way to create a differentiator for your communities.

Building a Differentiated Brand to Captivate Owners: Strategies for B2B Marketing

3:15 PM – 4:00 PM
Speakers:
Sydney Webber
Sharon George, MIG Real Estate, Director of Multifamily Asset Management

Tina Miserendino, Avenue5, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications

Expected Takeaway:

  • Explore marketing and business development strategies from a NMHC Top 50 management company
  • Understand what owners are seeking in a management company partner
  • Learn how to attract, convert, and retain ownership groups as long-term partner

Why It’s Our Pick:
When you brand a property management company, the goal might be to attract ownership groups. Plus, when you know what they’re looking for, that can streamline your process. Get busy growing!

Branding…….It’s NOT a Game(show)

4:15 PM – 5:00 PM

Speaker:
Elizabeth Carton, Rangewater Real Estate, Vice President, Marketing
Jerry Norman, Pedcor Companies, Director of Multifamily Marketing
Barrie Buckner, GTMA, CEO
Sarah Johnson, Willow Bridge Property Company, National Director of Marketing & Brand Strategy

Expected Takeaways:

  • What goes into branding
  • Successful brands/rebrands
  • Timeline Guides

Why It’s Our Pick:

First: It’s a game show! Plus, they delve into branding for any and all scenarios, including property management companies. Sounds like a win-win-win to us. 

TUESDAY, MAY 7

Breakfast Roundtable: The Evolution and Anatomy of a Brand: Building a Compelling Brand in 45 Minutes

7:45 AM – 8:45 AM
Speaker: Stacey Feeney, Founder & Creative Director, Zipcode Creative

Discussion Around:

  • Branding is more than a logo
  • A new BFF in the Multifambam

Why It’s Our Pick:
We’re biased. Stacey, our founder, is pretty great at what she does. And she’s super fun. Plus, building a brand is our bread and butter—perfect for breakfast!

#2
Tuesday, May 7th

Jack, Barbie and Cinderella: Fluent Devices in Strategic Brand Marketing

9:00 AM – 9:45 AM

Speaker: Suzanne Schlundt, Cox Communications, Vice President of Marketing

Expected Takeaways:

  • The benefits of relatable brand personas
  • Attract customers, talent and investors with emotional brand strategy
  • How fluent devices (and their retirement) impact your insights
  • Learn how to elevate your brand’s impact

Why It’s Our Pick:
Learn from a Barbie marketer? Yes! Brands should get emotional. Otherwise, you won’t make an impact. We’re excited to hear about the ways charm and familiarity with your brand can be used to reach and retain.

 

Keynote: Using Humor to Sell

10:15 AM – 11:15 AM
Speaker: Jon Krevolin, Cronin Advertising Agency, President, Chief Creative Officer
Moderator: Tina Mortera, Bozzuto Management Company, Vice President, Business Development

Expected Takeaways:

  • Amplify your reach without spending MORE
  • Create a memory link between brand and audience
  • How to build a repeatable emotion-first story

Why It’s Our Pick:
Humor is one of our love languages at Zipcode Creative. So we’re curious to find out more about how our bad puns and knock-knock jokes can be turned into a lasting connection between brand and prospect.

Perception is Reality: Study Results on Leasing and Living

2:00 PM – 2:45 PM
Speakers:
Margette Hepfner, Willow Bridge Property Company, Chief Operating Officer, Residential Management
Merideth Bunting, The Dinerstein Companies, Vice President of Marketing and Management Services

Expected Takeaways:

  • Prioritize data-driven decisions over gut feelings
  • Understand Gen Y’s vs. Gen Z’s preferences (and stop generalizing them)
  • Align strategies to current trends

Why It’s Our Pick:
The ideal resident for every brand is different. Having the facts (and changing your strategy) about renter preferences through data will get your brand further—to the audience it needs to reach most.

Roundtable: How to Stay Ahead of Generational Shifts in Apartment Marketing

3:15 PM – 4:00 PM

Speakers:

Elizabeth Carton, Vice President, Marketing, Rangewater

Kasey Munsch, Vice President of Marketing, The Preiss Company

Sarah Gencarella, VP of Marketing, Olympus Property

CJ Edmonds, Chief Revenue Officer, Conversion Logix

Discussion Around:

  • Catering to unique generational preferences in marketing
  • Embracing technology to enhance apartment hunting/leasing
  • Building stronger connections with prospects and residents
  • Collaborating with all teams (marketing, leasing, management) to stay cohesive

Why It’s Our Pick:

The IRP (ideal resident profile) should dominate your marketing research. Find out who they are, and that will likely tell you what they like, don’t like and how they want to be approached. Can you say “marketing gold?”

