Marketing and communicating sustainability

The industry challenge

The quote above illustrates the challenge in creating a marketplace for new homes that are being brought to market under the Code for Sustainable Homes. The provision of a low energy light fitting was seen as expensive and wasteful by the purchasers. This is clearly a difficult area for our whole industry to get right, and lighting is just one of the many challenges.

Crest Nicholson believes that cross-industry communication is fundamental if we are to overcome the barriers of consumer engagement in low carbon homes. The industry needs to rapidly adopt a common marketing strategy that will stimulate consumer demand and present a proposition that is affordable, attractive and desirable.

Crest Nicholson has been actively working with the Zero Carbon Hub, as part of their Consumer Engagement Workstream, to help inform the wider marketing debate and stimulate consumer demand for low carbon homes. The results of this work can be seen at: http://www.zerocarbonhub.org/consumer.aspx

Find out more about how we work with our stakeholders.

Understanding the importance of sustainability to our customers

We want to understand how environmental issues factor in our customers decision to purchase a new home and we have incorporated additional questions as part of our standard customer survey.

Developing our own communications

In August 2009 we held a focus group with our Sales Advisors of the Year, to better understand our customers' perception of "sustainable homes" and how to improve our marketing communications.

In general, customers perceive sustainable homes to be those with environmental "features", overlooking the less tangible social and economic aspects such as safety, community cohesion, affordability etc.

The focus group findings helped to inform a Group-wide marketing and communications strategy to promote the benefits of sustainable living at all our developments. While we are proud of our exemplar schemes, they should not be perceived as a niche offering. All of the homes that we build have sustainable features; from innovative new energy solutions to open spaces and we are working towards incorporating the sustainability message as standard across all of our marketing and communications. This will raise awareness with our customers of our focus on sustainability and will contribute to the wider industry marketing objective of stimulating demand and marketing low and zero carbon homes as mainstream.

We continue to communicate to our customers simple ways in which they can contribute towards reducing the impact of climate change. Content from our "Guide to Greener Living" has been replicated and updated on our website in a new section dedicated towards leading a more sustainable lifestyle.
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Our Home Owners Guide and Handover pack provide purchasers with an easy reference point for accurate, plot-specific information, detailing everything from the efficient operation of white goods through to the location of local cycle paths and transport connections. At One Brighton this is supplemented with a community extranet, www.onebrighton.net, which provides real time information on public transport as well as information on a range of issues including community events, energy efficiency and recycling rates.

We supplement this online and written documentation with a home demonstration for every purchaser. While the documentation can act as a tool for ongoing future reference, there can be no better introduction to our purchasers' new home than a demonstration from the Sales Advisors and the Site Manager responsible for building it. We will be carrying out additional training next year to help ensure that we provide the best possible demonstration experience for our purchasers.

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Find out about our Next steps.