SUCCESS STORIES: Westchase District

Challenge:
RCS has done economic development advertising for the Westchase District since 2003. When we began working with them, their average occupancy rate for high-rise, multi-tenant office buildings in the District was around 80 percent. The District wasn’t even listed by the HBJ as an area for office relocation. Commercial brokerage surveys showed that the area didn’t register on most CEO radar screens as a place to relocate – despite the fact that rents there were approximately 25% cheaper than the Galleria and Downtown.

Solution:
After analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of Westchase and competing areas, we decided to focus their communication budget exclusively on “the high costs of commuting.” The campaign ran for three years while the Katy Freeway, West Loop and 59 South were being reconstructed, and commuter frustration was especially high.

We targeted advertising at business owners on the far west side who drove past Westchase on their way to work in the Downtown, Greenway Plaza and Galleria areas. We felt this tight focus was necessary to make the message register on such a small budget.

We designed an ad format that could dominate a page in the HBJ for the price of a quarter page. We used their distinctive W logo as the only art in the ads to increase brand awareness. We changed out headlines in the ads every week so the campaign would look bigger than it actually was and keep people interested. We also developed two low-budget (under $4K commercials) that aired on Katy and Sugar Land cable TV systems. Finally, we revised their Web site to make it easier for brokers to find information about the area. We also added a javascript “commute calculator” to the Web site to show how quickly the costs of lost time and gasoline could add up.

Results:
The launch of the HBJ and TV campaigns quintupled hits on the District’s Web sites. Within three years, the vacant office space had all but disappeared. The high-rise, multi-tenant buildings were fully occupied. Average rents had increased to be on a par with the highest in the City. And Westchase was ranked as the #1 area in Houston for corporate relocation.