Page 335 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

MARKETING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT 313

talking? What are their interests? Are they early adopters of sustainability and, there-
fore, sensitive to communication that over-promises with a hyped-up green message?
Or are they more likely to skew the other way—distrustful of environmental concerns
and anxious about the costs associated with sustainable development?
Different targets require different tactics. When we sought to create communica-
tions for Abercorn Common, you’ll recall we used a very different strategy to talk to
potential tenants than we did to speak to the general public. We knew, for example,
that potential tenants had pro formas within which they needed to operate. We initially
projected that $20 a square foot would either make or break the deal. Their primary
concern was the bottom line. (We were right about the focus on the bottom line. Our
projections about the rental rate were understated by almost 100 percent.) Prospective
tenants’first questions centered on how much the space would cost per square foot and
whether the property justified paying that amount. The public, on the other hand, was
open to a message about sustainability. In each case, we chose messaging strategies
relevant to their respective targets. In Shopping Centers Today, we talked to the poten-
tial for success in locating in the center. Meanwhile, the public relations efforts of Lisa
Lilienthal spoke to the “green” message and garnered a great deal of positive public
attention from the local press and government, very likely boosting our ability to
charge higher rents. Both efforts worked toward the common goal of ensuring success.
Once you’ve identified specific targets, knowing everything you can about them is
key to a viable communication strategy. Create a profile of your target by gathering
every piece of information you can. Create a focus group of people representative of
the target. Take them to lunch. Sit them around a table. And pick their brains. If you
think you can, capture the session on video or audio so you can come back to it. If that’s
not possible, have a really good note-taker on hand. You want to know who these peo-
ple are, what they think, what they are predisposed to believe about you and your proj-
ect, what they read, what shows they watch on TV. Your goal will be to discover what
they are like, how open they will be to your message, and some really powerful ways
to deliver it. Look for common behavioral traits, common likes and dislikes, demo-
graphic commonalities. For example, does your target attend any conferences where
you might meet a large contingency of them? Do they subscribe to specific trade pub-
lications? Are they typically male? What do they like to do in their spare time? Do they
tend to be hockey fans? The more you know about them, the more likely it is you will
create messaging that reaches them. Relevance is key to your messaging strategy. Ask
yourself, “What is the single most important message I can take to this target?” Another
way to think about this is, “What is the single most important promise I can make?”
As we went through this process with Abercorn Common, we even crafted differ-
ent messages for different potential retail tenants. For example, the message to the
smaller retail tenant was, “We will enhance your business through a unique, strategi-
cally located property.” The message to the larger, big-box type retailers, however,
was, “We can fit your formulae, save you some on operational expenses, and enhance
your perceived goodwill to the community.” We developed a graphic language that
incorporated a background texture that felt like aging paper, a classic font called Mrs.