Orange Crush

What is playing on your iPod: Podcasts from NPR’s “Wait, Wait … Don’t Tell Me!”A VISIT FROM J.D.The Irvine Co. Apartment Communities spreads out, wins coveted award.

The J.D. Power and Associates moniker is a powerful and coveted customer service brand. Awarded annually to companies across select industries, the award recognizes those that pass the Westlake Village, Calif.-based firm’s rigorous on-site customer satisfaction surveys. In 2007, the company issued its first ratings for apartment communities, initially polling 2,505 residents across the Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Silicon Valley sub-markets. As the program expands, J.D. will likely be evaluating more multifamily assets across the country.

“J.D Power doesn’t ask for your permission to be included in their resident satisfaction surveys. They let you know that they’ll be testing and surveying in your market and then contact you post-survey with results,” says Colleen Lambros, vice president of marketing and training for the Irvine Co. Apartment Communities (IAC). It appears she had nothing to worry about, though: IAC took home top honors in the Silicon Valley market during the program’s inaugural year.

Historically sequestered in Southern California markets—particularly in Orange County—IAC has been expanding its Silicon Valley footprint over the past five years with marquee developments such as the Franklin Street apartments in Redwood City and San Jose’s North Park Apartment Village. The J.D. Power award, then, comes at a perfect time for the company, which launched its “Love Where You Live” campaign in 2001 as part of a total overhaul of the company’s marketing philosophy.

Key to IAC’s “Love Where You Live” strategy is to achieve measurable customer satisfaction scores. Winning this award in a market where the company had yet to build a historical brand presence hasn’t gone unnoticed throughout the IAC ranks. “[In Orange County,] it’s to our advantage to say we are of [a certain] size and quality, and your expectations should be high,” says IAC president Max Gardner. “Marketing in newer markets is not necessarily harder, just different. We are not marketing our brand, but instead defining and building our brand. We set the bar for service and experience extremely high, and all indicators are that we are doing a great job delivering on the promise.”

THE IRVINE CO. APARTMENT COMMUNITIES