62 | INTERVIEW Kurt Fraser
DEVELOPER
Dropping a super-yacht marina and residential village into the ancient bay of Kotor, without shattering the authenticity of this stunning Eastern Mediterranean coastline is a big ask. But, unlike some of his breed, when Fraser talks about preserving integrity, you believe him.
“One of the saddest sights in Montenegro is the concrete jungle of ill-conceived development that has gone ahead, scarring the landscape. The market correction, halting these sites, was a blessing.” Fraser got the Porto Montenegro
gig perched on the bow of Canadian billionaire Peter Munk’s super yacht, (pictured) nibbling canapés and sipping sangria - as you do. Munk is chairman of Barrick
Gold, the world’s largest gold mining company. Add in Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and a couple of Rothschilds and that was quite an investor panel to impress.
“They want results and they will not tolerate bullshit. For Peter Munk, Porto Montenegro is very much a legacy project he wants to be proud of. There are a lot of visionary developers out there, but they are hard to fi nd. My job is to try and connect with them.” So what exactly is Fraser’s job? He does strategy; he does creative, he does vision, he does marketing and he does sales. “I play the quarterback role, bringing in all the other players and I have been very lucky working with incredibly talented people.” There must be something in the Molson beer, because if you were to pick a Resort Olympics team you would pluck several from Fraser’s Canadian homeland. Other services in the Proven International portfolio include target market profi ling, development envisioning and branded operator sourcing. It is easy to assume Fraser is simply a dreamer with a big budget, but fl anking what Fraser calls the “magic” of telling the story of a resort, is the “science’” of development and the “logic” needed to sell it. He is both poet
and pragmatist.
“When developers take the time to understand their target market and design their product to align with that target market - and apply a winning strategy to create excellence - then this business is a joy with huge potential for success, even in this challenging market,” says Fraser. “What amazes me is when
developers purchase land and design, or worse build, a product and then come asking for help to identify purchasers and achieve sales. This is the grim hangover of the investor-fuelled market
“There are terrifi c opportunities for fractional in Europe - for genuine legacy & lifestyle reasons”
we have thankfully left behind.” Fraser is a big fan of the fractional
concept, having seen its success in the Rocky Mountains and Whistler in Canada.
“There are terrifi c opportunities for fractional in Europe.” He also hopes the market downturn will see homes being bought for “genuine legacy and lifestyle reasons and not principally as a quick buck investment.” He also welcomes moves away from giant master-plans to more boutique, intimate and sustainable real estate offerings. “I like to think in storylines when it comes to the potential purchasers. A young family with kids; a retired couple searching for a legacy purchase for their grand- children - how do they spend the day on the development? How do they interact with the touch points of the resort?” Fraser had a stretch as international director of Hamptons. He did not enjoy the agency game, but quickly learnt to look beyond the pre-defi ned corporate marketing programmes that many estate agents impose on developers. “You have to use agents in the
right context, rather than developers simply leveraging against an agent’s brand. The biggest mistake is to give an estate agent exclusivity on a resort development.”
Fraser says agents should focus on a small number of special projects to give them the attention they deserve. Agents may be good at selling,
but that does not mean they are branding experts, creative wizards or PR specialists.
He is quick to praise the best agents in the global fi eld, naming Paddy Dring and James Price of Knight Frank and Charles Weston-Baker of Savills. “These guys know the international market really well.”
“Gone are the days when beautifully designed market collateral or a fancy website was all developers and their estate agents needed to achieve sales success. I no longer create ‘marketing pieces’. I work with developers to create ‘sales tools’. There needs to be a rebalancing of the magic versus the logic. It is all about logic today - developer credibility, building consumer confi dence and trust. Consumers demand far more attention to factual detail and information. Finding a way to do this, whilst presenting it in a highly creative and engaging way, validates the development.”
Returning to the Forrest Gump
analogy, Fraser has certainly packed in a whole host of experiences in his 30-something years and has come a long way from an offi ce boy hired by the Canadian Government to work in a centre dispensing business advice to wannabe entrepreneurs.
Fraser did the ski bum - make that
www.opp.org.uk | AUGUST 2010
instructor - and surfer dude - make that driving high speed Zodiac boats as a whale-watching guide - bits as a Canadian kid chasing the women on the slopes and the water.
He even had a stint as a movie actor, as part of an agency called DEFCON 5 Talent. Fraser was parachuted in when a director wanted actors who could portray elite soldiers or police offi cers able to handle lethal weapons without shooting the boom operator. He has settled into a rather less macho English family life - complete with British citizenship - with wife Catherine and daughters Lola, 4 and Ruby, 3.
“England is home and one of the most beautiful places on earth. I am amazed that people want to leave.” You can tell Fraser is desperate to connect with a developer with the passion and pockets to bring luxury resort living to the UK.
I am thinking Scottish Highlands weaving a resort between loch and mountain, or perhaps he has already sketched his kids’ footprints in the Cotswolds grass and that family photo album is all part of a West Country master-plan. ‘Forrest’ Fraser has still got a few chocolates left in the box and a long way to run.
Kurt Fraser will be presenting integrating sales and marketing for maximum perfomance at the OPPLive conference on Thursday October 14 2010 at 16.00.
My Biggest Mistake
“Buying a fancy black Jeep instead of my first piece of real estate, before the boom of my generation began. Then I could have been buying and enjoying the beautiful properties I have been marketing and selling!”
My Biggest Success
“Making it this far and surviving through the current economic crisis! Having started in Vancouver, relocated to Switzerland with a very young family, then to London, with a desire to become an international expert in my field, is my greatest success. It has been an incredibly challenging and yet rewarding road.”
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