Last November, visitors to New York’s Times Square might have encountered something odd, given the neighborhood’s emphasis on shopping and spectacle.
Amid giant billboards promoting Samsung, Coca-Cola and The Book of Mormon, some of the estimated 275,000 people who passed through the area each day that month may have seen multiple screens showcasing a new marketing campaign from commercial real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle.
JLL, as it’s called, is not a small organization. The Fortune 500 company operates in more than 80 countries. It made $20.9 billion in revenue last year.
Yet how many tourists taking selfies in Times Square are thinking about leasing office space? What percentage of them, strolling to American Eagle Outfitters while sipping on McDonald’s coffee, would know, or care, JLL had replaced its five-year-old, success-oriented tagline “Achieve Ambitions” with the optimistic, future-focused “See a Brighter Way”?
JLL’s chief marketing officer, Siddharth Taparia, explained that while he’s responsible for delivering business results through more conventional b-to-b marketing tactics, he also intends to build a brand.
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