/01
THE BRIEF
Brand a public-private community that any owner-occupier would actively want to belong to — without compromising the partnership behind it.
In 2021, AVJennings was tendering for a partnership with Homes Victoria — the Victorian state government's social housing body — to redevelop an ageing public housing site in Brunswick West. The partnership would deliver a tenure-blind community: 198 new homes combining social housing, community housing, private apartments and private townhouses on a single inner-Melbourne site.
Three problems stacked. First, AVJennings had to win the tender. Second, the precinct had to be branded in a way that would land with Homes Victoria itself. Third, the project would have to go to market in a country where mixed-tenure communities still carry public-perception baggage. The brand would have to do social-context work that almost no community brand in property marketing is asked to do.
/02
APPROACH
In the tender room before the contract existed.
We worked alongside the AVJennings acquisitions team in the tender room before the contract existed — building the brand and credibility evidence that supported the bid. After the tender win, we pitched the brand to Homes Victoria itself. The brand had to satisfy two rooms at once: the marketing room that wanted a brand that would sell apartments, and the policy room that wanted a brand that would honour the social purpose of the partnership.
The brand went through two identities. The first was launched as GronnPlace — a Scandinavian-feel name reaching for a particular kind of European urban-residential aesthetic. It didn't land. The brand was repositioned as Harvest Square — a name that carried the agricultural and market-garden history of Brunswick West, grounded the precinct in its actual local context, and signalled neighbourhood rather than enclave.
The Harvest Square identity was then applied across the full application set: the brand system for the precinct, apartments and townhomes, the Display Suite, signage and off-site billboards, the CGI library, and the complete digital marketing toolkit — landing pages, digital brochures, advertising and social. The brand sustained through release after release: Bricklane, the Ceres collection, Now Complete.
/03
WORK DELIVERED
/04
OUTCOME
A tenure-blind community that buyers chose on its merits.
The brand carried Harvest Square from the tender room through to homeowners moving in: 198 homes across social, community and private tenures, releases selling through to Now Complete, and an identity that held for three years without a reset. The repositioning to Harvest Square gave the precinct a name the neighbourhood could own.
"
The brand had to sell homes and still honour what the partnership stood for. Harvest Square struck that balance.
— DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, AVJENNINGS
The brief that arrives is rarely the brief that delivers.
We're worth having in the room before the tender is written.
NEXT PROJECT
Cadence →
BRAND & PLACE · CONSULTING + STUDIO