Digital Marketing Campaign Deep-Dive | LIV Mirvac with Jade MacAuslan

James Lawrence: I am here this afternoon with Jade MacAuslan. Jade, welcome to the pod. 

Jade MacAuslan: Thank you, James.

James Lawrence: This is gonna be good. Jade is senior marketing manager at Mirvac Build to Rent, which essentially means she's responsible for Mirvac LIV. And this episode, it's kind of an interesting one, we had a listener to the pod back end of last year, request that we do a deep dive on basically a successful campaign that we've run basically from ideation, strategy, implementation and results. The LIV Mirvac campaign and Jade would be a really, really interesting one for listeners. It's probably the most acclaimed campaign that Rocket has ever run as an agency, which is cool. 

James Lawrence: Recently at the 2023 APAC Search Awards it won Best Use of Social Media in a Search Campaign. At the last two years, it's won Best Online Marketing Campaign in Real Estate at the SEMrush Awards. Best Use of data APAC Search Awards. I'm not going to list them all, but there's kind of 4 or 5 different digital awards that it's won. It was a finalist in the B&T Awards for Best Digital Campaign last year. It's been really successful. I think from a Rocket perspective, it's been really successful from a commercial perspective. For yourself, Jade, it's involved a bunch of different agency partners that you've brought in, balancing it with in-house kind of capability. And it's also another interesting one because basically we’ve run the whole gamut from 2019. It was an idea through to, we're in 2023, and we've got lots of successes we can talk about in the real world. First of all, just for the listeners that aren't familiar, what is build-to-rent and what is LIV?

Jade MacAuslan: Traditionally what happens is a build to sell market. And that's when the developer builds an apartment building and sells it off individually to individual buyers. And those buyers might live in it as an owner, occupier or invest and rent that out. Build to rent is where the developer constructs and builds a building, but keeps it and rents it out. So everybody in that building is a renter, and they plan to hold onto that asset as the operator for 30 years. And that's simply what that is. LIV is the brand that Mirvac launched in 2020. It's sort of similar to the, say, a Qantas and Jetstar kind of brand relationship. LIV is not budget. LIV is a more young, youthful brand that's designed to appeal to a whole different new audience. And Mirvac is the stamp of safety, if you like, because you don't want to be entering into a whole new category of housing with some shoddy builder you've never heard of. So that's sort of the relationship between LIV and Mirvac. 

James Lawrence: I think it's a huge category overseas. Right. Like in America, it's ginormous. 

Jade MacAuslan: Yep. Second biggest asset class in America. It's been 30 plus years over there. It's been ten years or so longer in the UK. Those countries have had similar cultural narratives around housing and home ownership, but they've just had a lot longer to get to the place where we've got to now with home ownership.

James Lawrence: So let's jump into 2020 or 2019. You were brought in by Mirvac to kind of spearhead the launch of LIV. What were you engaged to do? What was the brief? What did success look like?

Jade MacAuslan: With the launching that Mirvac was, the first to decide to do this, and everybody in the industry of property in Australia said it will never work. CEO Sue Hurwitz would always talk about this story, about it would never work. So what? What she was like, no, this is part of the solution. We've got a massive problem going on in housing. People can't afford their homes. We need to do this. So they disrupted themselves because they're really attacking a part of their business, their traditional business base of build and sell. So they brought me in, in 2019 and said, right, we're just going to launch this. Had a look at everything they'd done to date. The brand already had been developed and there were some light web pages and stuff, but they really talked a lot about the mission around revolutionising rent. But when you married that mission up against everything that was sort of developed so far, it fell into that property convention. 

