Mark Henderson looks to Skoda for inspiration on how to change perceptions of offsite construction
Mark Henderson is the chief executive of Home Group
When Skoda introduced the Octavia in 1998 its launch was not the success the company had dreamed of, despite its cars winning top industry awards. Why is that? And what can we learn from it in housing?
As a sector, we love talking about modern methods of construction (MMC).
Building offsite offers many benefits in terms of responding to the housing crisis more efficiently. And we know that the quality is good - after all, these homes are built in controlled conditions and therefore have to meet strict quality standards.
Additionally, we continue to face a challenge around capacity to build at scale in the traditional construction sector, which means we will only get close to the government target of delivering 300,000 homes a year by using MMC.
Another challenge we face is efficient use of land.
Small pockets of land can be incredibly costly to build traditional homes on, but this may not be the case with MMC.
Since modular homes came into existence, we have seen an increase in quality, improved access to mortgages and broader choice. But what about perception?
After all, we're talking about people's homes - and if the public don't believe in modular houses who are we to force the idea onto them?
What's the point of building this kind of home at scale if the public don't want to live in them?
This is why we commissioned YouGov to conduct some research for us on the public perception of modular homes.
In doing so, we discovered that the reason perceptions are not hugely positive is because they are not based on today's modular products.
Around 70% of respondents (a weighted sample of 2,076 people) associated the 'modular' home with shipping container homes - something that can't be further from the truth with today's high-quality products
And just 11% identified an image of a modern modular home (from Ilke Homes, a supplier that we are working with in the North East this year) as modular.
Worse still, 52% of respondents said they would not live in a modular home. So at present, we are trying to tackle the problem with products that customers don't want (or at least don't think they want).
This could be compared to the situation that Skoda found itself in - perceptions were based on the brand and not the product it was currently marketing.
When the Octavia launched, Skoda took a cautious approach, failing to acknowledge that consumers thought of the brand as a joke and failing to be open about the journey the brand had gone on.
So why would consumers think anything had changed if Skoda wasn't brave enough to be open about it? Why should they have put their faith in the new car?
Following the lack of success in 1998, a new marketing campaign was developed to launch the Fabia that tackled the issue head-on. Denial was not an option and the ad copy was bold: "The Fabia is so good that you won't believe it's a Skoda". It was a success.
So perhaps with modular homes we need to be upfront about the negative perceptions we face.
We need to publicly show how MMC has evolved since early iterations of modular products.
And we need to be transparent about the benefits too.
Skoda was offering value for money - but because of negative brand perception, that benefit may be translated by the customer to mean 'cheap'.
Similarly, we are talking about one of the benefits of MMC being efficiency - but if people associate shipping containers with modular homes, they might translate this into 'quick and dirty'.
But as I mentioned, in the sector we know this isn't the case.
This is why at Home Group we have launched our Gateshead Innovation Village live research project - an open and transparent MMC project that compares and contrasts many modular products on one site, and actually involves residents in the monitoring and evaluation of these products.
Of course, that part of the project involves only the people who live on-site, and we need to reach out much further than that.
This is where we will use tech and multimedia to allow customers to see these products first-hand as they really are. With virtual reality, product journey films and public exhibitions we need to make these products and processes more accessible and open.
We need the public to see the quality assurance processes and technology involved.
If we can invite customers to virtually go behind the factory doors and into the finished homes, they will be able to see for themselves that we have moved on from the early days. They will be able to see that modular homes are no longer the traditional home's poor relation, but an exciting possibility for a whole new lifestyle.
But if we are going to succeed in changing these perceptions, we need the wider sector to get behind MMC. Gateshead Innovation Village isn't simply a Home Group project - it's an accessible and independent research project.
And we hope its findings will help other organisations take the confident and bold approach to offsite construction that the UK needs.
Mark Henderson, chief executive, Home Group
Original link - Inside Housing
