# 381
 Case Study
Weinstock Homes
 

Situation

Weinstock Homes, a Father and Son builder, had been the largest custom home developer in the Valley for over thirty years. It bought the land, built quality homes on it, and did its own marketing. Now the California real estate market for single family dwellings was tightening up and the Company needed to become more aggressive. Weinstock was running ads every week, but the ads weren't doing the job.

Problem

California track housing is a mixed lot. The term itself suggests mass production and poor quality.
   When you have a bad product, about the worse thing you can do is advertise it. But, this clearly was not the case with Weinstock. Its homes were designed well, built well, and provided great value to home buyers at lower to upper middle price ranges. The Company wanted home buyers to know it, and the right kind of advertising could only help. The agency was called in.

Solution

Weinstock's Quintessence of Value Campaign:  The agency hit the ground running pulling data from various syndicated research sources and phone interviews. It did its homework and brought in a plethora of strategies that were being used in the market to sell homes. At the time, only two developers were "branding" their homes to provide continuity and mnemonic value through their advertising investments. So, a branding strategy that would compete for the same home buying customer against other brands, while at the same time providing the flexibility needed to rotate saleable features ranging from interest rates, pricing, terms, and locations was recommended.
   Both the father and the son were hands-on with every aspect of their business. The idea of showing a son carrying on his father's legacy for quality was central to the campaign the agency developed.
   Recognizing that it could leverage awareness for quality behind the Weinstock name new home sites with advertising dollars that were already being spent, the agency created a

 Weinstock Quintessence of Value Seal.  Weinstock's  quintessence referred to the "fifth essence," the highest degree of interlinking detail involved in building a quality home; in this instance, every Weinstock Home. The Seal was printed on gold foiled stickers and appeared at all its sites, inside closet doors, on the garbage disposal unit, on garage door openers, water heaters, etc., indicating they'd been inspected, tested, and certified ready for sale.
   The seal was also given prominence in all Weinstock advertising.
   Price ads featuring elevations, terms, locations and maps were featured in the context of a brand campaign that ran in the real estate sections of all local newspapers. RE articles featuring grand openings, buy downs, and other special values and opportunities were written by the agency to run concurrently with the advertising. Ads occasionally carried snipes to indicate close out opportunities and other time restricted offers.
   The Campaign led off with six weeks of RE ads featuring "The Weinstock Quintessence of Value" as the headline. The lead-in copy introduced the campaign positioning for Weinstock and built a case for the interlinking detail that was built into every Weinstock Home. Under this brief positioning were elevations, price ranges and terms, features, amenities, and special buying opportunities.
   On the seventh week of the Campaign, on-site photographs of the Father and Son were introduced into the format as a way to personalize the Company and reflect their level of pride and hands-on commitment.
   In the years that followed the Quintessence Campaign evolved into other headlines. "We build a lot of home into everything we do," and "It's tough to build a Weinstock Home" were rotated into the mix with the Father, or Son, or Father and Son walking the sites of their different  developments.

Results

The Weinstock Quintessence of Value Campaign served this marketer well in tougher times. The new positioning and branding provided an instant mnemonic of recognition linked to quality in weekly ads and in sites visited among thousands of home buyers coming in and out of the market in these and in the years that followed.

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