Photo by Valerio Capello

As a luxury real estate marketing professional, how can you achieve top of mind status in your marketplace, overnight? One word: Publicity! The right publicity can help you stand out from the crowd.  Here is an example of how one Italian restaurant leveraged public relations to stand out.

Italian restaurants represent the largest population of ethnic restaurants in the U.S.   For example, several years ago the famed Golden Triangle in Beverly Hills (a few short blocks surrounding Rodeo Drive) was home to 18 Italian restaurants.  New York has the most number of Italian restaurants in the world outside of Italy.

Two years ago, Nino Selimaj, who runs six restaurants in New York, introduced the “Luxury Pizza,” which sells for $1,000 for a pie, or $250 for a single slice. This outrageous 12-inch pizza is lavished with crème fraiche, six kinds of the finest caviar available and thin slices of lobster.  It is sold exclusively at Nino’s Bellissima restaurant in New York.   The luxury pizza must be ordered 24 hours in advance. 

Nino’s luxury pizza may seem extravagant, especially today, when high net worth consumers are shying away from conspicuous consumption, at least in public.  But, it is the newsworthiness of the story that is at the core of the real message here.    We recently caught the story on the Travel Channel which means that the story has “legs” (longevity).  It was covered on many TV news features.

For those who travel to New York, having heard about the $1000 pizza, but have not spent a lot of time there, it is very likely that Nino’s restaurants may very well occupy top of their mind when selecting an Italian restaurant. What can you do, as a luxury real estate marketing professional to generate this kind of buzz in your marketplace by leveraging public relations?

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