WEDNESDAY, MAY 8

 

Differentiating Your Communities in a Rapidly Evolving Market

10:15 AM – 11:15 AM
Speakers:
Kaley Rafferty, Olympus Property, Senior Marketing Manager

Kyra Lambo, EQR, AVP, National Marketing

Lauren Carpenter, UDR, Inc., Sales Initiatives Manager

Jesse Stein, Airbnb, Head of Real Estate

Carol Enoch, Enoch & Co., CEO

Expected Takeaways:

  • Explore vendor-driven strategies to stand out
  • Enhance resident satisfaction through rewards programs
  • Optimize space and amenity rentals
  • Boost loyalty through tech engagement

Why It’s Our Pick:

If you want to survive, you have to stand out. Differentiation isn’t just a fun word. It’s vital to stay in the game!

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Bees and Biodiversity: The Future of Multifamily ESG

11:15 AM – 12:00 PM

Speaker:
Noah Wilson-Rich, The Best Bees Company, Co-Founder and CEO

Expected Takeaways:

  • How to attract residents that care about sustainability and the environment—through bees
  • Bring ESG to life in commercial real estate
  • Honey from a hive maintained in commercial real estate (!)

Why It’s Our Pick:
The next generation of residents cares deeply about the earth. Bees are key in keeping it going, producing food, by pollinating our fruits/vegetables. Plus: HONEY!

AIM 2024 Speaker Picks

Michelle Moriello

Michelle Moriello – VP, Digital Marketing, GID/Windsor Communities

Speaking on:
May 6, 2024
1:10-1:50pm
Opening Keynote: “The Investment Case for Branding and Customer Experience: Hotelier Lessons from Hampton by Hilton”

Why we picked this speaker:

25 years in multifamily? Incredible. Michelle’s our pick not only because she’s one of the keynote speakers, but also because she’s making a case for branding. We’re stoked to see what she says!

Elizabeth-Carton

Elizabeth Carton – VP, Marketing, Rangewater Real Estate

Speaking on:
“Branding…….It’s NOT a Game(show)”
May 6, 2024
4:15-5:00pm

Why we picked this speaker:

As VP of Marketing for Rangewater, Elizabeth Carton is The Boss for creative and strategic marketing. Additionally, she’s worked in healthcare and property management, which gives her breadth of knowledge—from parallel and outside industries—a little more complexity.

2024 Must-Visit Sponsors

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Zipcode Creative – Besides coming to see us at the Zipcode Creative lounge, there are few other folks we think you’d enjoy talking with—not only are they friendly, but they also have awesome solutions for apartment marketers. (P.S. Our services partner really well with theirs.)

*Will You Sign My Yearbook?!*

Our lounge at AIM is going to be totally boring. NOT!
​​???????????? Get ready to get 90s up in here! ????????????

Stop by our booth (25) at the Ocean Lounge to take an instant photo, paste it in the book, and sign your name with gel pens. Check your email or LinkedIn to nominate people for “most likely to” and other superlatives awards! We’ll be taking votes for awards through April 30!

OTHERS TO VISIT

Engrain – Their interactive sitemaps are awesome—many of our clients supply our beautiful 2D map files to them as a starting point. (It’s all coming together.) 

HyLy – Email and templates to reach your ideal resident? Hyly’s got it—and the branding we design for you is easy to fold in with their CRM system.

Connect
and
Apartment Geofencing – After we’re done making your branding beautiful, you can get on the advertising train with super-smart digital ads, getting in front of exactly who you want.

LCP Media – Visual branding—beyond your shiny new logo from us—needs beautiful photography to round out your marketing collateral. Enter: Show My Property.

Social Kapture – Steadily creating your community brand is easier with Social Kapture, with custom content and smart social media strategies. Establish your brand here and it will work hand-in-hand with your digital and physical collateral.

FOR WEBSITES

Branded sites (with brand style that we help you establish) can make way for gorgeous websites with any of these partners. Plus, they’ll play nice with PMS!

