Newland Communities, the country’s most prominent privately held residential developer, unveiled its newest master-planned community – Wendell Falls – in the spring of 2015. Wendell Falls is situated in a relatively undeveloped section of Wake County, and when it experienced a lull in traffic, Newland turned to Clairemont Communications to re-engage prospective homebuyers and increase interest during slower winter months.

Strategy and Execution

As part of a larger strategic approach, Clairemont crafted a campaign that leveraged a foodie trend by highlighting Grounds Café, the on-site cafe, and its sustainable approach to sourcing. Clairemont created a video targeting food influencers as well as homebuyers in the Triangle with the objective of ultimately helping increase interest and traffic at Wendell Falls in the month of December by 50 percent, as compared to 2015.

This story would create an additional cultural appeal beyond just housing products. But instead of relying on editorial articles or paid advertising, Clairemont chose to also tell the story via a video featuring personal interviews. Visual mediums like this are easily sharable and have proven to generate higher interest from viewers as well as produce higher engagement on social media.

Results

The Grounds Café video secured the highest number of views for any Facebook video at that time posted by Wendell Falls. In addition, Wendell Falls experienced a distinct uptick in traffic, experiencing an 81.6 percent increase in December 2016, as compared to December 2015. Since then, we’ve converted followers into fans; Raleigh influencers and foodies regularly visit Grounds, posting pictures and touting Wendell Falls to their 50,000+ followers on social media.

The work Clairemont Communications conducted in partnership with Wendell Falls earned an Award of Excellence and a Best in Category from the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America for our video “Our Coffee Cares.” It also received a Gold Award in Video/Podcast/Videocast from the Raleigh Public Relations Society. We are proud that this campaign represents one of the 175 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.