Sentul West project promises peaceful, green surrounding
Business Times Malaysia, Monday, August 18 2003
By KANG SIEW LI
IF YOU have been wondering where the birds in the city have gone to, they’ve all gone to Sentul West.
At least that’s what Leo Burnett Advertising Sdn Bhd wanted us to think when empty birdcages and traditional cuckoo clocks (without the cuckoo birds) were positioned throughout Kuala Lumpur’s traffic hot spots including Bintang Walk, Bangsar and Desa Sri Hartamas.
“Our purpose was to inform the public that amid the chaos of Kuala Lumpur, there is also peace and quiet just five minutes away from the Central Business District,” Leo Burnett Advertising senior copywriter Christie Herman told Business Times.
“We tried to express this by using the empty birdcages and cuckoo clocks. For instance, at certain intervals, instead of finding the usual little birds popping out of the clock, passers-by would find printed notes that read, ‘Gone to Sentul West’.
“This is to indicate that even the birds have gone there,” said Herman.
The gimmicks were part of a recent advertising campaign aimed at attracting the attention of potential homebuyers to YTL Land & Development Bhd’s new development in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur.
Entitled “Your Park. Your Home”, this campaign emphasised Sentul West’s 14ha green space. “Sentul West represents the more luxurious end of the Sentul development and contains nine parcels of condominium developments that ring a park. As such, we were briefed by our client (YTL Land) to focus on educating the public about the park and what it has to offer,” said Leo Burnett Advertising consultant Sharon Foong. She said that an advertising campaign that initially focused entirely on Sentul West was deemed more effective by YTL Land and Leo Burnett Advertising, instead of simply rolling out the various condominium products available there. “People need to be educated about many things. For instance, they need to know that the park provides a variety of amenities such as a forest walk, a bird sanctuary, a campground, boathouses, a hot air balloon centre, a petting farm and a maze. “This is a seven- to eight-year project and we needed an effective campaign so that when homebuyers buy either the Maple or the Oak condominium units, they will understand what they are buying into,” explained Foong. “We are talking about a park that is equivalent to London’s Hyde Park and New York’s Central Park and not just children’s playground.” Herman added that YTL Land assisted on describing what park-living in London and New York entailed before the agency embarked on the campaign. “The developer had to educated us first about the lifestyle (of Hyde Park and Central Park) because we had never experienced it ourselves.” While the purpose of the campaign was to educate people about the park, Foong also said that the agency had to inform them that it was a private park. “We didn’t want to create that misconception about the park and later disappoint people and tell them, ‘Sorry, access is only for residents’,” she added. Since April this year, a series of print ads have been appearing in the New Straits Times, the Star and the Edge, showing the difference between the natural and the man-made. The creators of the advertisement, Herman and Leo Burnett Advertising art director Brian Capel, hoped to create an impression that people who live in Sentul West will actually live in the world of nature and that they will have a 14ha park as their backyard. “It’s not so much about buying a home, but buying into a lifestyle which is a marriage between a park and a home. That’s why we came up with the whole concept of “Your Park. Your Home”. The campaign was supported by 40-second television spots on TV2, TV3 and Astro. “The commercials showed people reading books by the lake on a Sunday, children with balloons and lots of greenery ... just to give viewers a feeling of relaxation and recreation,” said Herman. Foong added that another key objective of the advertising campaign was to get people to register with the developer. “There is a coupon attached to all our print ads.” The ads also directed readers to the YTL Land website, www.ytlcommunity.com, which had additional information about the development. Foong said this has proved to be effective. Since April this year, some 1,500 people had registered with the developer through e-mail, fax, telephone or the website.
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