Jade MacAuslan: So what I did was I came in and said, right, I can launch this brand and we can talk to the same cues and features that we all know, like architecturally designed building and convenient locations. Or we can stop for a second and go; if we truly want to revolutionise, we can't use familiar language. We can't use the stuff everybody knows. And we also can't just do that traditional role of selling product. Because consumers don't care about products. Consumers now have moved on and they resonate with the brands with purpose, with relevance to their life. No one cares about an architectural design building. They care about security. They care about having community, and they care about, you know, having somewhere to call home. We needed to really say, let's take a moment, stop, and let's understand the culture of what we're actually entering here broadly in Australia, not just sell a property. So we did a six week cultural analysis with Kantar Consulting, one of the biggest global insights businesses, to really understand what is the value proposition, what is our emotional benefit that we're going to sell, and what is our purpose here. Because we need to be really clear. So we did that and it was a very quick analysis just to get us up and running to talk to a macro renter's audience. So that was 2019, leading into a launch for July 2020 of our first property in Sydney. 

James Lawrence: If we could kind of go into the phases of the campaign. I think you have done a really good job of taking that step back before you kind of look forward. And I think that is something which most listeners to the pod kind of struggle with that or grapple with it where you're either in an environment where it's like, no, we need rubber to hit the road. We need to have campaigns in marketing. We need tactics firing. It can be very difficult to say no. Before we move forward, we're going to get a much better long term outcome if we take that step back. So you've managed to get buy in to do that piece of work with Kantar. And I'm trying too hard not to kind of say what happens next, because I remember being in some of those early sessions. So we've got a stronger idea now of sentiment and so what?

Jade MacAuslan: The world we're trying to enter into and what we ended up realising is that if we we could just go to market with this idea of better renting because let's face it, that's an easy win. The renting experience at best is, I would say inconsistent. At worst is pretty shitty. So it's an easy win to start attacking that. You could easily attack landlords because there are so many or real estate agents. It's so easy to do because renters aren't treated with experience. At the core of that transaction is just transactional, right. So the players were like, what are we in the business of? We're in the business of life. We're not in the business of renting. What are people really wanting from us is really what built to rent actually as a category is doing. It's creating a platform for people to live the lives that are right for them, not right for the other person. 

Jade MacAuslan: And then it's sort of, what experience proof points do we need to build on that? So we build our whole launch campaign around this idea of we've got a value proposition, a way to live built around you, and then we've got experience proof points. So that was the brand and education around the category was that way to live, built around you. And then the living experience was all around simplicity around security, no bonds, maintenance on site, making life easier. Connection was all about promoting the benefits of community. And it's pretty funny when you have a whole building of everybody being renters. It naturally creates a bit more democracy that you don't have in a normal traditional building of the hierarchy of an owner versus a renter. So you get people more willing to sort of speak to each other. And then the last one was ability. And that's like personalising your home to be yours. So we went to market with this very high level macro view. We have a brand and a category we need to launch and educate people on. And then we've got this property out at Sydney Olympic Park as our first property, where the experience is unlike anything you've seen in renting before. So that really was the two phases of like awareness lead gen conversion. 

James Lawrence: And the actual property itself at Sydney Olympic Park, what you said about kind of having that those two tiers, almost in a typical apartment block, if you've got renters and owners, but the actual building itself is designed to have that community angle in terms of the shared spaces, and you kind of deliver on that. 

Jade MacAuslan: That's right. And so what they do =and this isn't necessarily on all buildings, but it is a bit of a philosophy of principle. That top level out of the penthouse, which is usually reserved for the highest bidder, and let everybody have access to the best view in the building. That's where you'll find a large amount of shared common amenity for the whole community to come and use or book. So that is a product. Fundamentally, because we didn't lead with Come and Live at Sydney Olympic Park, where there's a cinema room, there's a Pilates studio, there's a gym, there's co-working, there's bars and stuff. Because we didn't do that and we led with a; it's time to expect more out of life. And this is home now. Like this is a new way to do things. Brand and emotion. We had 10,000 inquiries come into that building. And it's not because they wanted to live at Sydney Olympic Park.

James Lawrence: It’s amazing.

Jade MacAuslan: We led with; this is what's missing right now in the market. And this is a brand. The brand was a tone of voice, which was cheeky and funny as well. It wasn't that typical guess brand archetype of a bank or an insurance company being the ruler of We'll Save You, we know the best for you. It was like, just come and make it yours. Bring your pets. We don't want to charge a bond because that's just not fair. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, and it is. It's just friction isn't it? The before state. The old state is friction everywhere, which is filling out forms online and not being responded to. It's lining up and having 50 other people rocking up to a rental that's been feeling like you're being treated like crap because you're a rental. 

