It’s Not Just Selling Real Estate. It’s Telling A Story

This is part of a series that highlights how commercial real estate’s power set is marketing itself, winning new business and building its brands to meet today’s business climate.

For commercial real estate marketing veteran Madelyne Kirch, branding and other aspects of marketing aren't a one-way conversation. 

As CRE firms set their marketing goals and strategies, the president of Sun & Moon Marketing Communications says they need to think of the process as a dialogue. And the most productive conversations involve input from all participants.

“It's not about what you want to tell your audience,” Kirch said. “It's about what your audience needs to hear from you in order to move them to take the action that you want them to.”

SMMC clients include owners, developers, institutions, REITS, bicoastal private equity funds and major brokerages. Bisnow spoke with Kirch to get her thoughts on what makes effective marketing communication and how CRE firms can achieve it. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bisnow: What led you to a career in CRE marketing, and what has inspired you to stay in this business?

Kirch: I have dual degrees in journalism and political science and a master's in public administration with a concentration in urban planning. I've always had a tangential interest in real estate because of the urban planning component of my background. 

My first job was in the management training program of the Port Authority, and I developed the first marketing plan for the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That really got me interested in real estate. From there, I went to Rockefeller Center, and I began to realize that it's always about real estate. 

Milestones in our lives are almost always tied to some form of real estate decision: Where am I going to live? Where am I going to work? Do I want to move? Real estate can have an impact on the greater good in a way that few other facets of society can. And so it's always captured my imagination, and it's ever-evolving and it's always stayed relevant. 

Bisnow: The first thing visitors see on SMMC’s homepage is the phrase: “We Are Real Estate Storytellers.” What does that mean?

Kirch: One of the responsibilities that we have as marketing people is to understand from the perspective of the end user, what is important about any particular company or any particular space that they may be considering? It's our goal and our responsibility to frame that space in a way that is going to move them to action. 

So how do we tell that story? How do we understand what the need is in the grand scheme of things? How does space work for people? That has changed a lot in the last three years since Covid. What do we expect from space? From there, it’s about framing a story so that it's relatable and authentic. 

Bisnow: How do you craft a story for a brand, and what advice do you have for newer firms who are looking to create their own story?

Kirch: The word “brand” has become diluted in my mind. A lot of people have now sort of associated brand with a color or a logo or a font, but really, a brand is a much bigger idea. It's the relationship that a building or a company has with its audience. 

I think what we miss a lot is strategy because strategy is more than just a transaction: Strategy is the thinking part of it. It's not necessarily the execution part of it, and the same strategy can be executed in a variety of ways. It is very inherent to what a particular building or a particular company is all about. 

To do that well, you need to ask a lot of very serious questions and think about those answers. And think about the world from the outside in, not necessarily from the inside out.

I think that has gotten lost and diluted a lot in the past decade or so. We've skipped the thinking part and gone right to the execution part, and I think we lost a lot in that process.

Bisnow: What are some of the most influential changes you've seen in CRE marketing in the last decade?

Kirch: Many, many years ago, when word processors and Macs first came into existence, they were considered the biggest, fanciest thing, which is sort of laughable now. But someone said to me, “Giving someone a Mac and expecting them to be an artist is like giving someone a word processor and expecting them to be John Steinbeck.” Technology is only a tool, and the thinking and creativity are in the mind of the human. Tech is tremendously critical to the future of the world and of our industry. But I don't want to lose sight of the importance of thinking. 

And that ties into the strategy and not just running headfirst into the latest tech tool because it happens to be a tech tool, but thinking about, what's the information I'm going to get here? And how can that information be best deployed to support the strategy and the story that I want to tell? 

Covid changed a lot of what was acceptable, and it completely upended how we communicated. Before Covid, agents rarely took an iPhone and walked around an apartment or office space. You had to go see the space. And I still think that's true. 

But I still think that, particularly with real estate, you need to touch and feel it, right? You can't see the light in the same way from a phone as you can standing in it. You don't fully feel the neighborhood unless you're in it. Real estate, in a way that a lot of other industries don't necessarily need to, has that need to touch and feel. Even though I think tech has been the single largest change in the industry over the last 20 years or so, the need for that in-person touching and feeling is still very real. 

Bisnow: What role do you believe in-person networking and events play?

Kirch: People need people. There's a level of authenticity and connection that happens in person that I think you just don't get in technology. 

And it's interesting because what we're seeing is a renewed interest in creating marketing suites, even modest ones, because owners understand that the role of that in-person presentation is as critical today as it has ever been. How you tell your story in person is different from anything that you can do digitally or in any other media. I think it's the same with networking events: They're still necessary regardless of everything else going on in the world.

Bisnow: What are some of the most common mistakes you see CRE firms make in their marketing strategy? 

Kirch: I think that too often — and understandably in the current economic environment and as challenging as the office leasing environment is — the focus is very much on a transactional approach, what I refer to as a documentary approach. Look, here's the facts: This is why my building is great, right? This is why my company is great. 

This is opposed to being more strategic, and success really lies in a solid strategy. You need to know your audience, you need to know what moves them to action, where you stand against your competition and what position are you going to take. The monetization of real estate comes in at the end. It's when leases get signed. And leases get signed because tenants are attracted to a particular space. They believe that it best suits their overall needs, not just necessarily their real estate needs. 

A documentary approach misses out on what is it that a company needs. What it is that a company wants when it rents a piece of space. We're seeing that manifest now in amenity centers, with people being together and the other advantages that the building can bring beyond just a particular square foot of space. 

It's about truly understanding the tenant's needs and not focusing too heavily on the technical aspects of any particular space.

Bisnow: Looking to 2024, what do you think are some of the major marketing tools firms will be utilizing?

Kirch: I certainly think AI is going to continue to come on strong. I think we have to be very careful that we're crafting a story and not a work of fiction because there's a tremendous opportunity to misrepresent space. I'm not suggesting that we don't take what we've got and put our best foot forward. But we have to be very careful.

The relationship between the brand and its audience has to be an authentic one. However, we're relying on artificial intelligence to help represent us. And that's sort of a dichotomy I think that we need to be very careful about. 

Marketing companies need to be accountable. I think that the idea of targeting who your audience is goes back to the strategy of thinking about who is your audience. Not just anybody who needs a piece of real estate or anybody who's a lawyer or anybody who's an accountant, but thinking much more carefully about who that tenant might be and targeting that tenant in a knifepoint way, and then doing the types of activities that will generate real leads to target those tenants.

Using your marketing dollar most efficiently and most effectively, through the tools that are available now, is what's going to drive 2024. It's going to continue to be a tough environment. And so we need to be respectful of our dollars and use them in the best possible way. To that extent, technology is a tremendous advantage.

This story was produced by Studio B, Bisnow’s in-house content and design studio. Bisnow news staff was not involved in the production of this content.