Mercury Advisors retained Walker Brands to develop a refreshed sales campaign for the final 50 residential units of this mixed-use, urban neighborhood community comprising one city block in Tampa’s Channel District. The neighborhood had significantly matured since Grand Central was first developed ten years prior, and the sales team needed a story that leveraged the strong retail and public amenities that residents could now enjoy, as well as the variety of other planned development in the area. The result was the achievement of the goal to sell out in just over a year.
- 392 studio, one- and two- bedroom condos
- 180,000 sf retail and office space
Recognition
Best Overall Marketing Campaign
Award of Excellence for Best Overall Marketing Campaign – Community
Objectives
- To reposition the property to meet the updated wants and needs of target buyers
- To create a strategic marketing and communications plan to support sales efforts of the final 50 residences
Strategy
Walker surveyed existing residents and retail tenants to understand what they valued most, then evolved the website, sales collateral and signage with compelling video and visuals to showcase all that was “Central to Life” at Grand Central. An aggressive multi-channel plan was developed to promote the central urban location and provide a compelling buyer value proposition.
Services
- Evolved brand positioning
- Brand concepts
- Brand and marketing sellout plan
- Photography and video
- Site signage
- Sales center environmental graphics
- Collateral
- Website
- Media buy
- Social media
- Realtor communications
- Public relations
- Guerilla marketing
- Events
Success
The campaign launched, producing over a million digital media impressions and 110,000 consumer and realtor emails, which helped drive over 28,000 website visits and 700 leads – and ultimately sell-out of the entire community.
Walker Brands helped us to realize our goal of selling out of our remaining inventory at Grand Central at Kennedy in the Channel District over the past 18 months. We had some challenges here as the property was unfortunately considered unwarrantable by FANNIE MAE so we were only able to offer portfolio loan products at terms less attractive to most buyers than the market. Walker did a great job of identifying the properties strong and weak points and most important how to sell over/through the weaker aspects like the aforementioned financing situation. We were successful at liquidating the remaining inventory within 18 months at attractive pricing for us so we could concentrate on building downtown Tampa’s first urban Publix. Would love to use them again.
