Condo Spokesman’s Flashy Lifestyle Is Too Good to Be True

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Rob Clark lives like a celebrity traveling the globe, hosting Oscar night parties, even sending his people to hand out $50 gift certificates on street corners for the holidays. Occasionally he stops to rest for a few days at his namesake condominium development in West Los Angeles.


Not a bad lifestyle for a person who doesn’t exist.


Rob Clark is a fictional personality invented by New York’s Athena Group NYC to help sell condos at The Rob Clark. His name comes from the location of the building, one block from Robertson Boulevard at the corner of Clark Drive and Third Street.


“I believe in Los Angeles, of all places in this world, people aspire to be something they’re not,” explained Harry Dubin, director of Sales & Marketing at Athena Group and creator of the campaign. “Rob Clark sounds like a Hollywood name. By living at The Rob Clark, you become the aspirational person you want to be.”


The 105 units went on sale in September, and as of last week were 85 percent sold. Prices range from the mid-$300,000s up to more than $700,000, with the average cost around $700 per square foot, according to Dubin.


Young professionals, married or single, represent the target buyers. Within the next 30 days the first escrows will close and residents will start arriving to realize their Rob Clark aspirations.


Other brands have invented personas Tony the Tiger for cereal, the Maytag Repairman for washers but what makes Rob Clark unusual is that he personifies a real estate development and that no one has ever seen him.


He hosted a party on Oscar night with Forest Whitaker but never showed up. People who come to the property can tour his apartment (the model), but are told Rob is traveling. His Web site gives visitors a virtual tour, again in absentia. Even friends on his MySpace page don’t get to see an image.


“Everybody asks, ‘Where’s Rob?'” said Dubin. “We tell them, ‘He’s away.’ At parties we say: ‘He just left the party, you just missed him.'”


The no-shows occasionally irritate would-be condo buyers. According to Heather Shahon, sales associate at the property, most people think Rob Clark either refers to the Robertson-Clark neighborhood or that he is the developer.


Dubin expects that soon Rob Clark will move to another building in Los Angeles, or possibly to Las Vegas. “It’s a different twist on regular real estate marketing,” he said. “Quite frankly, Rob Clark is everybody who buys into the concept. Rob Clark is within each one of us.”

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