Office Branding - Towards An Integrated Brand Building Strategy

The situation on several German real estate markets today is characterised by high vacancy rates, more intensive competition and increasingly exchangeable offers. Especially on office space markets the situation is still tense and market participants anticipate the high vacancy rates to remain a long-term problem due to the stagnating job market. Against this background it is today more important than ever for project developers to excite public attention, to identify target group oriented positioning characteristics of the object and to create an individual customerís benefit. In this context real estate branding gains in importance as can attach a unique and customer oriented image and brand to the object. Whether a customer buys a consumer good or buys/leases office space, it is always a bundle of attributes that come along with a certain product. As consumer goods industry generally focuses on emotional attributes when marketing their products, real estate industry solely concentrates on hard facts. This hidden potential has not yet been tapped successfully but bares several opportunities for real estate developers and investors. The aim of this paper is to make a contribution to the field of real estate marketing by providing a guideline for the strategic creation of real estate brands. Therefore, the functions of a brand from a userís perspective, postulated by the classical marketing theory, are being defined and the transferability of these functions to real estate is being analysed. Taking the previously elaborated findings into account, we determine the circumstances under which a corporate or real estate brand should be created from a developerís perspective. Finally, we present a strategic approach towards building a real estate brand and its retention in the corporation.