Building a brand helps clients ‘realize their value’ and puts a new face on GVA’s advertising.

Challenge

New York-based commercial real estate firm, GVA Williams (GVA) was known to its peers and existing clients as a boutique, yet highly successful, firm.  However, the general public was largely unfamiliar with GVA and its services. Although the firm has an 80-year history, GVA Williams’ reputation was waning and the lesser-known firm was struggling to stay on the “considered list” whenever landlords and tenants were looking for a real estate partner.  To strengthen its awareness in the industry and develop new business, GVA needed a marketing and advertising message that would resonate with potential clients.  GVA rarely utilized corporate identity advertising and the firm’s most recent ‘Williams Works’ ad campaign was viewed as dated and lacking a clear message.  Instead, the firm relied upon transaction-specific advertising which lacked a consistent theme, design and brand. 

My Approach/Role
My first task after joining GVA as its new Director of Marketing was to began the process of rebranding the firm.   My objectives were to 1) create compelling positioning for the firm that would strengthen its brand image in the NY/NJ/CT marketplace and 2) design corporate marketing collateral in support of this brand. I had only four months to complete the branding process and to develop the advertising campaign, with the corporate collateral following a few months later. To accomplish this task, I retained the services of a branding firm and assembled an internal committee to help capture the GVA philosophy, culture and tradition of excellence, as well as to capture future buy-in among numerous departments.  I directed the entire rebranding exercise and, later, as copy writer, drafted all content for the supporting advertising campaign.

Solution
Brand Assessment-Realize Your Value: During the discovery part of the branding exercise, we learned thatGVA’s clients and prospects were under pressure to get the best real estate deal for their company and needed a broker they could unequivocally trust. Larger firms were the safe choice, yet were overly bureaucratic and preoccupied with clients across the globe.  However, a boutique firm, like GVA, provided a more personalized approach.  

From this connection to the needs of prospective clients, GVA’s brand promise – the single most important message to its clients – was distilled. The promise, “Realize Your Value,” reinforced the firm’s commitment to meeting its clients’ business objectives and reflected GVA’s principled and client-centric approach to doing business. It also spoke to a desired financial benefit for clients. By incorporating the tagline into advertising and, more importantly, into its corporate vernacular, GVA institutionalized a sales message that eventually became its marketing tagline.

Advertising Campaign-You Are More: GVA needed to raise brand awareness through developing a message that would resonate with its target audience and differentiate the firm from its competition. Following the corporate branding process, I worked with an external agency to craft an advertising campaign to reinforce a new client-centric brand promise. The resulting corporate advertising campaign, titled “You Are More”, featured an up-close image of an individual behind a real estate-related graphic overlay. The ads were dramatic in their impact. Unlike competitors’ ads, which focused on buildings, transactions and services, GVA’s ads addressed what mattered most – the client. From the branding exercise, I was able to compose ad copy that reflected a true understanding of the clients’ concerns and requirements. With eight versions of “You Are More” copy, six images and three overlays to choose from, the ads could be customized for any audience, including small and large tenants, CREs, owners, and brokers.

Outcome
The campaign was successful because the ads had a personal and human approach and the message was results-oriented, speaking to true client benefits. Later, in response to demand from our partner offices to use the campaign, I identified a technology vendor to design a web-based PDF Generator for the advertising campaign. This “ad-maker” separated the individual components of the ads into a tool that enabled the user to build their own customized ads without the need for an external creative agency. In so doing, GVA provided satellite offices with access to the entire advertising campaign on their own desktops.  

Design Partner: The Lord Group and OnCall Interactive