What’s In A (Building’s) Name?

After moving back to the area after several years in New York, I began my apartment search with the wide-eyed enthusiasm one only gets after methodically stalking Craigslist listings and Pinterest design inspirations. Would I have a walk-in closet? Do I want a traditional or modern coffee table?  And most importantly, what would the name of my apartment building be?

My apartment building in New York was a largely unremarkable brick walk-up, a dime a dozen in Queens, so I was curious when I noticed that many residential properties in DC had a name.  This added a whole new level of contemplation to the apartment search, as each building started to emerge with its own personality, I began to envision how that personality complemented my needs and lifestyle.

Pro tip: The more you apartment-hunt, the easier it is to vet buildings based off of their name alone. You make assumptions about the neighborhood, the design, and the other tenants based off of the name, which is why naming properties and real estate branding at Delucchi Plus is no small task. How do you do it, you ask?

Vision Session

We start off with a vision session with all the stakeholders of the building, including the developers, marketing team, architects and interior designers, asking questions like: what is the overall aesthetic of the building? What are the amenities? How do you envision the lifestyle of the tenants? It’s important to understand the perspective of the stakeholders and how they are making their decisions, in order to find a name that truly encompasses their brand.

 The Research 

Once we understand how the stakeholders see the property, we hit the ground running with researching other buildings in the neighborhood. Perhaps all the building names in the neighborhood have the word ‘Crossing’ in them, or maybe they’re all named after people. Being able to identify shared similarities across the comps helps us pick a distinctive name that stands out against competitors. In this phase, we dig deep, using demographic, psychographic data and customer personas to ensure that we’re developing a brand identity that will resonate with the target demographic.

Thematic Bucketing

Once we have the combined forces of the client’s vision for the building and the local research, we develop thematic buckets, and brainstorm a handful of names that fit within those buckets. Is the property adjacent to an airport? We’ll include some names that fall under an aviation theme. Is the property located in a town established by a founding father? We’ll delve into a historical theme. Grouping all of the names thusly helps the client decide on a more macro-level what kind of direction they want to go in, and ultimately, what kind of identity the building has.

Thinking, Drafting, Writing + Voting

Once we’ve decided on the thematic buckets, we retreat to our creative places and dream, think, and write! We do a team brainstorm, throwing all our ideas on the wall. Then, we enlist the opinions of our entire team, quickly briefing everyone about the project and then asking them to vote for their favorite names. From there, we narrow the list down to 3-5 names per theme.

Local Search Audit

The last step before client review is our local search audit: One of our analysts does an audit of the local search engine results for each of our names so that we know exactly what we’re trying to compete with on a keyword level. At this point, we also delve into URL research, ensuring that we can deliver to the client a URL that’s relevant to the building name.

The Final Product

Then, we amass all our names, search results and URLs and present our  ideas to the client. Didn’t realize so much went into brand strategy and naming, did you?