Jade MacAuslan: The power dynamics all out, right? Because you're giving over 30% on average of your income in rent. Nobody other than a bank takes that much from a consumer. And then to be treated with this, we're not going to fix stuff when you need it. And we're also going to charge you four weeks bond because we don't trust you. We'll say no to everything that you ask for because it's not in the interest of our owner. Oh, and we need you to move in six months because the owner wants to sell the property. So it just takes all of that to go because ultimately, humans want security. I just want to have the knowledge and constant certainty of where I'm going to live is a big one. Once you have that security, you have the time and the motivation to get to know people around you, because who could be bothered if you're moving in six months time to get to know the neighbours? That's a lot of effort. So you start to see people go, I'll open up and start to build connections, community. And because of that, belonging. We get to feel more confident in self esteem and we get to build our homes to be a bit more for us. I live with painting the walls or bringing your pets. Making it feel like yours as opposed to you can't do that. You can't do this. 

James Lawrence: Can we bring it now to the actual go to market? How did you do it? How what was the approach to okay, let's take a step back. Let's actually look at rather than selling features, look at the benefits to people's actual lives. And where is the mentality of the personas and target market? What was the actual go to market strategy to get that message out there? And I think be also interesting, just to talk a little bit about how Covid kind of impacted that as well. 

Jade MacAuslan: The go to market really had three phases or three objectives. Overall was we have to create and lead a new category of housing. A category of housing no one's ever heard of is a complete opposite to what we've been told that we should want. 

James Lawrence: The Australian dream of owning. 

Jade MacAuslan: Owning your greatest selling dream. So the point of it was we had to really set the tone right. We need to educate people first. So we did this explainer animation. Here are all the limitations to it. Surely there's a better way. So we went out to market with that. That was then followed by a live brand. So if you think about the first one is like the category, and then the next one was the live brand, and we sort of took that again, a bit of a tension point. Renting is all characterised by limitations. LIV is about you should expect more than we talk about. Expect more simplicity, connection and flexibility and have a real big brand pace around. This is so much more than renting. And then the third part was then really generating interest in the building itself to, I guess, booked. Here's the big ideas and concepts. What does it tangibly mean? What does it look like here? Or some of the reasons to believe all these other big brand ideas and concepts? So we did a big lead gen push right when we were opening the building. We are still running all of those now because the job is a big one when you're educating people on this. Third category of housing I've never heard of and really don't understand. 

James Lawrence: And the actual channels that you went to, it's kind of a mix of online, offline with probably more weighting towards online, which is probably an interesting part of it. We did big, big format billboards offline. We also did some Spotify ads, but ultimately we found looking at all those channels and YouTube and best channel that really got that reach, but also conversion with Facebook which everybody says Facebook is dead. But then you see all this volume of of interest coming through. 

Jade MacAuslan: And weirdly, I mean, this isn't totally relevant for this James, but the best performing ad, it's this picture of two old people at a communal, it was a stock imagery communal dinner, and it was like, expect more big nights in communal areas to really get to know one another. But it had all this sort of flexibility of renting with the security of ownership. Messaging comes through peppered with community, and we feel because of those three things, it talked to everything quite succinctly and that drove so much volume.

James Lawrence: I think when we initially worked on the go to market strategy, it probably was more localised towards the area than where it has ended up being, let's start a point park and then let's broaden from there. 

Jade MacAuslan: Because we also thought no one's going to want to come from the city. It was appeal to people who live further out west wanting to come in. And so you remember we started with a very sort of specific radius and end up opening it to the whole of Sydney because we had people coming in from Mosman, Bondi, Cronulla, Vaucluse, like all these blue ribbon areas into this geographic epicentre of Sydney, 

James Lawrence: Which I think is like testament to, regardless of what industry you're in as a marketer, taking that step back, what are we? What are we trying to achieve here? What is the friction that we are removing? 

