purport to persuade us.
A few weeks back, my Sunday New York Times contained, like probably most Sunday Times readers south of the Atlanta area, a new player among the usual glossy advertisements we've come to disregard.
[For whatever reason, I usually get the 8" X 11" foldout brochure for Trump Hollywood, which, with no building yet, at least offers an interesting looking sales office on the west side of A1A, he said with faint praise.
http://www.trumphollywood.com/selectok.php , see also:
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-zrichroomsbrow20mar20,0,4576455.story?coll=sfla-news-broward
This is that brochure that below a photo of Trump, "the short-fingered vulgarian," -a man I personally have reviled since I first read stories about him in the late-but-great Manhattan, Inc. magazine- says with breathless prose, and I don't exaggerate:
"If there is one man whose very name defines a superior level of sophistication, craftsmanship and lifestyle, it's Donald J. Trump. His passion for perfection in everything he puts his name to has placed him into a category of one..."
Shocker!
It's from our old friends(!) at The Related Group, and is one of their Signature Development
projects. Which I guess explains why there's a photo of Jorge Perez on the inside of the foldout, below the artists depiction of the property.
Do their immediate neighbors to the north on the beach at 2501 Ocean Drive, The Wave, realize what effect a 40-story building will have on their little swimming pool?
I think not, if the Related's The Beach Club project's effect on Hallandale Beach's North Beach is any example. "A vision of such magnitude could only be realized by one company..."
Do these guys really think this kind of faux prose works?]
Being a new player in the market to capture upscale consumer's attention and imagination, is, admittedly, not an easy task.
Inside the Times was a very well-designed if perhaps unintentionally humorous 5'x 7' brochure for a Buena Vista Hospitality Group developed Condo-hotel property in Orlando
www.bvhg.com, with Fortune International Development handling sales, called Vista Club. http://www.vistacluborlando.com/ And yes, there's a South Florida angle.
The brochure is written slightly tongue-in-cheek along the lines of a "field guide," like the popular Peterson's Guide to North American birds.
But this isn't just any bird they're trying to capture.
No, they're trying to capture a very particular and elite bird of a demographic, one that heretofore had kept their presence around the world mostly on the 'down low,' since to reveal their presence was to break what everyone knows is one of the cardinal rules of 'cool," i.e. you never draw un-necessary attention to yourself - except when YOU want to.
Yes, the geniuses at the Tampa-based Buena Vista Hospitality along with Fortune decided that what Orlando really needed -on top of their many other problems, what with moderate housing being an endangered species for their hospitality worker bees- was to capture for Orlando that small slice of the real estate demographic pie that South Floridians have long since become accustomed to, even while we revile them behind their backs for what they've done to the South Florida places we knew and loved, and have since seen changed to something we definitely don't like. (God knows there are hundreds of examples of that down here.)
It's my experience that this internal conversation tends to happen a lot while stuck in mindless traffic jams to and from South Beach while stuck behind bad drivers with luxury cars
sporting out-of-state license plates.
So who is this elusive target that the real estate powers that be believe is reading the Sunday New York Times?
"International Hipsters."
Judging by the brochure, I don't think South Beach needs to lose any sleep!
In case you don't know whether Fortune is responsible for selling some of the newer South Florida buildings you've come to like or appreciate after a bit of getting used to them, or the ones you really, really hated from Day One, their project history via the website informs us that:
...In addition, Fortune International is the developer’s choice for exclusive on-site sales, having represented some of South Florida’s most successful projects with thousands of sales to date. Fortune’s portfolio of high-end, luxury condominium projects include Jade Residences at Brickell Bay, The Bridgewater, Le Meridien Sunny Isles Beach, Jade Beach, Jade Ocean, The Ritz-Carlton Club and Residences South Beach, The Ivy, Mint, and Flamingo South Beach.
(Just for the record, the Vista Club is located west of I-4 and north of Downtown Disney.)
The interior designers of the property are Urbanica Group, which the Vista Club website
http://www.vistacluborlando.com/team.html describes thusly:
"Urbanica Group is a full service Design organization founded in 1998 and headquartered in South Beach, Florida.""This South Beach-based design firm has brought its cutting edge vision to some of South Florida’s most luxurious projects."
Well I'm all for South Beach-based designers spreading their wings and grabbing new territory.
The Vista Club press info is at http://www.vistacluborlando.com/pressroom.html, but I've scanned the brochure that was in the Times that day for you here so that you can laugh and make your own jokes, especially if you have any friends or family living in the Orlando area.
And if you see any unruly International Hipsters over the next few weeks: along the beach, perhaps pulling into the parking space you were about to roll into, or making a pest of themself along Lincoln Road by talking loudly at one of the great al fresco restaurants there so that you can hear them from 100 feet away, or of course, at the Malls, telling sales clerks that their merchandise is nice, "but not as good as -Buenos Aires, Milan, Florence, Paris, et al," tell them to head north to Orlando, where they'll be much better appreciated.
Clever marketing or un-intended humor, you decide.
Having looked at this brochure any number of times, my favorite page is the one marked "Migration Patterns," where it suddenly seems that Orlando is where all the International Hipsters are migrating to.
Let 'em.
No comments:
Post a Comment