The Nationals: Sending The Right Message

While an ad has a couple of seconds to get prospects' attention before they turn away, a brochure can establish a relationship: People can carry it around with them and pore over it when the day gets quiet and they can concentrate on it. Too much information and you'll lose them; too little and you'll leave them with more questions than answers. This year's gold award winners for best brochures gave their customers valuable details about the projects and important values about the communities and the builders and developers behind them.

The most important message that Infinity Home Collection wanted to convey in its brochure for Moda Lofts, a loft project in Den-ver's Stapleton redevelopment area, was that this will be a very cool place to live, marketing director Dave Steinke says.

With the introduction of “something quite a bit cooler than what was offered in the area,” Steinke says, “we needed a brochure that was out of the box, too. We were speaking to an interesting crowd. ... They're drawn to the energy of an urban center. They aren't as concerned with [price] as the type of living [the units] represent.”

The result was “The Birth of Cool,” a brochure inspired by a Miles Davis recording. The brochure folder looked like an album sleeve, with the floor plans inside.

“People go nuts over it,” says Dave Miles, president of Miles-brand, which designed the piece. “This really sets the tone and expectation that this place will be trend-setting.”

Instead of preselling units, which Infinity felt would attract too many rentals and investor resales, the builder convinced its bank to finance the project with just a handful of presales and will wait until the building is actually under construction to sell units.

“We decided to start with the brochure,” Steinke says. “It got our creative side focused.”

Some babies take a little longer to arrive. Five years passed from acquisition to the grand opening of The Palisades, a 1,500-acre master planned community in Charlotte, N.C. The brochure is “our baby book,” says Jim Medall, president of developer Rhein Interests of Charlotte. “It shows where we were and where we were ending up as the project started to kick off.” To that end, it included sketches, vision statements, and the resulting renderings and photography.

The brochure is given to prospective buyers of custom homes “to remind them where they were ... or to remind them why they bought,” Medall says.

The direction to creative director Chris Bradle at Eye Design Studio was to give the same feeling of elegance to the production version, and even that was limited to 1,000 copies. Bradle chose a sleek black-and-silver cover on a paper with the feel of suede, and the handmade paper was photographed and reproduced on textured paper for a similar look and feel.

Sent out ahead of a preview event, the brochure helped boost attendance above the anticipated turnout, and the first phase sold out before phase two offerings were available.

“Very few times do we have the developer take the reins and say, ‘We're going to make one great brochure,' ” Bradle says. “It's a rare deal, and it's very exciting to be involved in.”

Jay Hoeschler knows this feeling well. The creative director of The Motta Co., Hoeschler has worked for a while with Bonita Springs, Fla.–based The Bonita Bay Group, a company founded 20 years ago by David Shakarian, founder of the General Nutrition Co.

“His whole philosophy was living in harmony with nature,” says Mary Briggs, corporate public relations director for Bonita Bay. “That's been our vision ever since.”

Bonita Bay's corporate brochure focuses on its commitment to environmental stewardship, right down to ensuring that the leaves on the cover aren't from an exotic plant that would damage the native vegetation of southwest Florida, where the company builds.

“It's become the primary brochure for the corporation,” Briggs says. “It's not just the environmental brochure.”

Of course, while it gives prospective buyers (and bankers and landowners) a clear sense of who the group is, it also helps the company provide a point of differentiation in a crowded market.

Hoeschler says, “There is a lot of competition here in southwest Florida. This defines them and separates them.”

Category:

Number of units: 64

Price range: $200,000s to high $300,000s

Date opened for sale: September 2005

Sales volume: First release of 6 units sold out; remainder being held until construction is completed

Cost per piece: $3

TURN IT UP: The jazz-inspired brochure for Moda Lofts not only became a conversation piece that people wanted to hang on to, it also served as a starting point for a highly interactive Web site and many of the project's thematic elements.

Qualified traffic generated: 500-plus names on interest list

Category:

Number of units: 2,000

Price range: $300,000 to $2 million

Date opened for sale: June 2005 Sales volume: 15 per month

SELECT FEW: Only prospective buyers of high-end custom homes at The Palisades received this brochure. A limited printing on premium paper enhanced the idea that it was an exclusive offering. An elegant replica was given to buyers of production homes in the community.

Total traffic: Average of 60 people per week to the information center

Cost per piece: $12

Qualified traffic generated: Brochure sent to qualified prospects in advance of a preview event; attendance surpassed expectations; phase one sold out before phase two offerings were available

Category:

Number of units: 12,198 (entire company)

Price range: $200,000 to more than $3 million

Date opened for sale: First community opened in 1985

I.D.TAG: The Bonita Bay Group's corporate brochure—given to sales center visitors, landowners, builders, and bankers—establishes its identity as a green builder.

Total traffic: 129 weekly

Advertising budget: $28,500 (for brochure)