By Chris Cooper

“Do you think this is a crazy idea?”

A few years ago, that was the question Marianne Harris of Dranoff Properties asked Rick Miller, owner and creative director of Northlight Advertising in Chester Springs. As Dranoff’s Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Harris needed to drum up interest in One Riverside – a planned, 22-story, luxury condominium tower along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia.

But because the future site was still being used as a parking lot, and the construction of a sales center for the project was still months away, Harris had considered a unique approach to a temporary sales office: renting an old-fashioned Fairmount Park Trolley and converting it to serve as a mobile sales and information center.

Her first step was to call Northlight Advertising, an agency known for the kind of unique and effective campaigns that could help make her vision a reality.

“The challenge was to market something that would eventually be beautiful, but for the first few years of the marketing effort all we had was an architect’s rendering,” said Miller. “Once again, we were selling the invisible.”

The Northlight team began the campaign with the development of the One Riverside website and then began the design for the trolley. Miller paid a visit to the Philadelphia Trolley Works and its garage of old, restored trollies. He designed the “wrapping” of the trolley’s exterior and the interior displays that could be installed without damaging the trolley’s old wooden seats, brass poles, and railings.

The design would welcome and encourage people to walk through, from end to end, and view the displays, floorplans, elevation drawings, and other sales information for the One Riverside project.

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“We took out a few of the seats, and installed a countertop where we could place brochures and handouts,” said Miller. He also designed a system to mount the display graphics on the brass poles, using conduit pipe brackets.

The trolley’s first appearance was at a realtors’ event at a restaurant on South Broad Street, where One Riverside was announced. After dinner, the unsuspecting attendees were invited to step outside into the “sales office,” just as the trolley pulled up to the curb.

According to Harris, the trolley was an instant hit.

“It was very eye-catching and created a lot of buzz in the real estate community,” she said. “It was cleverly done, and Rick did a great job with all the displays and marketing materials. It’s one thing to have a plan, but it’s another thing to implement that plan and execute it properly, and he did that.”

Harris was also pleased that the retrofitted trolley was delivered on time in early September, a critical month in the real estate industry.

“We wanted to be able to capitalize on the good weather to generate interest and sales and not wait until our formal sales office was going to be ready,” she said.

The trolley was open seven days a week and driven to various locations throughout the city, like Rittenhouse Square, where it was parked on the street for people to walk through and learn about One Riverside.

The “Traveling Trolley Sales Center” was not the end of Northlight’s contribution to the marketing of the new condominiums. Northlight also produced an elegant, 20-page sales brochure, One Riverside’s website, a print ad campaign, e-blasts, and the invitations to various events – from the groundbreaking to the ribbon-cutting, held last month to celebrate the official grand opening.

The Dranoff team had reason to celebrate. At the time of the ribbon-cutting, One Riverside was 80 percent sold. Harris admits that much of the interest in the upscale residences was generated by the unique trolley and sophisticated advertising campaign.

“When you’re selling million-dollar-plus homes, the marketing has to be done really well, and Northlight always does a beautiful job,” she said. “They know how to match the demographics of the people I’m selling to with the message. And they are very good about getting the right message across to those high-end buyers.”

“We were up against some heavy hitters in the advertising business, but we do things a lot of agencies don’t do,” said Miller. “Clients come to us because they want something unique.

“Northlight’s expertise includes the full gamut of design and advertising services, including branding, website design and development, social media campaigns, multi-media marketing, videos, exhibits, and displays.”

Click here for more information on Northlight Advertising.

Click here to learn more about One Riverside.

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