With today being one of the most important Earth Day’s thus far everyone should be doing their part to help this amazing planet. At BDX, and our parent company BHI, we do the best we can to reduce our eco-footprint. BHI recently installed solar panels on the roof of our building to help us do just that! Check out the time-lapse video below to see:
Last week BDX parent company, Builder Homesite (BHI) celebrated the company’s anniversary. 14 years ago, the country’s leading builders began collaborating on digital marketing ideas that could elevate and transform the entire building industry. This anniversary was a great time to reflect on how much has changed in those years both from an industry and a technology perspective.
We’ve gone from a handful of founding builders listing their homes on NewHomeSource.com to over 1000 builder clients taking advantage of a variety of digital marketing and technology solutions. From mobile solutions, to innovative sales center technologies, social media and the advances in rendering and digital media, BDX is at the forefront of builder marketing, media and technology solutions. We’ve also seen our industry hit all time highs and weather the downturn. Through it all our priority has been focused on helping our builders succeed.
To help us celebrate, our BHI board members joined us at our Austin office to participate in a panel discussion and share their thoughts on the state of the building industry. We welcomed Stuart Miller from Lennar, David Weekley, Allan Merrill from Beazer, and Richard Dugas from Pulte. As employees posed insightful and sometimes challenging questions, the panel responded with thoughtful and inspiring views into their business.
And of course, as we reflect on the past, it is the perfect time to look forward and get excited about everything that 2014 will bring to our industry and our builders. We can’t wait to work with you this year and help you grow your business!
Recently, BDX/BHI has entered into a local contest to benefit the Austin Area Food Bank. BuildASign (a local Austin company) hosted CANville, a community-wide food drive to benefit the Food Bank’s “Summer Meals That Matter” program. BuildASign invited Austin area companies to join them by constructing an Austin landmark entirely out of food items.
Each company had to create one structure of an Austin landmark using a minimum of 1,000 food items. BDX/BHI decided to recreate the famous “Greetings from Austin” mural that can be found downtown. Our version of the giant “postcard” is composed of over 1,300 cans and stands about 7 feet tall! All items will be donated to the program campaign, along with a monetary donation from the company. The structures are being judged based on creativity with the winner being announced at the Austin Area Food Bank on Thursday, July 25th.
While most of our time each day is spent supporting our builders to market and sell their new homes, it was fun for our employees to get in on some building action themselves! And of course, the fact that the fruits (and veggies) of our labor went to support a good cause was very motivating.
Leading the pack during the design and construction was our very own Advertising Manager, Thane Tennison, who in addition to lots of can shopping worked furiously with the rest of his team to complete the massive structure by the deadline.
Want to follow the action? “Like” CANville Austin’s facebook page to keep track of the competition and to see behind the scenes photos of what other Austin landmarks are being built.
***UPDATE*** While there were some worthy opponents, as of Thursday evening BHI/BDX has taken the golden can award! We swept first place and are delighted with the outcome of the contest. Watch out CANville 2014-we’ll be back!
Builder Homesite, one of the companies behind BDX, is planning to launch a multimillion-dollar national marketing and advertising campaign designed to “take back market share” from resale’s and foreclosures that have marginalized new homes for many buyers.
BHI/BDX has decided to launch this campaign as a way to reinvest in the industry and help drive additional business for all home builders. Builders don’t have to pay to participate or fund the initiative. This is something we are doing because we believe we have a unique place in the market, we have the industry connections, the market expertise and the resource to be the voice for all builders. AND, it is the right thing to do for our clients and the industry as a whole.
Here is an excerpt from an article that was recently published on BuilderOnline about the initiative. Click here to read the full story.
By: John Caulfield
Within the next 60 days, Builder Homesite Inc. (BHI), the Austin, Texas–based consulting firm owned by a consortium of 32 leading builders, is planning to launch a multimillion-dollar national marketing and advertising campaign designed to “take back market share” from resales and foreclosures that have marginalized new homes for many buyers.
BHI has hired GSD&M Advertising and Edelman, a leading public relations firm, to help devise and execute this three-year campaign, which will be spearheaded by Keith Guyett, a former account executive with GSD&M and Richards Group, whom BHI hired last November as its vice president of marketing and industry communications.
Tim Costello, BHI’s chief executive, tells Builder that the purpose of this campaign is to win back the hearts and minds of consumers whose perceptions of new homes and the housing industry in general are not always positive. He notes that new homes last year accounted for only one in 15 sales; in past years that ratio was more like one in six. He also says builders are their own worst enemies when they continue to refer benignly to existing housing stock as “resales” instead of “used” homes.
“I believe the product that we build today is better than anything that’s already on the market, but there’s simply not an agency out there forming opinions about our homes,” the way the National Dairy Council and the Cattlemen’s Beef Board promote for their industries’ products institutionally.
To that end, BHI has been conducting consumer focus groups in three markets—Phoenix, Houston, and Alexandria, Va.—to ascertain public perceptions about the industry and new houses. Costello says BHI will track these opinions over multiple years to determine if its marketing campaign is working.
Costello says his group is still trying to determine whether it needs to come up with one marketing message for all groups, or tailor that message for different regions and buyers, such as Millenials who might require more coaxing to see the investment value of buying a house.
However, the campaign is likely to revolve around planting the idea of buying a new home in the minds of people who may not be in the market today but could be in the future as a result of “trigger events,” such as the birth of a child or a relocation to a new job. “We want these people to consider a new home before they’re ready to buy,” he says.
Costello adds that BHI will also be targeting Realtors, who notoriously don’t show new homes to clients. One reason, he explains, is that new-home data typically don’t exist in multiple-listing services (he says his group is trying to rectify that), or if they are listed the new houses are identified by individual addresses without information about their communities or amenities.
John Caulfield is senior editor for Builder magazine.
