In December 2008, Privateproperty.co.za launched an online competition to find a new slogan that would appropriately describe the direction the property website has taken in recent months. Starting in December, the competition was open to anyone registered on the site and the winner would take home a R10 000 cash prize. “We received thousands of entries to the competition, despite no external marketing being done at all,” says CEO Justinus Adriaanse. “Some were really off-the-wall, and you could tell that people weren’t taking the competition seriously. My favourite of all of these amusing entries was that our slogan should be ‘Chuck Norris uses Private Property’”. People entering the competition could visit the company blog to find out more about Private Property and the changes being implemented on the website before making their entry, thus ensuring that everyone had an equal opportunity to arrive at an appropriate slogan. “Although the competition closed at the end of January, it took us a long time to go through all of the entries and hone them down to the best one,” states Adriaanse. In the end, a shortlist was narrowed down, and a final choice made. When Randall van der Merwe was contacted and told he had won, he was extremely happy. “I thought they were joking! I entered last year and forgot about it. This is the first time I’ve ever won anything.” Randall said that he’d been registered on Privateproperty.co.za for more than 2 years before he entered the competition. At the moment, he’s looking for property to rent in the short term, until he’s saved enough for a deposit and to buy house for his family. And the winning slogan? Private Property – your virtual property showroom. “We chose this entry because it was the closest to what we’re trying to do with the website. Randall obviously thought about where we wanted to go with the website, and gave his take on it,” says Paul Ten-Bokum, IT Manager of Private Property. “We may still tweak the wording slightly, but this was definitely the closest to what we’re trying to achieve.” The slogan will be launched along with the redesign of the website in the next couple of months. “The website is under development at the moment. The new face of Privateproperty.co.za will be fully up and running by June, although the changes will begin to be phased in from April this year,” states Ten-Bokum. |
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