Sitcom Used to Sell Condos

When I said Video Killed the Virtual Tour, I wasn’t kidding. But the developer of the Donovan condominiums in Vancouver, Canada has taken the idea one step further. They’ve partnered with a local film production company to produce a mini-series about life in their Yaletown building. (Warning – some of the content is adult in nature and may be NSFW)

“Donovan Life� is a lifestyle comedy in the tradition of “Sex and the City�, “Will & Grace,� and “Friends�. It tells the story of Anya, a 20-something professional woman who seeks exile from her commitment-phobic boyfriend in her best gay friend Dougal’s luxurious new Yaletown apartment in the Donovan building. Over the course of the five webisodes, Anya tries to decide whether to go back to her boyfriend, or start her life anew by moving into Donovan.

The show will be released consecutively over the next several weeks. The idea is to encourage consumers to come back weekly and catch the next episode, thus building the brand and presenting a stylized vision of life in the building.

It’s definitely an interesting partnership and a unique way to sell the “lifestyle” of the development. The production quality of the first video was impressive and the performances weren’t too shabby either. That said, it’s not really my thing, so I doubt I’ll be tuning in for the next episode.

The BMW Hire Series pioneered the technique of branded content and this is definitely one of the more creative ways I’ve seen to market a property; though it can’t be cheap and its net effectiveness may be hard to measure. Though, if the project sells out, then I guess it doesn’t matter.

Strangely, though the company is billing it as viral video promotion there doesn’t seem to be any way to share the videos, either email it to a friend or embed it in a blog post. This seems like a serious oversight in my opinion.

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