Tag Archives: lifestyle marketing

Pre NYNOW Trends Should Inform Stagers Of First Time Buyers.

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NY Now Pre PlanningEvery summer, I drag myself through the heat and humidity to Javits Convention Center for NYNOW’s summer market. This year is August 16 – 19, 2015. It’s a huge convention center, filled to bursting with fresh, colorful ideas. Trends are laid out for you in glorious 3 dimensional technicolor and it. is. exhausting!  I love it. I completely love it, but I have to start working out for it months in advance.

Interesting, this year in the promotional materials they are talking a lot about the changing customer base in terms of lifestyle.  My ears pricked immediately. That is one of our signatures at Amazing Spaces NYC – home staging, yes, but more accurately, Lifestyle Marketing. Millenials’ more casual lifestyle (than their BabyBoomer parents) is altering the retail landscape.  Which one would expect, it’s just fun when everyone sits up and notices how.  How many Boomers do you know who are just now starting to downsize and finally stop acquiring things?  As the youngest of that generation sends their last kid off to college, a new era is emerging.  And, the more The Gift And Decor industry writes about the Millennials, the more I realize that this is vital intel for home stagers as we prepare homes for sale for younger or first time buyers.

Gifting Trends Derive From Millennials Lifestyle

Millennials are becoming known as the ‘Cut The Cord Generation’. Gone for them are phone wires, audio system cables, TV plugs, TV in general!  Since they carry their life and memories around on a phone, they don’t need or photo frames so much anymore.  In terms of gift giving, according to a recent study commissioned by Gift and Decorative Accessories magazine Picture Frames are becoming less popular, as are candles.

Home staging no nos for new buyers

To do a centerpiece of candles used to be pretty. Not so any longer. Now, an aromatherapy mister in the kitchen would be more on trend.

Toys, games and puzzles are popular again, as is anything handmade. It’s not just Panera excited about “Artisanal” – “Handmade” is huge. In fact, NYNOW will have a whole separate section on handmade items and exhibit hours specifically for that part of the Gift and Decor convention. 632 of the show’s 2,600+ exhibitors come from the Artisan space.

Trends in 2015 gift giving - wooden games

 

Other items trending are bar-ware. This is not surprising when you consider that the Millennials feel a strong affinity for the 50s, mid-century modern and all things ‘Mad Men’.  Cocktails and the stuff to stir, shake and pour are all the rage. Actually, is this particularly new?  Apparently it’s THE hot trend in giftware right now, but hasn’t Pottery Barn been selling these items since [their] Day One?

PB Tools and Accessories

 

When we think of first time buyers, we need to keep in mind, those folks are Millennials, and they’re a generation that is starting to be well-defined. They are starting to have enough of their own money that they set trends all by themselves.  Anything that appeals to them in general is what we should be staging with whenever they’re the target market.

Now, lest you worry whether I’ve incorporated any of these trends yet, let me remind you of a recent staging we had great success with –>

home staging success

Happy summer!  Looking forward to bringing you some sizzling ideas from #NYNOW.

Lifestyle Marketing Sells Condo Plus All Of The Contents!

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Living Room Staged with Lifestyle Marketing

Photos used with permission from Brown Harris Stevens

A few years back, advanced home staging training programs started talking about Lifestyle Marketing. It was the anti-thesis of generally accepted staging principles. Simply, the concept is staging for one specific person, where home staging is preparing a home for sale to appeal  to the most people possible.  Surely you limit the potential buyer pool if you design for one person, what happens if they’re not in the market to buy a $3 million condo?  It’s a logical question.

However, niche marketing has been proven successful many times over. The narrower the niche, the better it works.  Consider how effective people find Facebook Ads, and the huge savings you get when you put your message in front of only the right audience. In many business situations, you don’t want every buyer, or even a lot of buyers, you just want the right buyer.  And that, sooner rather than later.  But don’t take my word for it, here are some other credible opinions:

Dining Area

For this listing – 388 Bridge Street in Downtown Brooklyn – I listened carefully to the developer and the marketing/sales director as they said –

“Let’s position this unit for a bachelor with money.”

Aha, lifestyle marketing at its finest! We often apply this principle at Amazing Space NYC; it works very well for high-end listings where the buyer is often quite specific. More often than not, there just aren’t a wide pool of target buyers.

Here, we kept accessories to a minimum, opting for the kinds of things a busy, single guy might have around. Sleek, modern, efficient – for sure; and calming, soothing, a zen-like private space where he can scrutinize his strategy and plot his next move.

 

home staging nyc

 

The city is laid out at his feet. Glorious light pours in day and night. It is a stunning set of views, comfortably at arms’ length. The owner here can feel high above the fray in this unit.

Kitchen Closeup

Should he want or need to cook, the space is there. And there are lots of cabinets for the juicer and whatever else goes into those guys’ gruesome morning shake.

And if there is a girl… or a friend…there’s a place for them on the deck. They shouldn’t get too comfortable though.  #Justsaying.

Lifestyle Marketing in living example

 

Our Lifestyle Marketing strategy worked.  A bachelor bought the pad, alright.  The buyer turns out to be a hedge fund executive.  And, he bought every piece of furniture, lighting and textile that we installed as part of our design.

Lifestyle Marketing —

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Home Staging Brooklyn with Lifestyle Marketing“Lifestyle Marketing consists of segmenting a complex market into niche subdivisions based on interests, attitudes, and beliefs.  This marketing technique creates an enthusiastic and loyal consumer-base and establishes the brand as a valuable part of the consumer’s everyday life.”

Similar Terms:  – Lifestyle Segmentation, Cultural Marketing

 When designing a model unit, there are two choices: home staging or lifestyle marketing. Home staging is like a spray shot  – creating a “generic” space that would appeal to the widest number of potential buyers, in a similar vibe to Pottery Barn, West Elm  and Williams Sonoma.  Home staging keeps a careful distance from trends and specificity of any kind; the goal is to be the most classic and “evergreen” as possible.

Lifestyle marketing, on the other hand, picks up on the voyeurism in human nature and creates something deliberate, something specific. A space is customized to an aspiration  or ideal of the potential/target buyer .  Usually that ideal is a combination of career, hobbies, and trends.  Of course, there is the chance that one person’s image of a hip, tech multi-millionaire is not at all the same as another’s.  A seasoned Lifetsyle Marketing professional knows the limits and will not push the envelope too far with the lifestyle elements.  In New York City real estate, especially in Brooklyn where the market is hotter than hot, there is considerable money on the line – both in sales and in rentals.  It is important to get it right.  Sometimes that means adding a little quirky fun to a design, but only if it speaks the language of the target demographic.  The goal: making the property memorable as well as enviable.
Lifestyle Marketing and Home Staging in New York CityWith this 2 bedroom, we added a fondue set at the dining table. What better way to tempt children to eat fruits and veggies than to make it fun with fondue?  Especially now that Cookie Monster is Veggie Monster!

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To have one of the designers at Amazing Space NYC

design your model units, please call 917-428-3965

and ask for Debbie.

Lifestyle Marketing as home staging in Brooklyn model units

Isn’t this Master Bedrrom delicious?! 🙂