Newland Communities, the country’s largest privately held residential real estate developer, touts two master-planned green communities in central North Carolina: Briar Chapel and Wendell Falls. From inception, Newland built these communities on principles of sustainable design through energy efficient land planning and comprehensive, NGBS-certified home construction – standing as the two largest green communities in the Triangle. Newland sought to showcase its industry leadership with research and data proving the tangible value of building green. Clairemont set the objective to reach media outlets with a circulation of more than 100,000. Therefore, our goal was to secure a feature story in Builder Magazine within the 2017 calendar year that highlighted Newland’s delivery of demonstrable results.
STRATEGY
Clairemont and client Newland developed five personas to define our diverse target market, homebuyers between ages 21 and 65 actively seeking homes in North Carolina and designed an innovative pitch angle tailored to the publications’ needs. Clairemont framed the 10-year study’s centerpiece finding – that Briar Chapel and Wendell Falls saved residents more than $1 million in energy bills – with attention-grabbing, light-hearted depictions of the equivalent annual savings. For example, homeowners could have purchased 14,015 movie nights, 9,110 family cookouts or 60,733 fresh apple pies with their savings. We accompanied our pitch with content that editors could repurpose, such as visually appealing charts and images of the homes. To further ensure a good editorial fit, we met Builder Magazine’s need for data-driven insights by offering supplementary reports, an interview with Newland’s marketing director and the top three quantifiable ways Newland saves energy.
EXECUTION
The Clairemont team completed a media audit to determine which outlets provided maximum visibility within the target demographic. We also thoroughly researched the green building market to identify homebuyers’ biggest questions about green building and how Newland allays these concerns. To ensure quality from start to finish, we held regular internal planning meetings and client calls and completed multiple rounds of editing and proofing.
RESULTS
Clairemont met the stated objective and far exceeded expectations within our budget by the end of 2017. The feature story in Builder Magazine spotlighted Newland’s sustainable nature while positioning the community as a thought leader in the green home industry to its circulation of approximately 120,000.
This feature story fed into a larger campaign that skyrocketed traffic at Wendell Falls by approximately 32 percent, landed Briar Chapel two Best Neighborhood awards in Chapel Hill and earned Newland the Developer of the Year award from the Home Builders Association of the Triangle.
The work Clairemont Communications conducted in partnership with Newland Communities earned Awards of Excellence, Best in Category and Best in Show awards by the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America (NCPRSA) and a Platinum Award from the Raleigh Public Relations Society. We are proud that this campaign represents one of the 198 awards we’ve received since starting Clairemont in 2010.
To read more about the work we do with clients, please visit the case study section of our blog.
