The New York Times calls attention to some racy techniques to sell condos:
The Developers Group, a sales and marketing firm, first departed from the tried and tame in January with an advertisement for the Hudson Condominiums near the Time Warner Center, which showed an image of the 20-story building accompanied by the statement: “You Know Where You Can Stick Your Bonus.”
The firm’s partners, who are all younger than 35, were bored by cookie-cutter real estate advertisements featuring building facades and logos.
“A lot of the ads were looking identical,” said Highlyann Krasnow, the chief operating officer and executive vice president of the Developers Group. “To be a young company, it was getting to be painful for us,” she said. “They all seemed the same. They just weren’t fun.”
The “stick it” advertisement, as Ms. Krasnow calls it, created buzz for the condominium and got the firm noticed by developers who had never heard of it. “It became a conversation piece,” she said.
Interestingly, the creator of the “When Harry Met Sally”-inspired fake orgasm spot for Clairol Herbal Essences isn’t very impressed by the new sales methods.
Linda Kaplan Thaler, chief executive and chief creative officer of the Kaplan Thaler Group, an advertising agency, said marketing a property with well-endowed women was a throwback to the days when men were the only income earners.
“It’s very limiting,” she said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily the best way to sell anything anymore.”
“I think the whole idea of using sex to sell apartments is passé,” she said. “In the 1980’s and 90’s, sex was very disruptive and naughty and taboo so we wanted to take a peek.”
Now, it is ubiquitous. “It’s not the new taboo anymore,” Ms. Thaler said.
