Property freebies. Gimmick
or marketing gold?

It was the most expensive home sale in the city – and one of the most hotly anticipated.

This wasn’t your usual Million Dollar Listing extravagance. This was a fully furnished, fully art-curated, fully champagne-stocked, Ferrari-festooned force of nature. And in case you’re wondering, the Ferrari (599 GTO) shared the driveway with a Rolls Royce Wraith.

Absolutely…not a gimmick. Here’s why: Alibhai was foamingly passionate about this project. The house – and everything in it – represented six years’ worth of obsessive detailing, right down to the choice of bubbly. And people loved it.

Even if you think it’s perversely profligate, it’s hard to deny that there’s a growing hunger for readymade-no-gemstone-unturned luxury.

American psychologist and philosopher, Abraham H. Maslow, had it nailed. In the 1940s, he posited that each person has a hierarchy of needs – from basic sustenance to self-fulfilment. These needs have since been expanded upon and contemporised for a 21st Century consumer, which you can see in the Elements of Value above.

When most people look at the triangle, they assume you can’t achieve ‘Self-transcendence’ until you’ve satisfied all the emotional and functional needs below it. But this is an over-simplification. Or as Maslow would have said, “Baloney!” (We don’t know if he’d say that, but he was from Brooklyn, so we’re quietly confident).

There isn’t one set pathway to fulfilment. Take, for instance, the daredevils who don wingsuits, jump off cliffs and spiral through the air like broken kites.

Random incentives can be seen as a sign of desperation – a chance for prospective buyers to negotiate hard on price. Whereas specialist incentives, like free experience days at Silverstone and Le Mans, may only appeal to a small demographic and have a negligible impact on sales. That said, such a carrot could pique the media’s attention and secure a lot of free publicity. It’s a tricky balance. But when a developer gets it right, they appeal to their audience, fill column inches, bolster their brand and sell-sell-sell.

That’s what Amazon Property did when they marketed six apartments in the recently restored Park Crescent in Marylebone. In a postcode packed with beautiful real estate, they created a meaningful point of difference, or a decisive differentiator, if you will.

The lower end of the market is awash with superficially impressive incentives that just don’t add up. Yes, there are exceptions. But as low-to-mid range properties outnumber mansions, so too do the dubious deals on offer.

Consumer champion Which? has looked at lots of so-called freebies in this bracket and found most of them wanting. One development in East London is tempting buyers with price cuts up to £40K and a free annual travel card worth £1,168. But their three-bed apartments are around £150K more expensive than equivalent properties in the area. So even if you secure the maximum discount and get handed 100 free annual travel cards, you’ll only just break even.

To illustrate this point, we want to look outside of property for a moment and turn our attention to Amazon (the e-commerce conglomerate, not the art-loving real estate developer).

This is a company that is constantly adding value to its core offering. Every time it launches a new product or service, it satisfies another need in the Elements of Value.

For instance, Amazon Prime ‘Reduces cost’ and ‘Saves time’.

Global creative consultancy, Lippincott, famously states, “Appeal to customers’ reason and they’re yours for a day. Appeal to customers’ emotions and they’re yours for a lifetime.”

Discounts, cashbacks, free travel, free legal advice – these things appeal to our reason. They’re uninspired, unmemorable and sometimes they’re not even genuine. But meaningful incentives that enrich people’s experiences – these are rooted in emotion and have the power to cultivate lasting relationships.

Just look at smash-hit developments. Emotion is built into their marketing strategies.