Bisnow Special Report: How Some Of The Nation's Top Leasing Agents Find Buyers (And Tenants)
From broker parties to virtual tours, owners and leasing agents keep a delicate balance between creative and cutting edge when looking to market the nation’s office buildings.
Sure, Mark Georgas had business in mind when he paid $5k for a skybox at a Paul McCartney concert and invited 10 brokers and a dozen members of his team to the show in 2014. Mark, a VP for JLL Agency Leasing in Chicago (here with wife Jamie), wanted to fill the client’s office space.
But the music came first.
“We probably talked less business at the event," he tells us. "You got to know more about the person, their life and their interests. The follow-ups the next day and the appreciation were really good. Then you start talking business."
Robert Bach, director of research for Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in Chicago, says the US office market was home to more than 10.6B SF of rentable space in 2015.
From gift cards and YETI coolers to trips to Paris and lavish cocktail parties, building owners and their leasing and marketing teams will pull out all the stops to get tenant rep brokers and their clients to tour available office space.
Of course, a former Beatle may not be everyone’s cup of tea. (Or is that jam?) But Mark and JLL are clearly on to something. In 2015, the firm completed about 5,173 leasing transactions, representing about 67M SF of commercial real estate space nationwide.
Still, when it comes to marketing commercial real estate, Mark says there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. “Every building is its own product and requires something different,” he says.
Looking to showcase a $6M renovation on Chicago’s 500 West Monroe St (pictured), Mark’s team plans to host a lunch, tour and a three-hour TV viewing of the 2016 Master’s Golf Tournament April 7.
As a parting shot, attendees (they are expecting about 75) get a golf pullover embroidered with the building logo. “The goal is to get the most exposure for the building,” Mark says.
A bobblehead bonanza
In 30 years of leasing office space, Connie Engel, a partner with Childress Klein in Atlanta, has taken a client to a Barbra Streisand concert and hired an artist to design a stone edifice engraved with the client’s name. Streisand and the shoe-box-sized monument couldn’t close the deal.
But the 500 customized “Little Connie” bobbleheads (Cost: about $3,000) Connie, a landlord rep who oversees about 2M SF of space at Atlanta’s Galleria Office Park, mailed to 300 local brokers in 2004 continue to generate buzz.
Dressed in a black suit, waving and smiling, Little Connie (who resembles the real Connie) started appearing on corner office bookshelves in Atlanta before traveling the globe with James Partamian, a Norfolk, VA-based US Navy engineer and former US Army officer, who was a friend of one of Connie’s former employees.
James had not met the real Connie when he deployed to Afghanistan in 2007. Still, he tossed the bobblehead into his military pack and started sharing her travels on Facebook.
Little Connie didn’t make it home. A casualty of war? No. “She got lost in the mail,” Connie says. But James met the real Connie when his wife, who connected with the landlord rep on Facebook, invited her to James’ birthday party.
“I was dressed in the same outfit as the bobblehead,” Connie recalls. “He said, ‘Oh, my, gosh, you’re the bobblehead!’” Connie replaced his missing travel buddy.
The two are still in touch. But Connie says, “That bobblehead ended up being by far the best marketing gimmick I’ve ever done.”
Christopher Rogala, president of Office Space Chicago, spends $20k a year marketing the 1.5M SF of office space he oversees. In addition to hosting broker events, Christopher uses CoStar (Costs: from about $435 to $925 a month); LoopNet (Costs: free to $264.95 a month for full access); and Buildout (Cost: $150 per month per person with a minimum of two users), to automate his client space promotions.
Christopher, who has been in the business for 25 years, says one of his most successful events was a broker party for about 70. In addition to an open bar, food and live music, he gave away a $1,000 cash prize, $50 to the first 25 attendees and took the office building from zero to 100% leased in 18 months.
Catering To Couples
Kay Davis, executive managing director for Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in Atlanta, says broker events allow tenant reps to experience the space and can streamline how many properties she shows clients.
Christopher says the biggest broker event party prize he’s seen was new Tesla Model S (Cost: $75k to $120k) giveaway at a relaunch party at the famed Chicago Board of Trade Building in May 2014.
“I have never seen so many top brokers in once place at the same time,” Christopher says. Broker parties and functions can help industry professionals become knowledgeable about available products.
However, Kay cautions, “I’m not going to take my client to one building versus another because one guy is giving an incentive and the other is not. I wouldn’t be upholding my fiduciary responsibility to my client if I did that.”
A new car may seem over the top, but with a relatively small group of people making decisions about where a company leases office space, industry professionals say there is justification for owners to invest in the entertainment side of business development and secure valuable one-on-one time with brokers and tenant reps working the other end of the nation’s office leasing deals.
First Impressions
Katherine Richey, a VP of Atlanta’s Stream Realty Partners, who specializes in project leasing and tenant representation and oversees about 2.5M SF in office space, says Stream wants to make strong connections with their clients.
“Whether we’re building a relationship with a broker or building a relationship with the tenant, we want to make sure that we make a good first impression,” she says. “We are looking to evoke emotion in people, and we’ve found that the best way to do that is to make the experience really personal.”
When Hyundai Motor Company toured a client building in 2015, Stream rented every available Hyundai in Metro Atlanta and parked them in front of the building.
“They loved it. They showed up to the tour and thought it was the funniest and the cleverest thing. They were taking photos with the cars. We could hardly get their attention to come inside for the tour,” she says.
Did it work? Yes. They leased 50k SF of office. “That was a big deal for us,” Katherine recalls.
With a well-known retail brand looking to add a regional office, Stream had their entire team—from the managers to the interns—working out in the gym-outfitted in the retailer’s fashion wear during the tour.
“It seems silly. But attendees will leave and say, ‘Hey, do you remember that building where they had all their people dressed in our sports apparel?’ So it makes us memorable,” she says.
Reposition Versus Relaunch
With fewer cranes in the air, Kay says owners and brokers are repositioning older buildings—like redoing lobbies and common areas, adding amenities, making spaces lighter and brighter, updating technology, revamping restaurants and creating more common spaces for workers—and looking to shift perceptions about repositioned space.
“Landlords will send links to time-lapse videos or have us come in and preview the finish boards from architects and give them feedback,” she says.
When introducing a new property, Katherine says the marketing is more of a teaser with time-lapsed videos and sneak peeks to drive interest and keep people coming back to see the space evolve.
Of course, it can be harder to pitch an owner on a big budget campaign in a soft market, when budget dollars wane. Here, Katherine says, building owners and leasing teams rely more on relationships and creativity.
With a property sitting 40 minutes outside Metro Atlanta, Stream gave $100 Uber gift cards to brokers to encourage them to take the tour in fall 2015.
Katherine says three of the 10 industry agents, who took the Uber-campaign tour, helped lease the space. No matter how savvy the pitch, in the sky-high world of marketing office buildings, JLL’s Mark says success often comes down to one thing: relationships.
“I know developers with successful Facebook pages,” he says. “But there’s no replacement for knowing what’s going on in the market and having good relationships with the parties in the real estate communities.”
Michelle Hofmann can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @realestatewritr
