Downtown Toronto is filled with cutesy condo names, like the ‘Charlie’ building on King Street, ‘X Condos’ on Bloor and the inexplicably branded ‘London’ on The Esplanade.
In a bid to grab the attention of young, affluent and – let’s face it – cynical downtowners, the trio of developers (Castlepoint, Cityzen and Fernbrook Homes) behind the new condominium being built across from the Sony Centre at Yonge Street and The Esplanade has launched a social media contest inviting people to submit their own ideas for its name.
Launched Monday, the ‘Name Our Condo’ contest was urges people to go to Nameourcondo.com to share their nifty name ideas with the public, who can vote on the ones they like best. The names are organized in a list as per popularity, and buttons under each name allow people to share the ideas they like with their friends on their social media pages. So far, the response has been ‘overwhelming’ with over 200 entries submitted from Monday to Tuesday afternoon, Robert Galletta, partner and account services director at Toronto-based agency Blackjet, who created the campaign, tells MiC. Right now, the leading name is ‘Moot,’ with 1207 votes. (MiC‘s favourite right now is ‘The Ego’ but it only has 160 votes.)
A Twitter page has also been set up, with 100 followers to date, and a Facebook fan page as well, with 41 fans to date.
The goal was to create a consumer-engagement strategy that went against the grain, Galletta says, and if ‘there’s one thing that’s a fact, there’s a lot of bad condo names in the marketplace.’
‘Consumers are really fatigued by [traditional] marketing’ when it comes to new-condo sales, he explains. ‘All of that lifestyle marketing with traditional media mix is really falling on deaf ears. They are all using the same language and the same approach and it’s really hard to differentiate when everyone’s doing the same thing.’
Proud that the marketing campaign has so far had zero media spend, Galletta said they will be rolling out a second tier of media in August, targeting local online media such as TorontoLife.com, BlogTO and Torontoist, as well as a localized search on Google. Traditional ad units will be purchased, he explained, but the plan is also to develop editorial integrations and product placements with blog sites as well. In-show integrations with local radio are also being developed. Media is being handled in-house by Blackjet.
The contest closes Aug. 20 and the winter will be announced Aug. 27.
This article was updated at 2:45 p.m. to reflect a correction to the reference to the building, which MiC erroneously reported was above the Sony Centre. The condo being named is located in opposition to that new building, at the southeast corner of Yonge St and The Esplanade.