30 Lines

Digible

Resi – our go-to partner for *custom* sites (with our branding expertise)

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Organizing Your 2024 AIM Schedule

Feel a little overwhelmed? Just grab a pen, and start circling what you need to see and who you need to talk to. It’ll be okay. 

  • If you’re a first-timer, go to the First Timer Meet Up (Sunday, 4-5pm and Monday, 7:45-8:45am) with Tamela Coval.

  • If you’re hungry, head to a breakfast roundtable each morning (7:45-8:45am) and grab lunch from 11:45am-1pm.

  • If you’re a night owl, definitely don’t miss the hosted vendor partner entertainment Monday evening (plus networking from 9-11pm)! 
  • If you’re itching for a connection, check out the networking breaks each day from 9:45-10:15am.

There are a few breaks built in, so you can gather your thoughts and check those emails in between sessions. Just pace yourself and make a plan!

Special Evening Events

ola

Sunday
Ola Mexican
Cinco de Mayo Celebration / Annual Open Networking Dinner
7pm
Seating Limited, Email or DM Kristi Fickert to RSVP

Within walking distance of the hotel, join in for a non-sponsored Cinco de Mayo networking dinner!

This is open to ANYONE attending AIM – supplier, marketer, trainer, operator, c-suite exec, owner…we have zero requirements to attend because we know the best conversations happen when we all have a seat at the table!

Bear

Monday

Bear Flag Fish Co
6-10pm
Come and go as you please, drop in for a drink and apps before your other events OR hang for the night with us at this low-key patio with a view of the beach!

Contact Stacey if interested in attending.

AIM-2024-Nautical-Nights_Logo-Primary

Tuesday

Nautical Nights – Yacht Party

By Invite Only!
6-9pm
Contact Stacey if interested in attending.


Hop on and sail in style on the Motor Yacht Mojo, departing from Newport Beach. Enjoy passed appetizers and dinner, and don’t forget to pose for the perfect influencer photo while aboard the Mojo.

 

*There will be an In-N-Out Food Truck Tuesday for lunch at AIM from 12-1pm. Don’t miss it!!

Photorealistic Renderings—A Game Changer for New Development Leasing

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Marketing.

On the back of a napkin, a quick sketch. In Microsoft Paint, a quick pixel-by-pixel outline of a future blueprint. A developed architectural drawing of the elevation. And today: A soft-ware generated, photorealistic rendering for multifamily marketing.

What does it all mean?

We’ve come a long way, for one! 

Photorealistic renderings create 3D images of a project design. Those images are based on 3D models. The computer software is used to first create a virtual model of the building structure(s) and then light, texture, and the environment around it is introduced—think plants, the sky, people.

Photorealistic renderings in multifamily marketing provide near-perfect ideals of interiors and exteriors of apartment communities. 

Because of Stacey’s (Zipcode Creative’s founder) background in professional architectural photography, photorealistic renderings are our jam. Not because they’re not real photos, but because they capture the ultimate for a project.

Photorealistic renderings have the capacity to bring a project fully to life, getting it out of the designer’s head, and in front of the residents’ eyes. It showcases the design, like never before—especially when you incorporate 360 views.

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Power of Photorealistic Renderings


Your prospective residents may just want to come “kick the tires”—but what if your building isn’t built yet? A new development can certainly gain some power of persuasion through photorealistic renderings thanks to both 1) accuracy and 2) efficacy.

ACCURACY

Remove uncertainty in your prospects’ minds by accurately displaying where they’ll eventually live—right down to the way the sun shines in the window on the tufted couch in the clubhouse.

CONTROL

What’s even better is the amount of control you can execute over the image. You control the lighting, the weather, and the surroundings. No random pieces of trash blowing by, or a hose that wasn’t put away. Ideal!

EFFICACY

With improved visualization (how’d you get that perfect shot?) you can use the images for any phase of your apartment marketing: pre-leasing? Check. Long-term marketing when you’re working on retention? Also check. The images you get through photorealistic renderings are the ideal shot.

With 2D drawings or plans, only a portion of your prospects can “see” it—sometimes it falls short or gives the wrong idea. But with photorealistic renderings, your prospective residents are able to visualize every piece of the community because it’s right in front of them.

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Building Trust Through Realism

Potential residents’ trust can increase when you use photorealistic renderings for your multifamily marketing. Blurring the line between real and fake, your residents feel more confident in leasing since what they see in the rendering is typically what they can truly expect.

