New home web sites are nothing unusual any more, but one Washington, D.C. area builder is taking the concept a step further. NV Homes recently decided to bring its homes directly to potential homebuyers. It placed a CD filled with photos, floor plans and a link to the company's web site inside copies of The Washington Post newspaper.

The placement of the CD was also a bit unorthodox. Instead of distributing it in the Post's Saturday real estate sections, the disk was placed in the Sunday magazine -- a first for the newspaper. Darlene Williams, NV Homes Director of Marketing, says that when the housing market begins to soften, it's time to think outside the box and place ads in the areas of the newspaper people might be more likely to read. She says it's a way to grab attention and tell people "hey, maybe you should take a second look."

It's uncertain whether this marks the beginning of a trend in the industry. The National Association of Home Builders posted a question on its online forum asking for the names of other builders who might have tried such an approach. No one stepped forward.

Richard Elkman, of Group Two Advertising in Philadelphia, commends NV Homes for what he calls a "very innovative" approach. However, the real estate marketing company, which is known as an innovator itself, has no plans to duplicate the effort with its clients.

Elkman says this type of campaign is a "very, very expensive way to go" that's full of redundancy, since builders are already paying for newspaper ads to get the word out about their web sites. He says that with the CD, "you're reaching out to totally unqualified people, a tremendous amount of waste. To me, I would rather promote my web site."

However, Elkman and others will be watching to see what happens. He says, "maybe they'll get a return on their investment. NV's not a dumb company. It will be interesting to see how effective it is."

Though NV Homes operates in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, Williams says the CD distribution was limited to the national capital area. NV's management team decided to focus the campaign because "this is such a high-tech corridor and a lot of our buyers are very high-tech oriented." Reaching out through the Internet seemed like a good match. Williams says the CD itself has been used in NV's sales offices in other cities, but there are currently no plans to place it in other publications.

According to Williams, the CD is getting rave reviews from those who have viewed it in the sales offices. She says customers find it "very informative" and they "like the format," adding that realtors say the disk means, "less paper, it's smaller, it's easy to handle, with the computer age that we're in, it seems to be the direction of things in the future."

Still, Williams says it's too early to tell if the campaign will be repeated. She says NV's web site "had a tremendous blip" in the week following the September 30th newspaper campaign. However, Williams acknowledges that she's not sure this is a "true test" of the marketing idea because of "the timing with all the things have been going on in the world right now."

Despite the events of September 11, Williams says there were no thoughts of postponing the campaign. Since it began, Williams has been "pleasantly pleased, but I haven't been surprised" by the results.

Carol Ochs is a Washington-based reporter who covers new home trends.

Published: November 6, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.