CREDIT: Mark van Manen, Vancouver Sun Developer Cameron McNeill (foreground) and his partners are inviting the public to name a new 33-storey residential tower to be built at Seymour and Drake in downtown Vancouver

When Cameron McNeill decided on a moniker for the 109-residence development at Sixteenth and Cambie, Olive was a logical choice.

After all, the anchor tenant would be the largest Capers in the Lower Mainland, and what better way to entice buyers than making a not-so-subtle connection with a snappy, lively title.

But if a connection with the natural and organics food store was an overriding factor, why settle for Olive?

Why not Apple, Orange, Banana, Watermelon or, simply, Passion Fruit?

“That entire project was designed around gourmet kitchens and we knew early on that Capers would be the anchor tenant,” says McNeill. “So we searched for something that really played on those differentiation points. We look for the soul of the project and align the name with it. It was a brainstorming session and we threw around names such as exotic spices and unique foods. Anise was the runner-up. We wanted a slightly generic name and Olive was simple and people would understand it. Apple would be far too literal.

“And my daughter’s name is Olivia, so maybe it resonated with me.”

When it comes to naming housing projects, marketers spend a lot of money and time — anywhere from a day to a several weeks — deciding on the perfect handle.

McNeill said the secret to successful marketing is “the cohesiveness of all the elements, from product and positioning, to signage, sales and staff. The name is one of those components and it’s an important component that’s tied into other marketing details. There has to be a playfulness to it.”

Marketing teams feel that while buyers will obviously look deeper than a project name before purchasing, that first impression — a snappy moniker — can help get them through the door.

“It’s quite the process,” says publicist Pamela Groberman who has marketed many projects, including Olive. “And to the marketing team, it’s very important. We spend a lot of energy on that. Other names were considered, but Olive is clean, memorable and simple.”

Groberman said that when it comes time to choose a name, those involved in marketing the project submit about 10 names each. Then the 100 or so names are whittled down to the best 10, before the final name is chosen.

She cites the Opus Hotel in Yaletown. “Opus is a compilation of music. It was nice and clean. And I thought (the hotel) would be a compilation of great things.”

McNeill notes that there are many themes to housing monikers. He has his favourites, but also his aversions. “There are themes named after people’s names, like Oscar. And that’s growing in popularity North America-wide. But almost every London subway station or famous street or township in Britain is named in a project here, and I’m tired of all those British place names that have been used ad nauseum over the last decade. I think names like that are weak. We should be working for more originality.”

Although picking the right appellation is almost essential for modern marketing teams, it wasn’t always so.

There was a time in the not so distant past when new housing developments didn’t utilize fancy titles to draw people into their show homes. The project was built, the address advertised, and people simply showed up.

No more.

With the advent of slick, high-priced marketing teams, the project name is now a vital component in selling real estate.

Howard Steiss at Adera says projects names are created based on a preliminary visioning session involving all members of the developer’s team, including landscapers, architects, public relations teams and interior design and marketing.

“Comments by the development team consultants are made and a common thread is woven into a project’s identity,” said Steiss. “The graphic design and marketing manager will agree on a preliminary project name and visual (logo). The Journey project came from the location of the site at UBC where many people go to advance their own lifelong journey of learning.

“The Solay project in south Surrey is in the banana belt of the Lower Mainland and a name using the term sol was transformed from soleil, the French word for sun, into Solay, a contemporary version of the same sounding word.”

Macdonald Realty project marketer George Wong says his team looks at other projects in the area — especially such things as unit sizes and target markets — which helps their “image” positioning.

“Once we have an idea about what other people are doing, we will look at the target markets of our project and analyse in-depth who our buyer groups are and why they would be interested in buying into the our project, and what elements will make them buy in our project and not another project on the market now.”

From that, Wong said, the team gets it down to three or four core attributes and then starts working on a name.

“The naming exercise is critical to a project’s success as it can evoke and fortify the positioning of our product or, conversely, it can generate the wrong images. In other words, no one name is good or bad, but it has to fit the buyer’s thinking and motivation.”

Wong said Esse, for example, was “pleasing to the ear, easy to pronounce and memorable.” As well, he said, it was “balanced and meaningful to purchasers.”