Jade MacAuslan: Yeah. And because I think if you had just set up a quasi rental model, this apartment block in Sydney Olympic Park, no one's coming. The only people going there are people that are interested in renting in Sydney Olympic Park. Location, location, right. Which is property 101. 

James Lawrence: But because all that work was done to actually understand who are we trying to move and what do they actually care about it kind of.

Jade MacAuslan: And the hierarchy switched location number one, when the experience is all pretty substandard, you're going to go; I'll just choose where I live and I'll take the benefit of that because I know my experience is going to be haphazard. We talked up the experience. I think the point of what I was trying to get to is, that's actually what you're selling. And most important people. Not the features. 

James Lawrence: It delivers on that promise. Like the actual Indigo, which is the name of the property at Sydney Olympic Park. It's beautiful. And it's different than if you walk into and not even a poorly built, but an averagely built apartment block of apartments. And in some ways, it makes our job easier. I was joking before the pod that a bad product just means that good marketing allows it to fail faster. But it's kind of the inverse here, right? 

Jade MacAuslan: It comes down to the people on slightly, because we've got a full time team on site, a community team. And what they talk about often is in a normal apartment block that's got that traditional model, you walk in the door or you're driving the driveway, you get up to the front of your apartment, or you open the door and you know, I'm home. Difference with built a rent is that you're walking into the apartment building or driving in the driveway. You're like, oh, I'm home because the team's on site, they're there. They know your face. You get that kind of social capital from seeing other people.

James Lawrence: It's really nice. What I wanted to talk about was, because I think one of the benefits of digital and how a lot of our clients, one of the benefits they see from what we do is the ability to kind of have digital creative split testing at variance, giving them data and insights to help them more broadly. Also just in terms of its almost like real time feedback from prospects. And I think it was six experience pillars, like the idea that you could bring your own pet, you can paint the walls, personalisation, security. You're not going to get kicked out in six months, 12 months. I can't remember the other three - I should. 

Jade MacAuslan: There's only three, but broadly speaking, it was that security connection flexibility. 

James Lawrence: It allowed us to test. Like you could get insights by what ads people were clicking on. So it'd be interesting just to talk about that. How you almost were using those initial campaigns?

Jade MacAuslan: So think in terms of assets and permutations of images, copy or actions, I think we ended up like with 1200 different assets.

James Lawrence: You're a nightmare. 

Jade MacAuslan: No thank god Rocket doesn't mind. But what that was able to do was we put that into the machine. It really came out for Sydney in particular. And we've learned this now because we've launched in Melbourne. Sydney and Melbourne are very different places. Who would have thought? But Sydney, the things that resonated most was the secure lease. There's a lot of people not feeling secure in their leases. The one I told you about, that kind of community and being around other people, but pets and painting the wall huge. And there was these themes because we tried mean no bonds gets a lot of clicks, but it's very feature. 

James Lawrence: It's just interesting, right? It gets a bit of cut through. Who would have heard of a rental that doesn't charge a bond? 

Jade MacAuslan: Yeah, but it really is those sort of pillars of want somewhere to call home and want to be able to bring my pets, especially in Sydney. It's not heard of. And I think 40% of people out in Indigo have a pet.

James Lawrence: And it's kind of changed. Because I know that the kind of Sydney, and I guess these things never finish, right, you've always got kind of residual. 

Jade MacAuslan: So this is our baseline right. So now we've done a whole heap of work to really deepen our understanding of not just renters but all Australia. And on a mindset level, 7% of renters are under the age of 40. But everyone's going to be there because we're in a situation that is not sustainable with this sort of housing shortage. We did this huge amount of work on really segmenting the market in terms of how they live, build on that baseline of security and how we evolve, because we've set the benchmark. And what we've seen is a lot of other operators are copying everything we're doing now. When we went to Melbourne, we've got a whole three other campaigns with another 1200 assets. I'm sure that has given us even more learnings around driving forces. It comes through all of that test and learn, rationalise where we can hunt the prominent ones and then continue to evolve. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, because as a business, where are we at at the moment? Sydney Olympic Park Indigo basically got itself up to stabilisation? 

