The Explore. Play. Grow. HudsonHeartbeat.com Lifestyle Branding Ad for Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty

It was decided that a major portion of the  marketing campaign for  HudsonHeartbeat.com branding would need to be focused on the Hudson Valley lifestyle. This ad was designed with the Luxury market in Westchester County in mind. After some exhaustive image research and a few other design comps we decided that we should down play screen grabs of the actual site. Instead Rand Realty’s owners wanted to present it as a lifestyle ad. This style actually ties in more with the typical branding ads produced by Realogy‘s Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate franchise branding.

Initially the design used an image of a laptop. However, the new iPad was so much fun that we though it would be more hip to use an iPad instead of a laptop and better reach our luxury audience. The main background photo of the Adirondack chairs, dock, and water is from iStockPhoto. Eric Ortner took a studio photo of an iPad matching it to the perspective of the iStockPhoto shot. He then superimposed a screen grab of the HudsonHeartbeat.com site into the iPad image in Adobe Photoshop. Mr. Ortner then used Photoshop to place the iPad image into the Adirondack Chair Image. Upon purchase of the Hi-Res Adirondack chair it became clear that additional retouching of the iStock Photo image was required. In addition to being distressed, the hi-res photos revealed that the chairs had a great deal of dirt and mildew on them. So Eric Ortner needed to “repaint” the chairs in Photoshop. Some careful selection, masking, feathering and layering eliminated the filth. The page layout’s, photo, logos and text were then all put together in Adobe InDesign.

This branding ad is being used extensively in local publications throughout New York’s Westchester the Hudson Valley. It has also been turned into a postcard and flyer.

Display ad promoting Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty's Text message yard signs

In an effort to better serve interested buyers in  a challenging real estate market, Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty adopted a new text message system. The company added a rider to its yard signs, so that perspective buyers could find out information about the property on the spot.

The display ad in this sample was created to further Better Homes and Gardens Rand Realty’s brand awareness and promote the new text message riders. The design utilizes two primary elements the stock photo of the house and the photo of the yard sign and text rider.

An interesting point regarding this display ad is that the only use of the company’s logo is on the sign itself. Believe it or not, but this is a major break from the company’s standard design. Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s branding standards mandates that the logo always be included in the top right corner of the ad. This design doesn’t stray too far from that design standard, although it is a stretch having the “For Sale” rider above the main sign.

I particularly like this design because Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate’s design system revolves around grass. Grass is a prominent feature in this particular display ad so, I think it is helpful in reinforcing branding.

It was created using Adobe Photoshop and InDesign.