Digg This
Talk Back
Post a Comment
|
||||||||||
HousingZone Most Popular Stories
- Under the Radar: Military Housing
- Building Product Manufacturers Speak Out about Green Building
- 100 Best New Products 2009
- Sustainable Landscaping: the Next Step in Green Building
- How A K. Hovnanian High Performance Home Educates the Masses
- Builders: Faulty Appraisals Threaten Housing Recovery
- Remodeling market down, but remodelers expect recovery
- Making Small Projects Work for Your Remodeling Company
- Wood vs. Engineered Lumber
- Closet Systems
In the Fishbowl
December 1, 2001
Professional Builder
It is said that any publicity is good publicity, but sometimes you really have to wonder.
Take, for example, a promising water-themed marketing idea from Miller and Smith of McLean, Va., that wound up making the home builder look all wet.
"To promote our new waterfront community of Lake Ridge Point to local Realtors, we decided to have a messenger service deliver a large fishbowl with a live goldfish and fish food to the largest Realtor offices in the area," says Spence Stouffer, vice president of marketing at Miller and Smith.
Unfortunately, those deliveries were not made in a very, shall we say, timely manner. All the Realtors received dead fish in big glass bowls with the community’s name emblazoned on them.
"We received probably 25 enraged phone calls, several letters, and we were even reported to the Humane Society," Stouffer says. "We of course had to write letters of apology."
Nonetheless, Stouffer adds, "Our community - and its water orientation - became very well-known."
© 2009, Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