Jade MacAuslan: Stabilization. So that's 97% full. With your natural churn. And then just moved into Melbourne in the last year. That's nearly half leased. In a very short period of time. That's a combination of fantastic marketing, but if I don't say this myself and the market dynamics of high interest rates, international students coming back. But again, 90% of our leads are coming through our website. It's not through domain in where people are just looking to rent. 

James Lawrence: And that's why it's been such an interesting campaign. And I would say this, but it was kind of launched kind of through that first Covid period. There probably was more budget earmarked to some offline activity. And I'm not just shilling for digital here, but it was. We now need to reach people but probably dialing up digital Facebook prospecting Instagram prospecting, Google and YouTube tye type activity. But I would presume that given real estate and domain in most traditional property settings, they are that kind of first interaction. Like it's been fascinating to see that it's really been a digital first kind of approach to lead gen. Maybe that parlays a little bit into my question, the biggest surprise from what's happened so far, biggest success? And then I think the biggest failures and learnings. It's a bit cliche to say it's learning, but what other things that probably haven't worked as you would have expected from the whole thing?

Jade MacAuslan: it's hard to sort of compartmentalise because they're all so linked together. Launching in a pandemic. Not ideal, however, also ideal at the same time. There's a lot of paradoxes in what we've done. A very brief moment in history where they really started questioning how they were living. You've got consumers in a mindset where they're going, there's got to be a better way. And then we go, hello, this is live. We believe there's got to be a better way too. Think opening in Sydney Olympic Park, the first of its kind. Maybe not the best option, but there was no simple solution to this. Like that was the opportunity to do it. So we took it. I think honestly pulling in all from across Sydney into that one very specific spot in Sydney was a big success because it showcased when you talk to consumers about what emotionally matters to them, they will they will come. I think the biggest success was just leading with the brand first, because it's a hard line as a marketer to push into a lot of businesses, especially in a traditional property business where the brand doesn't matter, but it's the lead up to a transaction not to have a full on brand engagement with. So I think I'd say the biggest success and say how many people come to our website have, you know, we're up to nearly 20,000 inquiries across Melbourne and Sydney. Now that just shows that is the only way forward.  

James Lawrence: This is obviously a deep dive into property, a particular segment of property, but I think it's such a practical takeaway for any listener, which is; where's the friction in the market? What is your marketing? What do you like? What does your target market actually care about? How does your solution make their life better and focus on that. And I think it is so hard often, whether it's because people don't think about it or whether it's because they think about it, but other stakeholders in the business won't let them do it. To actually take that step back and to invest in brand building; marketing has changed so much, right? Marketing has gone from selling products, and you think back to 50s advertising and what the way the housewife is there advocating and spruiking your product and all the features. It's gone from that into this whole lead with experience. Don't always be permanent as you solve my problem, just give me some ideas. Like it's just shifted so much into this world. Digital has played such important role in being able to understand and test all these different messages that relate to that big issue. I think the thing I would say most is, a double sided double sword, what's happened is back in the old days, it cost you a lot to put advertising out in the market. 

Jade MacAuslan: So a lot of crap got sent out and now think we're coming through to go; well, we know you don't actually lead with something that's got insight behind it and emotional benefit. It's just not digital's great at getting to people. It's still you have to do it well to get your conversion through it. 

James Lawrence: I couldn't agree more on that. We didn't talk about your experience prior to working at LIV, but I think we come at marketing from very different viewpoints. Like I've come out of this performance digital space, Google ads, SEO, dollar in, dollar out, everything can be measured, split, test your ads, let data do everything. And up until probably ten years ago, that kind of stuff did work. But now it’s blending together all of the tried and tested things that have worked forever and will continue and are important and but you've got some benefits and being able to do a whole bunch of things digitally if you could.

Jade MacAuslan: The best of both worlds. Right? Because you can take all that data that you get from all the digital interaction. But if you're building from a human truth, you actually get to understand what resonates more and mix it up as opposed to sort of back in the day, it's like we've spent 300 grand on an ad. It better be right. 

