In-Depth: The Art of the Iron Curtain
This year at the tenth anniversary of the Zolotoye Pero (Golden Feather) competition of the Moscow Association of Realtors something strange happened. Analytical center “Indicators of the Real Estate Market IRN.ru” received the award for best press-service in its field although the company has practically no press-service!
And it was not a mistake. As the organizers of the awards told IRN has no press-service, but there are visible results: the company is quoted a lot. This is nice, of course, but strange. And the question is this: how were we given the award instead of a company that has a large PR department, and tens of branches with thousands of brokers or building projects worth billions of dollars? It seems to me, it is not our business that was merited but the state of our PR work in the real estate market.
The Russian real estate market can be given the award for the most closed and opaque. The real prices for premises are hidden from the press. Some write "prices from... ", some specify the price in standard units, some only give prices over the phone, and quite often only through an official inquiry, something that is characteristic of companies working in the commercial real estate segment. The volume of transactions is another matter: it is not clear who is building and what, how much is sold, how much remains, and at what price transactions take place at. If you take the share market, the volumes of tenders is absolutely open information, but to find out any conclusive information about the volume of constructed square meters in the real estate market is difficult. The number of registered transactions, apparently, is kept by registration bodies, but this information, for some reason, is also provided reluctantly and with huge delays. All companies generally protect information on sale volumes like a military secret. We could talk at length about it. But what would the result be?
On the one hand, everyone wants to be successful in PR. But instead of giving actually helpful information on the market that any mass-media outlet would print with pleasure, they dispatch press releases about nothing. For example, about the next anniversary of the company, about the opening of another branch, about the signing of a cooperation agreement with another bank, that it won a mini-football match against its competitor, that the director has obtained a certain position in the list of the best managers of Russia or that a settlement has received a nomination in some awards, etc, and in general, everything will be about anything but business.
It is necessary to note that all this fog in the real estate market harms, first of all, consumers which do not get an objective picture of an event and consequently, cannot make weighted and intlligent decisions. Of course, the majority of companies show a positive front: they tell us everything is fine and good, but the real state of affairs is not known – what sales have taken place, at what prices, what about documentation, what’s the real financial state of the company? In fact, the majority of players in the real estate market, offering to buyers to invest in not yet constructed meters, actually do not possess the necessary transparency or publicity. That’s why construction here causes so many protests of deceived investors. And there may be a company that just yesterday was famed in all mass-media as the best, that suddenly becomes bankrupt, and unable to carry out all of its obligations. And as consequence, such a state of affairs, as a result, also harms other players of the real estate market as it undermines the trust in the field as a whole.
A natural question is why does this happen, why is there a deficit of useful and reliable information on the real estate market? If you don’t take into account companies that for different reasons conduct a closed information policy and are not engaged in PR at all, there are an abundance of companies that actively try to brand and PR, by creating PR departments, employing qualified people and spending money. It is clear that, when this happens, they set themselves goals and calculate the results, for example increasing the popularity of the company or stimulating sales. But this just ends in the following.
Numerous PR experts, and quite often of a highly professional level, employed by development, construction and realtor companies, are forced to dispatch close grained press releases approved from above because they are not supposed by management to be really interesting information, which for some reason is considered a military secret and has the signature stamp of highly private. Quite often it seems that no one has formed the position of the company on key questions, its position and mission in the market, its distinctive advantages from competitors, for the PR experts. And it may turn out that the company has none of the afore mentioned, as at times the main and only advantage it has is good administrative relations that allow it to get good land plots for construction.
On the other hand, in any serious company there are people who possess the power and the information and understand the general ideology of the company, but they usually “fly” so high that they either do not have the time or desire to answer journalists’ questions and share interesting information. Therefore there is a big gap between the great expectations from PR activity and the availability of the company to provide this activity to this level and, accordingly, a gap in the final results of such PR.
But I think that everything can be different. IRN is a quite small company, engaged in information and analytical support in the real estate market. We don’t sell square meters, but information, our experience and professionalism and, really, we shouldn’t share that with anyone because there will be nothing left to sell... But we have always taken a different position and considered it normal to give away 10-20 per cent of sellable information simply seeing in it an absolutely normal social position. And that has brought unexpected results - without any additional expenses on PR and advertising. The popularity of IRN and our website www.irn.ru can compete with leading companies in the real estate market with million dollar budgets.
Incidentally, having worked in the real estate market for many years we have studied the needs of journalists well. But on the other hand, working with players of the market, we know what business information they have and how it can be disclosed in the best way, without disclosing any really important secrets of the company. Many players of the real estate market have the most interesting information, but they don’t realize and don’t understand how it can be used.
For example, the dynamics of prices on real sales. A lot of real estate companies are now trying to copy us and publish their own "indexes of the real estate market". But it is no good being second, or third, etc. Why not to do something more original and calculate the dynamics of prices of real transactions that are made by the company? For leading players it is hundreds, and even thousands of premises a month – a good enough volume, especially considering that nobody else in the market has this data, including us. I’m sure that the mass-media would give their right arm for such statistics. And by disclosing information about the dynamics of prices of real transactions in average form the company does not break the confidentiality of the price of each specific transaction.
Or another example. Everybody likes to show press releases about an increase in price for apartments in their own premises, expecting buyers to come and buy them while the prices have not increased. Why not make it more cultural? Take the real sale prices on a given new building, for example, for a year - depending on how long it has been on sale - and show the dynamics of the prices during the process of construction of the premises, the ratio of growth of the cost of housing in the given housing complex with the growth of the general value index of housing in Moscow, etc. In this context it will be pertinent to give information on new increases in prices, and firstly, such data is published by the mass-media with much greater interest, and secondly, for potential buyers a new increase in prices will appear more reasonable and clear. Quite often constructers and realtors sell several premises at once, so give comparison figures for them.
Another interesting thing is sales volumes. Give the figures on the volume of transactions that are made through your company. Let it be in relative units, without precise quantities. I am sure that such information would also be interesting to journalists. In other words, by using flexibility and creativity, it is possible to use efforts and funds allocated for PR activity much more effectively, and most importantly make it more effective. Therefore I am sure that soon the word "PR" in the real estate market will cease to be perceived as something shameful or even immoral, and at last will become high-grade socially significant activity and be interesting to not only market players, but above all to their clients.