I visited the “Top Marques,” show in Monaco this weekend and bumped into Knight Frank’s on-site representative, Nick Brennan, who is a London-based sales director, dealing with luxury property for sale in the Bahamas.

Knight Frank chose to sponsor this year’s show, in the hope of meeting potential buyers, and when I asked Mr. Brennan how things were going, he smiled, shrugged, and said, “I ran out of business cards the first day.”  Which, if you are English (as both Mr. Brennan and I are) this  means, “Pretty damn fine thank you very much.”

Realistically, if some one can afford a $200,000 car, they are probably wealthy enough to be potential buyers of luxury property in the Bahamas, so a real estate agent sponsoring a luxury supercar show is not as outlandish as one might think.

One of the promotional tools Knight Frank were using at this show was a DVD giveaway of their “One Hyde park,” development. Produced as a promotion for both Candy & Candy and the development itself, stunning is the word that comes to mind. I have a copy and will hopefully be sharing sometime soon. Watch this space.

The cars them selves were pretty spectacular, (if a little boring – I must be getting old) although I would think they could afford to pay some one to polish the fingerprints off a little more regularly than they did. I only saw one fingerprint polisher the entire time I was there.

In the meantime, this is an excellent example of thinking outside the box, and certainly worth bearing in mind when considering appropriate venues for high-end property promotions.

Which also brings me to the opposite end of the spectrum. The broken promise, or “Getting it wrong on purpose,” which seems to be a prevalent marketing attitude, even when marketing a high-end show such as this one. I purchased two “V.I.P” tickets to the show, at just over sixty dollars a piece. After arriving at the show, I discover that all the tickets are “V.I.P” tickets and this entitles you to be able to pay $5 for a lousy cup of coffee, served by a surly waiter prepared to pretend he doesn’t speak English or French when you complain about said lousy cup of coffee. On top of that - they wouldn’t even let me drive the Lamborghini ‘round the Monaco F1 course.

Why bother? A massive advertising campaign, some of the most expensive brochures I have ever seen and then annoy the life out of everyone by treating them this way. Remember when your mother told you that you were special and then later said everyone is special. Yes – if everyone is a V.I.P – no one is a V.I.P. I doubt I will be returning next year unless I get a free ticket.

Whist this is not specifically real estate marketing, it is an interesting luxury brand marketing ploy gone awry. Last Year, Giorgio Armani came in for some criticism with the release of a marketing campaign for “Armani Junior,” using this particular image:

The Institute for the Defense of Children in Spain called for these advertisements to be removed on the basis that they promote sexual tourism.

Several fashion bloggers have decried this as being an issue of “censoring children,” and the fashion police suggests that we should, “let kids be kids while they still can.”

I have to say that dressing children up, covering them in make up and paying their parents large sums of money to have them photographed is not exactly what I have in mind for that idyllic childhood.

It certainly brings to mind Seth Godin’s maxim, “If I think it’s broken, then it’s broken.” And I come down on the side of the Spanish Institute – I think it’s broken.

Although the cynic in me thinks that may be Armani has achieved their desired goal. Take a look at another image from their collection and see if you can see the difference.

In one image, I see a little girl – a child, being a child. In the other, I see two little girls dressed as adults, holding the type of pose we are familiar seeing adult models holding. What do you think? Is this sort of marketing acceptable. Is it just a storm in a teacup – or are they sexually suggestive? This is not the first time Armani has had this particular critiscism leveled at them, and withdrew a series of advertisment along similar lines in 2004. This one being an example:

I do wonder why they would try a similar ploy again, unless it was to create controversy. Is this what they want? Have they achieved their goals?

This week, I have two videos that suffer from the same issue. And what is the issue? I hear you cry.

Simple - they are not videos. They are crappy quality slide shows. They remind me of the advertisements for Indian restaurants I used to sit through as a young man when (I don’t know if they still do this) I was at the local cinema.

This was, of course, in the days before the multiplex. Here’s how they went - background music - usually some standard sitar music - Ravi Shankar probably as that’s the only sitar player any one has ever heard of. Fade in photo of exterior of the restaurant, fade out/in to interior shot, fade out/in to couple staring lovingly into each others’ eyes over the appetisers, fade out/in to smiling restaurant owner with happy staff members all around, fade in name and address of restaurant, End.

Just watch these two videos. Seem familiar?

It was OK back in the day before ready availabilty of good quality video. Everyone knew the restaurant anyway, and everyone knew they couldn’t afford to have a video produced. I still wanted a curry after the movie though

Is it OK now? No, I don’t think so. One, it shows these expensive, high-quality properties in a poor light, not even coming close to doing them justice. Two, it demonstrates the fact that the real estate agent cannot afford or is unable to source a good quality video. These are million dollar plus properties.

So, not only are you risking the potential loss of a sale, you are turning off potential clients. If I had a million dollar property to sell, I would be looking for an agent that had some kind of grasp of today’s luxury marketing techniques. Crappy slide shows on YouTube ? No thanks. If you are going to market a property using video, at least make a video.