You’re Not Just Managing a Building—You’re Creating a Product
How Branding Principles Can Transform Your Tenant Relations Strategy
This week, I had the opportunity to present to BOMA Miami-Dade on a topic that reflects where the industry is heading—and what tenants increasingly expect.
We’re living in the age of hotelization.
Across the office, medical, and even industrial sectors, property management is evolving from a purely operational role to an experience-driven one. Buildings are being repositioned not just as places to work—but as curated environments that support wellbeing, engagement, and community.
Here are a few quick facts:
- In modern office environments, tenant experience accounts for over 70% of retention decisions, even outweighing rent rates and location.
- BOMA’s TOBY Awards dedicate 30 points of scoring to tenant relations and community involvement. More than any other category.
- Top-performing properties are now offering amenities, service levels, and hospitality standards once reserved for high-end hotels.
In other words, property managers are doing far more than managing buildings. They’re managing the product—the experience people engage with every day.
And whether they realize it or not, they’re also building the brand that surrounds that product. The project manager creates the energy and excitement around the project.
That’s why it’s time to apply branding principles to tenant relations—and treat it like the strategic asset it really is. Here’s how to begin.
Applying Branding Best Practices to Tenant Relations
Here’s the structure I shared during my presentation. It mirrors the way we approach building a brand or launching a marketing campaign:
1. Understand the Building User Journey
Not just the leaseholder—but everyone who interacts with your property. From move-in to maintenance, parking to package pickup, every touchpoint either builds trust or chips away at it.
In marketing, we map our a customer journey into six separate sections:
Are you aware of those moments? Are you engineering them—or just reacting to them?
2. Define the Experience You Want to Deliver
This is where branding really kicks in.
- What do you want people to feel when they walk into your building?
- What do you want them to say about it when you’re not in the room?
You don’t need to be luxury to deliver a luxury-level experience. You just need to be clear, consistent, and intentional.
That starts with defining what your “brand” is as a building—and how that brand shows up in your communication style, service standards, amenities, and even your team culture.
Let’s take it one step further.
Exercise: Create a style guide or a mood board. This helps you visualize the feel you’re trying to evoke.
3. Create a Playbook
Here’s where strategy becomes repeatable. Once you’ve mapped the journey and defined the experience, your next step is to document how to deliver it.
A simple tenant relations playbook might include:
- A welcome checklist should go beyond giving rules and regs. Let’s make it stylized. Let’s make it friendly!
- Communication templates (emails, service notifications, surveys)
- Touchpoint calendar (appreciation days, check-ins, events)
- Service standards for responsiveness and team tone
- Guidelines for how your brand shows up in physical space (signage, uniforms, common areas)
Think of it as your internal brand manual for tenant experience. Another way to think of it: a Tenant Relations & Community Impact SOP.
The Red Napkin Moment
Right before my session, I got an email from entrepreneur Dan Martell that underscored this entire approach.
Dan told a story about a restaurant where the staff places a red napkin at tables for first-time guests. To the team, the red napkin is a signal: this is someone new—create a moment worth remembering.
The manager walks over. Engages. Offers a small token (a free slice of cheesecake for next time). It’s not about dessert—it’s about planting the seed for return and referral.
That’s a customer experience system. And it works.
So, what’s your red napkin in tenant relations?
Is it a personalized welcome note?
A same-day service check-in?
A thoughtful onboarding packet?
It doesn’t need to be grand. It just needs to be intentional.
As a Property Manager, You’re Already a Marketer—Whether You Call Yourself One or Not
Every email, every repair follow-up, every touchpoint is either building your brand or diluting it.
If you’re thoughtful about those moments, you don’t need a big marketing budget to win tenants.
You just need a repeatable system that delivers value, connection, and care—over and over again.
So, what’s the experience your building delivers?
More importantly, does your team know how to deliver it?
Let’s stop thinking of tenant relations as a list of tasks.
And start treating your commercial real estate like the product it really is.
— Jackie Awve
A Note About the Work
I’ve spent the last decade helping commercial property teams shape those experiences. I founded Awve Marketing in 2012 and have worked with some of the top brands in real estate. Every week for the last 10+ years, I’ve published a curated newsletter with the top 4–5 trends from over 30 CRE sources—designed specifically for South Florida property professionals. (You can sign up here)
I’ve also had the privilege of writing BOMA International’s TOBY Award entries for more than 30 buildings—with three international wins, including:
- 2018, Global Innovation category (inaugural) – Shanghai Tower, Shanghai, China
- 2024, 1Mil+ category, – HaiTian Center, Qingdao, China
- 2025, Medical category, Baptist Medical Health, Plantation, Florida, managed by Yanei Perez
Jackie Awve Marketing & Design specializes in helping businesses create marketing initiatives that drive results. Our industry experience includes commercial real estate, retail properties, executive suites, trade associations, contractors and agency consulting.