Smart House was recently nominated at OHBA Awards of Distinction for Best Use of Social Media, Best Website, Best High or Mid-Rise Ad Campaign (4+Storeys) and Best High or Mid-Rise Project Sales Brochure. The awards will be held on Monday, Sept. 22 at the Ottawa Convention Centre. Good luck to those nominated and stay tuned to see what happens!
Offering micro-condos as small as 300 sq. ft., Smart House is for city lovers who seek affordability but still want to live large. 52 Pick-up Inc. opted for a sleek and simple design in a 9 by 9 brochure.
The team combined beautiful photography of the downtown core with illustrations of “Small and Mighty” icons. These icons provide pivotal imagery for the campaign because they celebrate small heroes that have made a difference, like smartphones and the Mini Cooper — and of course, Smart House. We turned these icons into a unique and exclusive-looking monogrammed print, that adds to the exclusivity of the downtown neighbourhood.
The brochure is punctuated with bold black pages highlighted with powerful messages — this simplicity is in line with Smart House’s “less is more” philosophy. One of our favourite elements is the map, which beautifully illustrates how central the development is to Toronto’s most exciting restaurants, theatres and shops.
One of the challenges was to ensure the website communicated the unique vision and messaging in a visually appealing and user-friendly way. One of our favourite elements is the interactive infographic we created to showcase how multi-functional the kitchen is, under “Smart Features.” The user can click on each appliance for more details. The website received 30,000 pageviews in the first month.
To amp up exposure the team developed a blog to share unique content and insights about design and the surrounding community. Posts were uploaded three times per week through four different columns, and ranged from features of interesting architecture and functional floorplans to neighbourhood profiles. Columns included Media (showcasing press exposure), Conversations (Q&As with the team behind Smart House), Trending (news and events), and SmartTO (neighbourhood profiles). Some of the articles included: “Five Minutes with Malibu’s Terry Lustig,” “Five things we consider small and mighty this month” and “8 Ways to Maximize Space Curated by II BY IV Design.” We used the Tumblr platform because it is fantastic for sharing and reblogging design and architecture photos. These efforts were complimented with a full range of social media activity, including buzz on Twitter and Facebook from the team: Urban Capital, Malibu Investments, Zero Fractal, Faulhaber Communications and 52 Pick-up Inc.
Everyone felt a social media campaign would appeal to the project’s youthful demographic and tech-savvy urban professionals. We measured social analytics once per week with a campaign dashboard and opened to a strong weekend of 526 visits. The overall campaign saw 2004 pageviews between September 1 and November 31.
Follow us! @52pickupinc, @UrbanCapital, @MalibuToronto.
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