Home / Creating Qualified Leads with the help of Dubai and Final Fantasy 7
December 18 2008, 12:18am
Dubai functions on another plane of existence to the rest of the world.
Dubai is a place where the neon wet-dreams of some Final Fantasy creative director working in pixels and polygons are actually, and unknown to him, being made into a reality by a bunch of obscenely rich real estate developers on the other side of the globe who have probably never heard of his quaint little game and are too busy smoking on caviar cigars and eating diamonds to ever care.
This is Business Bay, a planned development for a part of the city that will be Dubai's answer to Manhattan, or Ginza:
Aaaaand this is Midgar, the capital of Gaia from Final Fantasy 7, a city kept dark and polluted from society's abuse of Mako reactors:
Likewise, this is Dubailand, a theme park currently under construction in Dubai:
Aaaand this is Gold Saucer, where you can go to have fun betting on Chocobo races or take your date:
What's that? I got them mixed up? OH LOLS.
Anyway, of course we can rationally explain away some of the similarities. It is partly due to the genuine, fantastical nature of the developments going on in Dubai but is probably equally due to the genuine, fantastical nature of all architectural renders, which is a topic I recently had an, ooh, 3 minute heated debate on, with an architect friend.
Observe:
That's a typical architectural render of a property in Singapore. It appears to be set in acre upon acre of lush, tropical jungle. In reality though, this property is to be found in Holland Hill, which is a nice residential area just a few minutes from Orchard Road, and is surrounded by, well, a whole mess of other condominiums.
I felt like arguing, so I argued this point.
Isn't creating images like this a gigantic waste of time for the realtor? You end up acquiring this certain percentage of unqualified leads that you won't be able to convert (the people who say "hey, where's the fricking jungle?" and leave) so you end up just doing more legwork for nothing. Wouldn't it be better to paint a more realistic picture, attract a lower absolute number of potential buyers but a higher percentage of those would be better qualified as potential leads, because they know what to expect??
My friend spluttered, laughed, and said no.
Of course, I'm from a completely different world to this. The world I live in is governed by computers doing the selling, grinding out the conversion stats and reporting back to me. So for me, inefficiencies are there to be eliminated and if I can cut costs by focusing less on absolute numbers and at the same time convert a higher percentage, hey I'm all for that, or at least exploring it.
This is wayyyy different to how humans sell things, though. There are infinite ways that a good "human" salesperson can make you buy that house / car / toaster, through constant adaptation, interaction and relentless yet subtle psychological warfare*. Salespeople also have a personal motivation to sell - a computer only does what you tell it to do.
*Him: Why not upgrade to leather seats? if you don't, it means you have a small cock
Me: What did you say?
Him: Why not upgrade to leather seats?
The swift ad-lib into an introduction of other shinier features of the property, a change in tone of voice, use of persuasive language, smiling and talking passionately about the product, discounts and freebie deals made on-the-fly and tailored to my personality, a little playful flirting. There's a million different things a salesperson can try, in order to turn a lead into a customer - even a lead who was expecting a jungle.
A different process entirely, to passing a lead into a system of IF statements and "Buy Now" buttons.