From Location, Location, Location to Grand Designs, as a nation we are no strangers to television programmes with a focus on property. However, with the emergence of a new breed of property reality TV that have serious water cooler effect, such as Netflix’s Selling Sunsets and BBC’s Manctopia really got us thinking about the ever evolving and exciting world of property.
It’s fair to say the country has been watching a whole lot more TV since lockdown began. Here at Active Profile, we love a good weekend TV show binge and even have a dedicated Slack channel where we discuss all of our favourites and some of the clangers.
One series that has had some of the Place team hooked is Netflix’s Selling Sunsets. For those who may not be familiar, the show centres around the glamorous and dramatic lives of real estate agents working at the Oppenheim Group in the Hollywood Hills.
It follows the team as they list and sell some seriously jaw dropping homes to their elite customers, with series one focusing on the build of a $40,000,000 home in the hills.
On the Place team at Active Profile, between us we have around 30 years’ experience in the sector and we’re proud that we get to work with some key players and visionaries in the property industry who are delivering some of the most pertinent projects in the north west and beyond.
Another programme closer to home has been the much talked about Manctopia: Billion Pound Property Boom, which recently aired on BBC One. The show focuses on Manchester's housing boom, with a particular spotlight on Salford, a city which has undergone a huge transformation in the last 10 years, making it an extremely desirable city to live, work and play in.
A huge component of Salford’s transformation is the New Bailey scheme, which is being developed by our client The English Cities Fund, a joint venture between Muse Developments, Legal and General and Homes England. New Bailey is an ongoing development and one of the most successful urban regeneration projects in the UK, comprising innovative office space, restaurants and bars, hotels and residential space, all of which has been designed and is being delivered by a ground-breaking, award-winning team.
Whilst our clients work flat out on these game-changing schemes, we too are working hard behind the scenes making sure the world knows all about the pioneering placemaking work that is transforming skylines and redefining city centres.
We may not do ‘burgers and botox’ events (sorry, I couldn’t resist a Selling Sunset reference), but we do help to host some seriously memorable events for our clients (pre-Covid19). On New Bailey, we work in partnership with the team at Solid Ground, hosting and letting the nation know about everything from bite street food pop up events, to huge seasonal art installations, and possibly one of our favourite annual events, the Manchester Duck Race, which held on the River Irwell and raises tens of thousands of pounds every year for charity Brainwave.
On the B2B side of things, we know how to throw an excellent topping out or breakfast launch event, and get the right people through the door, be it property journalists or prospective tenants, we have it covered. You won’t find us hanging around on building sites in 6-inch stilettos with no PPE though – safety comes first for us!
While the Oppenheim Group spend millions of dollars on advertising and fancy billboards, we get our clients in front of national journalists who are writing the articles that our clients’ clients want to read, securing interviews and press coverage, as well as creating social media campaigns, always targeting the best possible audiences for the client.
We often see the cast of Selling Sunsets working weekends to secure that sale (and bag that rather generous commission), and we’re no stranger to occasional weekend working. Although sending out a press release on a Sunday is rare in the world of property B2B PR, we recently put in a Sunday shift ourselves in order to make sure our client igloo Regeneration’s big news hit the headlines first thing on a Monday morning – and it paid off. We secured coverage in the Guardian, the Telegraph and Sky News, to name just a few. If you fancy having a read, you’ll find the press release here.
This is just some of the exciting work that the Place team gets up to every day. It may not be as glamourous as ‘flipping’ homes in the Hollywood Hills, but we wouldn’t change it for the world.
