This week: spokesmodels, starlets and vichyssoise.
Model Achievement
Atlanta-based Apartment Guide plans on Feb. 1 to launch a video spokesmodel offering to its clients as a way to drive traffic and revenue to property listings on the company's Web sites. Multifamily executives who sign up for the service get a video spokesmodel that will fade into a listing and provide a 20- to 30-second video presentation that welcomes residents to specific properties, provides information on current offerings and specials, provides unit overviews, and points out online tours, commercials, and printable brochures. Apartment Guide will provide clients a number of professional spokesmodels from which to choose, assist in scriptwriting, and then shoot the video of the chosen spokesmodel.
"These days, consumers want to be fed information-it's 'Give me the bullet points and give them to me fast,'" says Apartment Guide director of national business development Tamela Coval. "This high-end benefit accomplishes that and immediately differentiates the listing and makes it more of a sticky page for apartment seekers." High-tech features available through the service enable spokesmodels to fade in and out of the screen, play on demand, or stream to a private Web site. Cost for the service starts at $139 per month.
Easy Does It
The condo owners association at Hollywood, Calif.'s Sierra Towers wants to keep troubled teen idol Lindsay Lohan out of the building, according to the Jan. 4 edition of the New York Post's Page Six gossip column. The association is moving to block Lohan from a post-rehab return to her Tinsel Town digs. Images flooding the Internet of Lohan chugging from a New Year's Eve champagne bottle have the condo association crying foul on the actress's claims that she has gone sober. "She was a disgrace when she lived here-no respect for the other tenants," an unnamed resident tells Page Six. "I'd be leaving for work early in the morning, and I would see her staggering in drunk." And it's not Lohan's celebrity status that is angering residents: Cher, Matthew Perry, and Michael Caine all have units at the Sierra and manage to keep a low profile.
Top Chefs
Trying to pin down the hottest dinner reservation in town? If you are in cosmopolitan markets like New York, Dallas, and San Francisco, chances are you'll look no further than the closest luxury multifamily development. As movie theaters, 24-hour concierge service, pools, and fitness centers become par for the course, developers are recruiting celebrity chefs to open restaurants within their residential complexes.
In San Francisco, chefs Gary Danko, Michael Mina, and Charles Phan are among the recent spate of high-profile residents in A-class communities, as multifamily executives look to lure high-end tenants and establish marketing cachet. Millennium Partners managing director Richard Baumert credits Mina and his RN74 restaurant with creating the buzz that helped the developer sell $100 million worth of condos at Millennium Tower, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, The building is now the tallest residential high-rise west of the Mississippi River,
"What we found during our research for the project is that San Franciscans are obsessed with three things: food, wine, and fitness," Baumert tells the Chronicle. "Michael is a very recognizable name in San Francisco, and Rajat Parr, Michael's wine director, is one of the most celebrated sommeliers in the world. Our intention was to find the best names who would add distinction to the project." In addition to operating the restaurant, Parr and Mina will provide food and beverage service to a private Millennium dining room where residents can order off the RN74 menu and get their own cellars to store up to a case of wine.
Editor's note: Send your offbeat multifamily news leads to [email protected].
