Project Overview

Only moments from the idyllic Brighton waterfront in Melbourne, Pillar+Tide is a boutique luxury residential development where every facet of modern life intersects seamlessly. Shaped by award-winning architects Carr, with landscaping by Acre, The Pillar+Tide brand identity - and positioning, ‘Still+Life’ - was crafted to reflect the wonderful duality of the residences themselves: a place where past meets future, indoors meets outdoors, community meets intimacy and time meets timeless.

Organisation

Fortis

 

Team

Head of Marketing – Kristina Granberg
Design Director – Em Matthews
Content Marketing Manager – Liz Keene
Designer – George Hatton
Copywriter – Peter Maniaty
Render Artist – Mr.P Studios
Still Life Photographer – Tanya Zouev
Still Life Stylist – Kendra McCarthy
Portrait Photographer – Dylan James
Media Agency - Giles Cain
Printer - Special T

Project Brief

The physical design of Pillar+Tide achieved a rich sense of timelessness and permanence, both in function and design, with a use of robust natural materials and a return to quality that consistently caters to the diversity of human experience. The Fortis creative team was tasked with creating an equally compelling positioning, brand identity and marketing campaign to communicate the unique characteristics of the development in a way that resonated deeply with the needs – both emotional and rational – of potential buyers. It was especially critical for the tone and execution of the Pillar+Tide brand to be able to cut through the noise of the highly competitive off-the-plan market in the recently re-zoned suburb of Brighton.

Project Innovation/Need

We flipped the common vernacular of the property market on its head. Instead of selling the building, we focussed on the life that flows within it. In this way, the Pillar+Tide brand was shaped to convey a secure and unwavering backdrop for our customers’ lives; a place pre-designed with everything they need to grow, connect and simply be.

Architecturally, the development itself presents as still, strong, constant and timeless, reduced to its raw, core elements. In contrast, our customers’ lives are represented as soft, evolving, fluid, perfectly imperfect, where no two days are the same. We spent considerable time exploring ways to bring in vulnerability and humanness to the Pillar+Tide brand experience, such as through the use of original poetry, commissioned exclusively for the project.

The photographic treatment equally reflects the broader brand positioning, pairing a ‘pillar’ of the raw robust materials of the built form, with a contrasting object that tells a more personal story. In total there are five image pairings, with each representing life and movement over a space of time, through lightning changes, long shadows and stylised props, further adding to the story-telling.

Design Challenge

The design challenge was to create the Pillar+Tide brand in such a way that its voice would be clearly heard, despite the considerable noise present in the Brighton market.

Recently rezoned to encourage higher density living, Brighton is currently a hive of cranes and hoardings, with multiple boutique luxury developments all vying for the attention of the downsizer market. Rather than attempt to shout loudest, our design response was the exact opposite: understated, considered and quietly assured.

Like an art gallery, everything was stripped back to the purest of information. The content was created to provide a respectful presentation of the facts surrounding Pillar+Tide, as articulated (in first person) by the experts who actually helped us create it. A key benefit of teaching through the language of the experts is that recipients become the experts themselves—and, in turn, ambassadors for the underlying benefits on offer.

Effectiveness

Launching digitally at a time when Melbourne’s apartment market confidence was at an all-time low, the Pilllar+Tide brand used emotive still life photography to successfully cut through the highly saturated Brighton market and resonate with our target demographic to achieve higher than average prices per sqm at sale time.

“The Pillar+Tide campaign set itself apart by providing a non-real estate based positioning. The imagery captures personal moments that our Brighton audience could relate to, which had a simple yet powerful influence over their perception of the project overall.”

Alby Tomassi, Tomassi & Co.