He said Esse is Latin for “to be, existence,” as well as the root word for essential and essence.

Some of the names in recent housing projects reveal handles that may be a tad on the ostentatious side.

There’s the Parisian-sounding The Left Bank (at Main and Prior); the Marquis Grande (a 27-storey tower in Burnaby), Denim in Langley (it “conveys the idea of youthful style and flexibility,” notes Steiss. “Dress it up. Dress it down. It always fits.”), King’s Landing in False Creek (need we say more?), Access (priced from $86,500), Pintura (“picture” in Italian), and, of course, Electric Avenue at Paramount, a 456-condo Vancouver project that includes nine movie theatres and a fleet of hybrid (natural gas/electric) cars for purchasers to use. (‘Electric’ Avenue at ‘Paramount.’ Get it?)

Italian names are a hit, even at the entrance to Chinatown (Firenze). And there’s Uno, a condo project in Mount Pleasant, a derivative of Oni-One, a funky Toronto-based design store that will anchor the Uno project. Oni-One is also a derivative of the names of the store’s design team, Elaine Cecconi and Anna Simone.

Some names are very simple and reveal, perhaps, a minimum of marketing savvy. Or, perhaps, great marketing savvy, depending on how you look at it.

Taylor, for example, is a 26-storey tower at 550 Taylor Street. And UniverCity Highlands is a Simon Fraser University development.

Second names like Mews, Estates and Gardens are popular. Or how about Zoey, i on West 10th or the pretentious The Max (a Concord Pacific project, predictably).

Brava was a play on Bravo, a word that coincided with a medium-sized movie theatre in the tower that will play foreign films.

Qube is the name of the renovated West Coast Transmission Building. “Architecturally, it’s a very cubic-looking building, with 11 and 12-foot ceilings,” notes McNeill. “So we play on selling cubic feet rather than just square feet.”

The Altura townhouse project in Burnaby was named for the Italian phrase “high ground” because of the town homes’ location in Burnaby Heights with commanding views. As well, it’s an historically Italian neighbourhood.

Twenty has 20 homes and is a reflection of the television series 24, which the marketer believed the target audience would watch.

The Silver project was reflective of the colour of building materials, as well as a common colour for Porsches and other spiffy sports cars.

While pretentious-sounding names are not out of place in Vancouver, many U.S. developments have predictably patriotic themes.

According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, some builders appear to be tapping into the post-Sept. 11 mood. There’s Liberty, Independence, Freedom and Heritage.

But before we Canadians start naming our new highrises Consensus or Peacekeeper, it might be best to ascertain whether all of it’s worth the trouble.

According to Dr. Andrew Cheng, his purchase of a suite at Olive had nothing whatsoever to do with the name of the project.

“I don’t think it did at all,” says Cheng. “I knew about the project before and for me it was the location. I didn’t care about the name.”

Ryan Nicholas, who bought a suite at Altura, agreed. “The name means nothing to me. Altura to me sounds like a car. If it was specific, like The Pines, for example, it might evoke an image.”

But Nicholas admits he went out to see Imperial Landing in Steveston partly because the name evoked a nice image for him. “It had a nice sound to it and I looked at it. Imperial is high end, regal, luxurious and I just figured waterfront. They were nice places too, but too far of a drive for us.”

Brad O’Connell, who bought a condo at King Edward Village in Vancouver, likes the name and feels it might have had a subconscious effect on him. “I won’t buy a place because of the name, but subconsciously if it’s got a nice name, it’s one more plus. It took me a few minutes to figure out why it was called King Edward Village when it’s at the corner of Kingsway and Knight, but King Edward runs along the side of the project.”

Meanwhile, McNeill’s Mac Realty is taking the whole exercise one step further with his firm’s invitation to the public to name a new 33-storey Vancouver condo tower at Seymour and Drake that will be marketed for Cressey.

“We’re going to have a huge campaign to name that building,” said McNeill of the project, whose website is namethisbuilding.com.

As well, everybody who participates gets free maintenance for six months when they buy a condo.

© The Vancouver Sun 2004