A little over a year ago, Gulf Coast home builder Heritage Homes appeared on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and received an incredible amount of well-deserved press. I emailed company president Frank Lott to congratulate him, and after a few conversations our agency was awarded his account.

Heritage Homes was founded in 1983, and their advertising had been very down-the-middle-of-the-fairway, similar to other retail home builders. The Extreme Makeover experience was an eye-opener. The public saw firsthand that Heritage Homes is a genuinely good-hearted company. And if they’re on a nationally televised show, then their product must be solid, right?

The positive publicity created a measure of brand fame, and the timing was perfect to step it up with the paid media. There’s no reason the advertising shouldn’t illustrate the same personality people followed on the show.

Heritage Homes’ retail advertising continues to be all about value; however, we’ve introduced conceptual advertising into the mix, something no other builder in the area is doing. It shows that Heritage Homes has a personality and gives the audience credit for having an intelligence.

Aside from the advertising, we’ve built a new web site from the ground up. The site is an integral part of the buying experience, so we concentrated on improving not only the production quality (overall design and photography), we completely reworked the information architecture to deliver a productive user experience. Have a look: HeritageHomesFamily.com.