Plus, if you’re seeking out investors for a new construction, photorealistic renderings are the icing on the cake. Investors love to see a finished product—and it shows how seriously you’re taking the construction and execution of your beautiful new community.

Enhance Online Search Experience

If you’re a prospect and you search for an apartment community in Plano, Texas, for example, and you see there’s a new community, that might pique your interest. If you click and there are no images whatsoever, that may be a problem. Or worse—a few photos of empty rooms and a lackluster clubhouse with a single folding chair.

Using a rendering can help the online search experience go far more smoothly. Add some visuals, and your resident will be able to picture themselves there—because it looks real!

TYPES OF RENDERINGS

There are a few different kinds of photorealistic renderings, each with a slightly different purpose.
 Photorealistic still renderings – These look like photographs of the interior or exterior. 

VR Walk through tours – Prospects can digitally tour the property in an online search.

Each of these types of renderings offer a powerful prospect experience. This is particularly true with pre-leasing new constructions. In your early branding efforts as well as in your pre-leasing marketing, these renderings can help you seal the deal. If you get a jump on your branding over a year in advance, and get your marketing up to snuff for pre-leasing, you could feasibly get the first units leased before they’re even delivered. Pure magic.

You can read more about apartment branding by development phase here.

Investment and Returns


Photorealistic renderings for multifamily are amazing—but they come with a significant cost: from $800-$3000 per image for large exterior rendering. The financial investment is likely worth it for your community, though. In seeing the dividends with how many ways you can use it (thanks to its long lifespan): in brochures, on your website, in your virtual tours, as hero images for your giant banners. Count up the number of leases you may be able to get signed by using this technology and take a long look at that marketing budget.

Our Experience with Photorealistic Images

As software improves and the line between real and fake gets blurrier, finding the best artists is necessary—at Zipcode, we handpick our photorealistic artists to ensure you get a top-quality results. With Stacey’s experience in architectural photography (who knows and hates a bad photo), photorealistic renderings in new development leasing are the next frontier. 

By investing in high-quality photorealistic renderings for multifamily—literally handing your residents the picture of their ideal community—could put you far ahead of your competitors.

Branding Adaptable Reuse Multifamily Developments

Written by Stacey Feeney on . Posted in All Articles, Branding.

The advent of adaptive reuse multifamily developments is now. 

But what is adaptive reuse—and why is it suddenly popular? Adaptive reuse is redevelopment that takes an existing structure and adapts it for another use. In multifamily developments, this can look like a partially remodeled historic hospital converted into a mid-rise apartment community. (The project also employed new ground-up development.) Adaptive reuse has become more popular thanks to its sustainable ideals—reusing existing structures is practical both financially and ecologically. 

Mark Twain is often attributed with saying, “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” This can go two ways—use what you have or buy up more land. But…

“Use what you have” is behind this movement. That idea can also, luckily, be applied to branding—use the history of the building to create a brand story that will capture your residents.

 

Adaptive Reuse: Multifamily

Adaptive reuse for multifamily holds a few benefits over new construction in its ability to appeal to the newest wave of prospects along with residential developers—if you play it right.

AFTER SAVING TIME AND MONEY

By taking an existing building, you might avoid pouring footings, foundations, structural bits and (sometimes) masonry. This could cut down on construction time, allowing you to open for leasing sooner. Those same footings, foundations, and structural pieces that you’re not building could also save you some money. 

Remodeling and renovating certainly have costs associated (think rezoning, or a possible need to gut the building), but depending on the condition of the building you’re adapting to reuse, your multifamily community could be sitting in a comfier place. Any construction savings could be funneled into beautiful branding and over-the-top amenities to draw your residents in.

APPEAL TO GEN Z

Speaking of drawing residents in, the next wave of renters is here. Time to brand your multifamily community for Gen Z. The reasons Gen Z would like a space aligns pretty closely with how adaptive reuse functions:

 Eco-friendly – Taking what’s already there will cut down on fossil fuels needed—if you start from scratch, you’re redoing work that didn’t need to be done.

 Sustainable: Cities are getting more crowded with population growth as well as housing prices ever outpacing income levels. Going up instead of sprawling out makes sense. And using buildings that exist will be faster and more sustainable than building brand-new.

