Case Study: CMK Realty

50%

Units sold within 6 months / Chicago area market share

CMK Companies is a leading Chicago real estate company that has helped redefine the concept of urban living with its award-winning contemporary buildings. The firm is responsible for nearly $1 billion in real estate development for projects in Chicago, Florida, Michigan and the Caribbean.

Brief

CMK Companies is currently building the largest downtown condo project since the 1970s at 714 units. They are also doing this at a time when the real estate market is the worst it has been since the Great Depression.

Insight

Developers in the City of Chicago have traditionally spent their marketing dollars in one place – The Sunday Edition of the Chicago Tribune. This opened up the possibility to market our property in new and unique ways – catching the city by storm.

Solution

In addition to having a baseline presence in the Chicago Tribune, we developed a campaign that included: office tower advertising; internet & social media marketing; transit advertising; video-on-demand long-form commercials; search engine marketing; and flyers to Chicago area realtors.

Result

Within 6 months, over 50% of the units in the building had been sold. CMK Companies also reported the highest sales of all residential developers in the Chicago area in the third quarter of 2007, accounting for nearly 10% of the market and easily beating struggling national homebuilders like Pulte Homes Inc. and Lennar Corp. This was at a time when across Chicago, sales of new condominiums and town homes had dropped 27% from the same period the previous year.