Parames: Like selling a promise.

While buying a home that exists only in the form of a blueprint is still common, many Thais have painful memories of the period leading up to the 1997 crash. During those years of feverish speculation, many buyers put hefty down payments on homes, mainly condominium units, on speculation that prices would rise in the future. Many ended up paying hundreds of thousands of baht toward homes that were never even built.

As a result, consumers these days have been placing particular emphasis on a project owner's brand image, which includes such factors as financial stability and reputation, before taking the plunge and buying a house, according to the country's leading advertising executives.

"Housing developers are using branding, just like the makers of consumer products. In the post-1997 era, brand building plays a significant role in this business as builders try to regain consumer confidence," On-Usa Lamliengpol, managing director of Leo Burnett Co, a corporate communications agency.

These days, she said, people buy houses to live in, not as a form of speculation. This means that the majority of buyers are more careful about where they spend their money. "Homebuyers these days are really demanding. They require painstaking attention to detail in project construction and look for qualified, financially sound operators who can provide good workmanship which will last for generations," she said.

SET-listed property companies, for example, pour money into their advertising budgets to maintain a high-level of brand awareness in their target markets.

On-Usa: Homebuyers are really demanding

Chaipranin Visudhipol, managing director of TBWA Thailand Co and president of the Advertising Association of Thailand, said that brand building was not only aimed at raising a company's profile in the market, but also being used as a way to differentiate one brand from its rivals in a very competitive market.

However, he said building a brand for housing projects was usually an uphill task, because strict regulations cover the kinds of messages that commercials in the segment are allowed to convey. The authorities are always on the lookout for exaggerated claims, he said.

Parames Rachjaibun, former president of the Advertising Association of Thailand and also chairman and chief executive of Turnaround Co, a business consultancy, said most commercial messages of companies in the property sector, especially those of SET-listed firms, had several communications objectives.

Instead of simply promoting sales or building up a brand image, the advertisements were often designed to deliver a feel-good message aimed at satisfying investors about the company's future outlook.

"Selling a housing project is often like selling a promise. Beyond price and location, buyers need to be able to trust the operator," Mr Parames said.

Spending money on television ads for housing projects, which generally are composed of no more than 30 to 40 units, is not cost-effective. Newspapers are much more effective and less expensive, Mr Parames said.

The younger generation has started paying more attention to branding in many aspects of their lives, he said, adding that this tendency could be exploited in order to form life-long relationships between companies and consumers.

Ms On-Usa said there was no sure-fire recipe for brand building success via advertising, because it depended on various constantly evolving factors.

Therefore, it is a challenging task for operators to find out what they want to achieve in brand building before launching a product or marketing campaign.

Over the next few years, she said, housing project operators would continue to invest in brand building because demand, driven by the growing number of new families, would remain high.