James Lawrence: The Super Bowl ads. I watched it this year and there's a couple of ads where it was like, oh my goodness. Like so many, so many fantastic ones. And then there was a couple where I was like, oh, I don't know if I'd spend seven mil on that, I'd be happy. What about learnings? What would you do differently? Things that you'd kind of go, yeah, if I was doing it again, I'd do it differently. Or when we're launching in Brisbane or wherever, the next one after that is what what you would do differently.

Jade MacAuslan: I'd do nothing differently because I've learned from everything we've done in the sense of can't do anything differently because it's so new. I think that's a good question because there are so many learnings, just in a practical sense, around how people interact with brands. And I don't have a good answer, unfortunately, because I feel like some things work and some things don't. In Melbourne, the culture down there is all pet friendly, so we just made assumptions that Sydney would be like Melbourne on our creative. On some level, I think the things that we could do differently is making sure that there's always that local nuance. Whenever you are appearing in as a brand, it’s not you've got a national presence, but you just want to make sure that you're not trying to be the same everywhere. It's got to have differences to local areas because we care more now than ever about our localness. I don't know if it's learning the question. And I'm not saying this because you're Rocket, but I don't understand what the channel mix does anymore. So we had large format billboards. We're doing a bit of b VOD, but then I just see such huge results coming from certain channels in our reach of message. I think learning is how do different channels work with each other? So I haven't figured that part out yet either. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. It's all the digital ones, Jade. 

Jade MacAuslan: They pay back a lot quicker.

James Lawrence: It's a good case study in picking the channels that you think are most likely to reach the people you're going to reach in an effective way, but then not being afraid to move that mix around based on what is actually working. And you've also done the right thing in terms of having a good amount of budget allocated to brand, which you view in a very different way to then the bottom of the funnel lead gen budget, which is in scrutinised in a different way. 

Jade MacAuslan: And one learning, I think that's a positive. Just when you were talking that is, we've done this from a brand first perspective. And that has such a positive effect on the conversion versus if we had sort of split it into that brand, you get such efficiency and effectiveness in what you're doing in those channels through doing it that way. Because then, you know, Facebook, we can hit people with a story. 

James Lawrence: And we across all of our clients, the most diverse range of industries, the clients that are investing properly in brand, whether that's online or offline, consistently outperform those that don't. It's just as simple as that. That probably goes back to that original kind of thing you mentioned around digital marketing. And back in the day, we used to look down our nose at brand marketers and go, you know, they're just hiding behind these metrics that that don't exist. Give us the budget and let us drive performance. But that's just not how it works anymore. And you do need kind of both. Both hands kind of working in synergy. I'm going to ask you the last question, Jade, which is the question I ask of everyone that appears on the pod. What's the best piece of career advice that you would give to a marketer? 

Jade MacAuslan: So the best piece of advice, I think, from personal experience is as a marketer, market something you're passionate about because it comes through in everything you do when you're passionate about it and think it's maybe a bit cliche because everybody says that, but it is. I was marketing Smith's potato chips, and as fun as that was, and the ten kilos I also gained whilst working for PepsiCo and selling chips, it becomes tedious because you're like, oh, do I really feel good about sort of getting more people to eat fatty food and the fulfillment and satisfaction around working. So what you're passionate about is the most important part to making that dream of work not feel like work. It feels like something that's added to your life. So I think more so than ever in marketing, that's that's really relevant to to all marketers. 

James Lawrence: I think that's a really good point. That's a great point. If you're genuinely believing the purpose of the business and believe the product or service is doing good, that can mean such different things to different people, right? 

Jade MacAuslan: It can. And in marketing them in particular though, it means that you can push people a little bit further to do the right thing. Not just the easiest thing. Yeah, I think that's my marketing's responsibility is to do it right. Don't just do it quick. 

James Lawrence: I love that as a piece of advice, I'm not sure we've had that one yet. It's good. That'll make the the compilation for the end of 2023. Best advice to marketers? Nice one Jade. Well, thanks for coming on to the pod. 

Jade MacAuslan: No thank you. I always enjoyed talking about this stuff because am passionate about it and love it. So thanks for having me.

James Lawrence: Legend. Thank you Jade.