Orange Crush

Adjacent to the 1.1-million-square-foot Irvine Spectrum Center shopping center and several high-rise office towers (all owned and managed by various Irvine Co. divisions), the Irvine Spectrum Center community is the epitome of mixed-use, multifamily luxury living. Residents can enjoy Starbucks Coffee, a gourmet deli, a dry cleaners, a 42-seat theater, four pools, BBQ areas, clubhouses, conference rooms, and a vast array of fitness courts, from tennis and basketball to bocce ball. If, for any reason, boredom sets in, 120 stores (including anchors Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, and Target), 35 restaurants (Cheesecake Factory, anyone?), a 21-screen cinema, and a 108-foot-high Ferris wheel beckon from the Irvine Spectrum Center across the street.

“We were paying attention to the pedestrian aspect at the design stage, as well as embracing the ideals of lifestyle and the nuances of each of the projects four communities,” says Rick Emsiek, president and COO of MVE & Partners, an Irvine-based architectural firm that does work with marquee multifamily players such as BRE, Camden, and AvalonBay and was the lead firm on the Irvine Spectrum Center project. “There was a real commitment on everyone’s part to bring the attention down to the finest detail, and Max Gardner certainly kept driving that point: Let’s not take our eyes off the ball; let’s keep moving the lifestyle concept forward until we have executed on every little last bit of detail. That’s why Irvine is such a rewarding client to work for—they do not let their foot off the gas; there is a commitment to paying attention and doing it right.”

Still, units at the Irvine Spectrum Center—which won an NAHB Pillars of Industry Award in April in the Best Mixed-Use Site Plan category—can still look the same on paper as units at IAC’s 1,500-unit Newport Bluffs community, according to Colleen Lambros, the company’s vice president of marketing and training.

“We’re fishing with a very big net,” she says, referring to sexy marketing collateral such as Rental Living, IAC’s semi-monthly glossy magazine distributed across the county, and its companion Web site, rental-living.com. Yet the challenge remains to break through the clutter and meet Gardner’s marketing expectations of “moving beyond another picture of a great-looking apartment building in front of an empty pool with a list of amenities and a map.”

Solution: the “Love Where You Live” campaign launched by IAC in 2001 that has continuously evolved over the past seven years. The campaign—developed by the firm internally with assistance from an outside marketing consultancy—focuses on advertising that promotes a lifestyle in lieu of playing up the IAC brand. The goal? Appeal directly to the emotive and psychographic particulars that ultimately influence renting decisions.

“Looking for an apartment is an emotional decision,” Lambros says. “People may start out in a very linear fashion with a static list of requirements, but if you follow them down the line you’ll see that they make decisions based on lifestyle, and that is ultimately what we are selling. This is the most important decision that our customers will make over a multi-year period, so it is incumbent upon us to learn who people are and what they want to do and build our marketing strategy around that.”

Advertising for the upwardly-mobile minded Irvine Spectrum Center, for example—which included posters at the retail hub as well as regional ads in Esquire, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Sports Illustrated—primarily featured a closeup of a beautiful woman emerging from a pool under the tagline “A Whole New Meaning for Heated Pool.” Additional images included a happy 30-something couple wrestling in bed (“A Whole New Meaning for Home Improvement”) and a group of young urbanites laughing over cocktails (“A Whole New Meaning for Dinner Party”). In addition to the print campaign, IAC leveraged its retail relationship with Starbucks to host “coffee breaks” at office towers near the property, providing local white collars with a java jolt and a multimedia CD-ROM promoting the residences. The strategy was a success: The Irvine Spectrum Center averaged 22 leases per week, absorbing 800 units in just 18 months for a stabilized occupancy of 95 percent.

Marketing efforts elsewhere across the portfolio are similar in psychographic feel. While all Irvine communities fall under the broader marketing umbrellas of the Rental Living magazine and Web site, individual communities also have their own property-specific marketing collateral. For the village of Woodbury, a master-planned community of single-family homes, townhomes, and apartments featuring a 19-acre central park and recreation commons, images are decidedly more bucolic and family-oriented.

RESIDENT ACTIVATION Regardless of how prospects are drawn in, the IAC resident and community managers must first focus on resident desires, rather than floor plans and rent prices. The “Love Where You Live” treatise begins with the premise that IAC has a property for everyone and anyone pulled into the magic kingdom of Orange County. Advertising lures them in, but it is the company’s internal mandate to qualify its customers for the most appropriate property—and the most appropriate unit at that property—that make the marketing campaign a success.

“The first thing I ask my customer is, ‘Why are you moving?” attests Woodbury Place community manager David Strasshofer. “At the outset, I need to find out why you would want to live here.” Of course, that approach often involves steering applicants to other IAC properties. Such “sister referrals” are quite common, comprising the second-highest source of lead generation portfolio-wide, but they require associates to have a holistic appreciation of the portfolio. “Ultimately, it is the job of the leasing consultant to bring those emotions from marketing into the discussion and use them as a tool to pre-qualify,” explains IAC vice president of property management Gabby Kirkland. “We want to train our on-site teams so that their ultimate goal is to help someone find an apartment, but not necessarily at their property.”