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The judges reported: "Themes were powerful, distinctive and creative and promotion was stylish and uncomplicated. These campaigns succeeded in attracting customers and publicity in a market hit hard by the recession; proving that clear messaging, smartly conveyed positioning and brand personality can mean big sales."View Flash Banner
Our work on this project was nominated as a finalist in the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Marketing Excellence Awards 2009.
Promote an exclusive collection of 288 private luxury villas
The Brief
To promote an exclusive collection of 288 private luxury villas on a championship golf course overlooking the Indian ocean, in a relatively unknown and undeveloped but stunning region of Mauritius.
The Challenge
Following the Mauritian Government's introduction of the Integrated Resort Scheme, several developments were announced within a relatively short timeframe on this small island, so our client faced a surge of strong competition from top luxury brands such as Banyan Tree and Four Seasons. Additionally, Mauritius was unproven as a secure overseas property investment destination, so the target market of international HNWIs had first to be informed and educated on the genuine attractions and viability of the offer. Mauritius is in fact the #1 financial centre in the region (World Bank ranking) but it is often compared closely with its neighbour The Seychelles, which is relatively undeveloped and has experienced recent political instability. It was therefore crucial to develop a strategy that would:
- Establish the credibility and credentials of the island to prospective investors;
- accurately define the USPs to attract this discerning HNW audience and persuade them to consider investing in this relatively unknown corner of Mauritius;
- achieve standout in an already oversupplied international property market, in order to generate interest in our product against numerous other global destinations and luxury resorts,
The Solution
Due to the above challenges, our pitch for this project was not creative but strategic, since Mauritius itself was a brand new market on the global property stage and faced considerable competition from other, more established, luxury tropical resorts both locally and around the world.
We therefore researched and compiled a comprehensive sales and marketing strategy outlining ‘the customer journey’, designed to maximise the impact of the client’s budgets in identified key target markets; this incorporated online and print campaigns, PR and marketing strategies tailored for South Africa, France, Mauritius and UK, and working with international sales agents in these countries. This in-depth study highlighted how and where to target these key audiences and even included a detailed budget breakdown and media planning.
Once appointed by the Board, our first action was to review the existing brand positioning and creative style and prepared a report. A key proposal that the development should be renamed, as the existing name did not resonate with the target audiences; we recommended ‘Villas Valriche’ due to its proximity to the Valriche Nature Reserve, which was unanimously accepted by the Board. We then designed the logo (using the beautiful frangipani flower to reflect the natural beauty of the location), for which we created a bespoke typestyle. We then developed a fresh and unique brand/VID and positioning - completely distinctive, it uses black as the main colour, which delivers substantial standout.
The collateral was designed specifically to stand out. It was a very bold step to use solid black as the principal colour for our visual identity / brand, but this worked exceedingly well, especially when positioned alongside other global developments that stuck to rather more conventional colours. The contrast of the vibrant tropical colours against the black created a unique and distinctive look and feel, which has subsequently been widely applauded by stakeholders and customers alike (indeed other developments have since “borrowed” elements of our visual identity, which people say is a sincere form of flattery!).
Much of the initial campaign was applied at putting Mauritius on the map as a place to buy property and the island was perceived as an undeveloped - and therefore wholly unproven – property market. We therefore had to communicate and reinforce the credentials and benefits of Mauritius, to make it seen as more than just a luxury holiday destination but as a true second home candidate meriting serious consideration.
An annual marketing plan is prepared following strategic workshops with the Management Board, at which we examine each of the key markets and analyse results and feedback from respective country sales and PR teams so that the messages and media can be adapted according to the situation in each market. We also conduct quarterly reviews of the strategy for each country. This process allows us to turn up or down our activity quickly in response to changing conditions, thereby ensuring that the budget is not wasted.
In addition, new markets are researched and discussed in depth, to enable us to prioritise where our attentions and resources should next be focused to generate sales.
The strategy has been to reach prospective buyers cost-effectively. Since launching we have run advertising in selected press, achieved extensive PR coverage (listed on the website www.villasvalriche.com), exclusive buyer events and exhibitions, online promotions, emailshots and sponsorship (including the Mauritius Board of Investment). We run ‘self-improving’ campaigns whereby we learn from the successes and failures of previous activities, involving detailed analysis and liaison with the sales management.
The collateral (brochures, CGIs, imagery, HTML and website) serves as a valuable and effective contribution to the sales process; bilingual brochures were designed not just for visual impact but crucially to actively support the sales effort by presenting all of the information necessary in an appealing and stimulating manner to entice a prospective purchaser to get on a plane for 11 hours to visit the site; to illustrate its effectiveness, $150 million in villa sales was achieved without having even a show home to view. The website has proven to be the most valuable sales tool and it offers a vast quantity of information. Indeed a top journalist commented: “If all websites were as good as this one I would never actually have to visit a development.” In 2009 we also prepared the winning entries on behalf of the client for Best Residential Development and Best Golf Course Development.
The original research we undertook that underpinned the launch campaign addressed and prioritised each individual market and defined exactly how we could best reach the audiences within these at various touch points along the ‘journey’. A key success was to secure all the key poster and display sites at the airport before any of the competition had woken up to this opportunity, and even today Villas Valriche dominates the arrivals area and beyond. As such, no visitor arriving by air fails to be made aware of Vilas Valriche and encouraged to visit whilst on the island.
A diverse range of print and digital media has been selectively employed to promote Villas Valriche in target markets, and massive brand recognition has been achieved; indeed the development is now recognised as the leading Integrated Resort Scheme on the island and our promotional campaign has generated thousands of qualified enquiries from potential purchasers around the world.