Building a brand

Former tennis champion Boris Becker was another sports star to attract a huge flurry of attention at Cityscape, where he unveiled the US $817 million Boris Becker Beach Resort & Tennis Academy in Ras Al Kamiah - his second project endorsement with ACI Real Estate.

"The market was quite simple four years ago, but now you have to be more outstanding," commented Robin Lohman, managing director of ACI. "Branding this way gives us better recognition."

Others are less convinced that superstar branding is the right way to market projects.

"I wouldn't buy into a project just because it bears somebody's name," says Mohammed Abdulla Al Hathboor, project development manager for Meydan.

"At the end of the day, I want something with all the right facilities, benefits and features. To be honest, I don't think Boris Becker is a good role model. He was a Wimbledon champion for a few years, but then he lost all his money on some quite unworthy pursuits. People who are going to buy in Boris Becker Tower, they don't care if it's Boris Becker - they're investors looking to buy and then resell. But end-users, actual end-users, they'll not buy just because of Boris Becker either."

Meydan, he says, are focusing on a less gimmicky approach for their next launch.

Luxury talks

Developers may have become savvy to the short-term hype and excitement generated by a famous face, but what about creating a successful brand identity for the long term? Futurebrand recently released its fourth annual study into the Gulf real estate sector and found that, while developers may have the cash to plough into expensive branding campaigns, the messaging is always the same.

"Hyperbole continues to reign supreme," said the report. The study pin-pointed that the top five most over-used words being churned out in marketing materials were ‘luxury', ‘dream', ‘paradise', ‘live/living' and ‘reinvented'.

"Luxury is going strong, with more and more entrants jumping on this bandwagon," states the report. 'Paradise', 'masterpiece', 'dream' and 'perfection' are other lofty claims that developers make, suggesting that modesty is not a virtue when it comes to property. In their efforts to top one another, more and more projects are parroting the same tired phrases."

"It makes it hard for a brand to stand out because everybody is talking about the ultimate dream and luxury getaways," explains Plapler. "How do you really stand for something when everybody is saying the same thing?" Unfortunately, developers seem reluctant to change.

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