Meridian Parkside Apartments

Project

Brand new Class A apartment community, located in Newport News, Virginia, adjacent to the region’s largest nature park.

Challenge

This community had a good “problem”—blending two selling propositions with completely different sales personalities. The community is designed as a high density, high tech, urban style community. On the other hand, one of its most unique selling propositions is its location on the edge of a 456 acre nature park.

Positioning the community as an urban living experience would leave out the benefits of the expansive nature park and its associated nature programs. However, positioning around nature would not be true to the more sophisticated “uptown” core of the community itself. Residents could achieve the best of both worlds…but how could the community effectively convey that message?

Solution

The solution was to embrace both the urban and natural aspects of the community living experience with the core marketing message: Town & Country. This marketing message is an organic and seamless marriage of the two faces of the community.

The branding began with the name. The word “Meridian” is described as the place where two separate planes intersect. The figurative “planes” in this case are the urban and natural worlds, and the “meridian” is the community—the place where these worlds intersect. The word “Parkside” indicates the location adjacent to the nature park.

The community’s logo incorporates the colors of black and green, indicating the urban and natural faces of the community. The logo incorporates a sophisticated emblem appropriate for a high-end urban residence…but the emblem is actually a floral symbol, inspired by nature.

Collateral materials show a split screen—half black/half green—to fully express the two different aspects of the living experience without compromising either. The brochure has a center cut, allowing customers to view the “town” features separately from the “country” features. Yet, the innovative design keeps each unique aspect uncompromised and “in tact” while at the same time blending them together in one cohesive message.

The community web site features a story driven Flash intro and carefully selected music, clearly conveying the separate town & country features while pulling them together in the final statement. Web text demonstrates the perfect marriage of the two.

Result

The branding has given the community a distinct identity that sets it apart from both urban and suburban communities in the marketplace. This community has all the tools in place to “own” a unique position in the mind of the consumer.

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