If I have learned one thing in college, it is the fact that college students love free stuff. We'll sign away perfectly usable email addresses to ruination by a company's daily spam simply for a free pen. We'll battle long lines and accept tardiness to class for a free slice of pizza. We'll nearly assault our peers at football games in Sanford Stadium for a free t-shirt soaring into the student section. The bottom line is that even though free stuff isn't "free" for companies, it is often profitable for them in the long run due to the amount of attention it draws.
One local company that has recently utilized this "free stuff" approach is Landmark Properties, the proud new owner of the 900-unit luxury apartment located on Oconee Street, The Mark. If you've walked through downtown Athens in the past year, I'm sure you've heard of it. Before construction of the actual apartment began, Landmark Properties leased a prime space located in the heart of downtown Athens for their leasing office. Steps away from the Arch, the leasing office was sure to catch the eyes of college students heading to and from class.
The company began an extensive social media campaign in order to convince students to sign an expensive lease for a luxury apartment that hadn't even been built at the time. Almost daily, The Mark's Instagram page posted giveaways, updates on construction, and opportunities to go on virtual and hard hat tours of the construction site. Perhaps their most recognizable marketing tactic were their elaborate giveaways. The giveaways featured expensive products that were on every college student's wish list, such as Yeti coolers, True Grit jackets, Eno hammocks, Georgia football jerseys, and more. In order to enter these contests, followers had to like The Mark's picture and tag three friends, which ultimately increased The Mark's internet presence and made it so that this new luxury apartment was associated with luxury and coveted products.
In addition to the Instagram giveaways, Landmark also gave away hundreds of t-shirts with their logos branded over a replica of an existing popular logo. Some of their most popular shirts included a logo almost identical to that of the Masters Tournament and a neon-colored t-shirt featuring the classic bulldog mascot of the University of Georgia, connecting the apartment complex to the campus. All it took was a walk into the downtown leasing office in order to receive free t-shirts, sweatshirts, coozies, and sunglasses, all imprinted with The Mark's logo.
Because there was no physical building until last month, The Mark convinced students to sign by offering virtual tours. These tours were posted on their Facebook page and showed the digital plans for the complex. Once The Mark had a basic structure, they offered hard hat tours and seemed to post a picture of each tour group to their social media. Especially in the spring, The Mark would post construction updates to their social media pages to assure signees that the complex would be finished on time and that that they made the right choice by signing with The Mark.
In about April, however, The Mark suddenly stopped their giveaways and posted construction updates less and less frequently. It was clear that something was wrong, so I scheduled a tour of The Mark about a week before the scheduled move-in date of August 1. Although most everything, including the rooms, were not finished, I was assured that everything would be finished upon move-in. Currently, a month after move-in, amenities are just now begin finished and construction workers are in and out of every apartment daily to fix things such as incorrectly installed appliances, which would not have been a problem had construction not been so rushed. Residents are rightfully frustrated, since we are still required to pay the full and steep rent, when virtually nothing we were promised by the lavish social media posts is actually usable. The Mark took advantage of college students' addiction to social media and hunger for free stuff in order to get almost 900 students to sign on an unfinished and sight unseen apartment complex, that was ultimately just one big empty promise.
