KL Gateway – University monorail station. Cool.

A property developer’s marketing knows no bounds. Remember my earlier articles about how the developers are getting ever more imaginative? Read here: Perhaps marketing is getting more sophisticated  This was preceded earlier by all the awesome TV advertisements during the Chinese New Year of 2015. Read here: Emerging Trend or Desperation?  Well, the latest one involved taking over the whole monorail station. Yes, branding at least in Malaysia has reached a new level. Three monorail stations were awarded to three companies who would now have the chance to brand the station to their wishes. They paid an undisclosed amount for the right to rebrand the stations.
The three rebranded stations would now be AirAsia – Bukit Bintang, Bank Rakyat – Bangsar and KL Gateway – Universiti. Suez Capital, the developer of KL Gateway which is an integrated development comprising of corporate office towers, residences and a retail mall will be rebranding the monorail station which is just opposite it. Prasarana introduced the Station Naming Rights concept last year. Of course this is not something new and has been done in other parts of the world including New York Metro, Metro Madrid (Spain) and even Dubai Metro (United Arab Emirates) Beginning August 2015, the new names would come into effect.
Would this branding help in selling more properties for Suez Capital? I certainly believe so even if no one would ever know how many actual units. The truth is, when the developers decided to advertise on billboards, HOW MANY actual units are they targeting to sell? What about their TV advertisement, after doing it during Chinese New Year period, how many units are expected to be sold? Last but not least and also I think the worst already, how many units do they think they can sell with a black and white advertisement in newspaper? Where the actual numbers in circulation is going down every year? I think the answer is very simple. Marketing is all about reaching out to the mass market successfully. Happy marketing.
written on 17 July 2015
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