Castle Residence

One of China’s largest real estate developers and investors; Shanghai United, has teamed up with AccorHotels to be the latest company to construct and manage a new hotel and apartment complex-the Castle Residence, valued close to $400 million, in the Sydney CBD with views of Hyde Park and the Harbour.

Industry

Real Estate

Positioning

The new CBD landmark; Iconic luxury residential and business building.

Stage

Established Chinese capital new to the Australian market

Objective

In-depth market research to assist the exploitation of the Australian market
● Building brand image and Increasing the project’s awareness to the Australian public
● Building public relations with Australian local and Chinese media
● Promoting the launch of the Castle Residences project, and conducting the marketing campaigns efficiently from the pre-launch stage to post-launch stage

Challenge

As a Chinese developer, Shanghai United were facing challenges brought on by a lack of brand awareness in the Australian real-estate market, as it is their first property project released in Australia. Since they are Chinese developers, there are many uncertainties when entering a foreign market.
The primary challenge includes language and cultural limitations. If Castle are not advised by professionals, it will be hard for them to implement effective marketing strategies to adapt to local markets even if they have good content available. They also do not have extended knowledge of the local Australian property market, so as to enact corresponding strategies to compete with its competitors.

Solution

We effectively conducted market insight on the Australian real estate industry and created a marketing strategy for our client. We provided traditional and digital media buying in both the Chinese and Australian media with our data-based tactics. Through mass media methods ConnectX were able to support their public relations and marketing coordination by achieving the integration between brand and marketing throughout the marketing campaign.

Shanghai United valued the power of market research as much as us and provided us with the opportunity to gather market intelligence and information to build the concept of HOPSCA. Our market research team conducted a 2-week qualitative and quantitative analysis, comprised mainly of HOPSCA information collection, including six sections: Hotel, Office, Park, Shopping mall, Convention, and Apartment. Our market research results provided strong support to the brand strategy and content marketing and helped Castle Residences differentiate itself from its competitors.

Results

Shanghai United has since experienced impressive sales success from their property launch date, with 50% of apartments sold, including an $18 million penthouse ($62,000 per square metre).The sale broke the record for a similar penthouse sale in the Hyde Park area previously held by The Residence, Hyde Park.

More than 100 buyers have registered to buy the first 80 luxury apartments at Castle Residences project, including 21 private Melbourne buyers who flew up to Sydney on Monday to personally register for the apartments after seeing the advertisement featured in the Chinese newspaper.

Working with Shanghai United, ConnectX successfully proved itself as a valuable Chinese media agency in Australia. ConnectX is not simply the bridge between its clients and media platform, but also between the Chinese and Australian market. More importantly, ConnectX endeavours to bridge the cultural gaps and break the language barriers in every single task of the marketing campaign.