From interactive annual reports to peer-reviewed research, and technical conferences, Avenue Living is leaving no stone unturned.
This article was produced in partnership with Avenue Living.
As an organization that owns, operates, and invests in a variety of real estate assets, Avenue Living naturally touches a diverse range of stakeholders. To strengthen all those connections, it has committed to an integrated communications strategy, constantly striving to provide an educational and engaging experience across multiple channels.
Tammy Cho, Avenue Living’s recently elevated chief communications and marketing officer, is at the centre of it all.
“Throughout my career, I've always worked in very technical industries, dealing with concepts that aren't that easy to grasp,” Cho says. “I’ve found that no matter who you’re communicating with, the principles of marketing still hold; you have an audience who has a need, and you have a solution. When you’re able to marry those things together and effectively communicate your value, that's where the magic happens.”
Building foundations for success
The past few years have seen increased saturation in the alternatives market, with multiple players competing for space in investors’ minds and portfolios. Against that noisy backdrop, Avenue Living steadily built credibility with focused thought leadership and education on the benefits of alternative investments.
When Cho joined in 2022, she applied a service-oriented ethos to restructuring Avenue Living’s marketing team.
“We wanted to build a marketing and communications department that was highly responsive and went beyond a typical agency model,” she says. “Some of our internal stakeholders were waiting too long for deliverables and there were lots of unnecessary processes and gaps that created bottlenecks in achieving our desired outcomes within a targeted timeframe.”
From the beginning, Cho focused on building an approachable and results-driven team, providing support to various business lines. By delivering quality projects on tight timelines, she and her team were able to breed a high level of trust within the marketing unit and across the organization, making it easier for the team to explore fresh communications strategies.
Today, Avenue Living’s marketing function stands as the heart of a robust system that circulates rich content and meaningful messaging both externally and throughout the organization. Driving that is a dedicated group that includes designers, animation and website specialists, video editors, copywriters, and other professionals producing innovative and high-calibre materials.
“Putting those foundational building blocks together is extremely satisfying,” Cho says. “When you have talented individuals, all driving towards a common goal and producing superior-quality work, it really accentuates our positive brand reputation in the market.”
Paving new avenues of communication
Avenue Living’s marketing A-team has a broad and rigorous mandate: to maintain a 360-degree communication approach that spans the entirety of its vertically integrated platform.
While the organization has always maintained a strong focus on investor relations with quarterly calls and reports, Cho and her team have taken that connection to a new digital level. The team takes an innovative approach to how they communicate vital data, such as its year-end report, which is delivered through a dynamic web page complete with interactive buttons and analytics to show which segments resonated most.
“We have back-end reporting to understand which sections were well read and which content pieces received more views and engagement,” Cho says. “This information allows us to provide a better user experience while becoming smarter and more strategic over time.”
Looking across the market, she sees an emerging younger generation of advisors and investors with a different set of preferences when it comes to their media consumption. That’s had implications for how Avenue Living provides information on its website’s Insights section, which now includes a rich trove of industry research and videos that are easy to view and can be shared intuitively.
“There’s been an evolution and shift in how you can deliver information to your audience,” Cho says. “We’ve found that not everything needs to be a long report. It can be a quick 30-second soundbite on LinkedIn, or an interesting explainer video. Our priority is to deliver content in the style people want to consume it.”
Further bolstering its authority among advisors and institutions, Avenue Living regularly speaks at technical conferences, represented by its deep bench of subject matter experts on sustainability, capital markets, alternative investments, and more.
“We also organize roadshows across Canada that put us in front of advisors, giving us more face-to-face and personal touchpoints with individuals to explain our different investment offerings,” Cho says.
Beyond that, Avenue Living invests heavily in peer-reviewed thought leadership and academic research. That includes regular partnerships with Dr. Grant Wilson, a professor at the University of Regina, on how different strategies can have a measurable business impact within the multi-family residential and private real estate investment space.
On the public-facing front, Avenue Living has built up a national brand presence with a sprawling media footprint that includes appearances on BNN and digital out-of-home advertising. Its strategy also extends to its multi-family residential and self-storage properties, with updates and other tailored communications to ensure customers have a best-in-class experience.
Looking ahead, Cho says Avenue Living will continue to push the marketing and communications envelope to stand out in the crowded field of investments. While the marketing team won’t shy away from exploring new ways to speak to internal and external stakeholders, she believes there’s one formula that it should keep at its core.
“At the end of the day, marketing is about effective communication … how clear, concise, and time-sensitive you can make that and how you differentiate yourself within the market is what drives your success,” she says.
“Everybody has a service to sell, or a product that they think is superior to others. Translating your business value so that it’s easily understandable is what really makes the difference.”
This commentary and the information contained herein are for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities or related financial instruments. This article may contain forward-looking statements. Readers should refer to information contained on our website at https://avenuelivingam.wpenginepowered.com/forward-looking-statements for additional information regarding forward-looking statements and certain risks associated with them.