Meaning behind the Multifamily community: What was the building before? A hotel? A hospital? A school? Taking a building that’s served a separate purpose and using it for housing offers up so much meaning to a segment of prospective residents—meaning that deep is hard to resist.

APPEAL TO RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPERS

Remember when we talked about 2024 trends in multifamily? Was adaptive reuse on your bingo card?
“Adaptive reuse will be an ongoing build and design trend in 2024,” says Esther Sperber, founder and CEO of ST Architects. “It is more sustainable to reuse existing structures than building from the ground up. Reusing old warehouses, factories, etc., will continue to appeal to residential developers in 2024 and beyond.”

Traditional, new construction might take more time and more money to create. A residential developer is interested in how urban dwellers will interact with the space—because they’re the end-user. And when Gen Z is interested in sustainability and meaning, adaptive reuse fits the bill and makes more sense as an investment.

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History—the STORY behind the Brand

Meaning. It has to come from somewhere, whether it’s created, or simply needs to be tapped into. With adaptive reuse multifamily buildings, it’s not drawn out of the ether. It comes with the territory! The story is in the walls, lived a thousand different ways already. Finding the piece that connects with your ideal resident is what you’re missing. When you find it, draw it out into the branding (using it as the structure for your brand both literally and figuratively.)

TELL THE STORY OF ITS HISTORY

Telling the story you’ve uncovered in the building can enrapture your audience—your ideal resident. Learn more about the building’s previous use. Get information on the history. Identify the building’s architectural style. Read up on the current events of its hey-day. Use everything you can to create the story of your building’s brand.

Now, select the highlights of those historical elements and tie them into your branding. Architecture can inform the brand style. History can inform your amenity names. Your logos, your signage, everywhere your brand appears, you can take inspo from the building’s history. Be choosy with what you’re diving into—not everything is viable to be public-facing. But go deep and find out everything you can, so you have enough to go off of.

This is especially true of your apartment’s name. Find a name that can work with the history, not conflict with it, or ignore it. Lean in, and create intrigue. And when your residents do move in, give them a gift that goes with the building. Old hotel? Give them a hotel style keychain. Old school? Give them some branded No. 2 pencils. Previous warehouse? Do a giveaway based on what used to be produced or stored there.

STORYTELLING

Continue the thread through your community’s content and copy. Your tagline, headlines, mission, vision, values. Your website copy—this is where you storytelling gets to draw on history. While it doesn’t write itself, the structure is there, just like the building. The best part about using history to tell the story is the creativity and authenticity. When drawing inspiration from an actual place in the past, one can connect with the ideal residents to create a brand that’s never been seen before, and will never be seen again!

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Brand Vibe and Personality

How does one capture the vibe and personality of a historical building? What if it was a warehouse? Ask deeper, bigger questions: What time period was the building built in? When was it in use? What kinds of items did it store? Who worked there, and were there any stories told about them? What major events happened when it was open and functional? (Wars? Riots? Parades? World fairs?)

ADAPTIVE REUSE BRANDING EXAMPLE

Rather than continuing to talk about the how and why, let’s break for recess, and take a look at an example.

Ivywild, a Colorado Springs marketplace with eats, drinks, and shops, is housed in an elementary school that closed in 2009. The communal atmosphere that developed was supported by the neighborhood, especially because it maintained a historic facade and revitalized a structure that could have otherwise stood empty, or worse, become a public eyesore. Our favorite part? “The Principal’s Office” cocktail bar. Clever. The school’s roman-columned facade is part of the logomark. One of the restaurants was housed in a short yellow school bus out front.

Though this is an adjacent industry, the multifamily realm could just as easily rise to the occasion, to bring historical buildings back into the limelight. (Take inspiration where you can get it!)

Why Adaptive Reuse Multifamily Branding?

We’re very much of the thought that you should brand everything. When it comes to adaptable reuse, this is the best possible opportunity for a brand—it’s fun, intriguing and has an outline already. The history is there, waiting for you to spin it into a yarn. Getting creative with it, no one will have the same story as you. Adaptive reuse in multifamily could be the next big thing. Save money, save time, attract GenZ-ers, appeal to residential developers, and be a little greener.

Build it and they will come?
More like: Adapt it and they will come.

Reach out to Zipcode Creative: Storytelling experts with copywriting that converts and branding that beautifies.