Absolute Nexa

Strategic brand and campaign agency Absolute has launched its first campaign for leading UK housebuilder Dandara, marking a significant step forward in the use of generative AI within residential marketing.

Since January, Absolute has been working closely with Dandara’s in-house marketing team to create an integrated multi-channel campaign designed to strengthen regional brand presence and support development sales across key UK locations.

The campaign,‘You’ll feel right at home’, represents a new approach to residential marketing, combining integrated, multi-channel delivery with an AI-led creative and production model designed to increase efficiency while maintaining high creative standards.

Built around the idea of Dandara as the ‘just right’ housebuilder, the work targets distinct buyer groups including first-time buyers, families and downsizers, using tailored messaging to reflect different life stages and motivations.

The campaign captures the emotional journey of homebuying through a series of AI-generated films and supporting assets, built around reassurance, belonging and confidence. Using detailed audience personas and purchasing profiles, Absolute applied generative AI across both development and production. This enabled multiple tailored versions across digital, social and performance channels, while maintaining consistency in environments and characters and allowing for rapid adaptation.

At the heart of the approach is a shift in how property marketing is produced. By removing the need for location shoots, large crews and complex logistics, Absolute was able to deliver the depth and quality of a conventional campaign while significantly reducing the time to market. The model also enables greater creative flexibility, allowing campaigns to be adapted quickly in response to market conditions or performance data.

The work is also complemented by real photography of Dandara’s show homes across marketing channels, ensuring an authentic representation of the homes and developments alongside the AI-led creative.

Trevor Dempsey, CEO of Dandara said:

We were keen to explore how AI could be applied in a way that genuinely adds value to our marketing, but it was important to find a partner who could guide that journey with confidence. Absolute immediately stood out – not just for their ambition, but for their clear understanding of how to bring AI into a campaign in a practical, effective way.

Throughout the process, they demonstrated real expertise and a strong strategic mindset, all while maintaining the human touch that’s so essential in housing campaigns. The result is a campaign we’re incredibly proud of – one that feels both innovative and commercially grounded. It marks an exciting step forward for us, and highlights the real potential for AI to shape future campaigns across the sector.

Chris Hodgen, Managing Director at Absolute added:

Dandara is a business with real ambition and momentum, and we’re proud to be partnering with them at such a pivotal stage in their growth. Over the past two years, we’ve made significant investment in upskilling our team and embedding AI into our creative and production workflows, positioning Absolute at the forefront of Ai creative development. That early commitment now enables us to deliver smarter, faster and more effective campaigns – combining strategic thinking with cutting-edge execution. For Dandara, that means creativity that not only builds brand presence across regions, but also drives meaningful impact at a development level.

The launch further strengthens Absolute’s position within the residential development sector, building on its experience supporting UK housebuilders including Redrow and Applethwaite.

As housebuilders navigate changing buyer behaviour, increasing competition and ongoing cost pressures, the ability to deliver high-quality, insight-led campaigns with greater speed and efficiency is becoming an increasing priority. This campaign signals a broader move towards more scalable, technology-enabled marketing models – where creativity and AI work hand in hand to drive performance.

About Absolute

Absolute Agency, part of The Absolute Group, is a brand and campaign agency specialising in brand strategy, positioning, development, and campaign creation. With over 25 years of experience, the agency helps ambitious organisations unlock their potential through bold thinking and strategic insight, transforming complexity into clear, actionable direction and delivering memorable, impactful brands designed to lead, inspire, and scale.

Its approach is built on a proven, collaborative process that helps organisations define clear direction and make better brand decisions, delivered through four key stages—Discovery, Clarity, Vision, and Reality, guiding brands from initial insight through to consistent, real-world delivery.

About Dandara

Established in 1988, Dandara is one of the UK’s largest independent housebuilders, with a focus on delivering homes that offer real value for money without compromising on design, durability, or quality. The company has also achieved a five-star Customer Satisfaction rating in the HBF New Homes Survey for six years running.

To reflect changing needs and support a broader range of customers, Dandara has expanded from a traditional housebuilder into a triple tenure developer – offering homes for private sale, affordable housing, and private rent. Its ESG strategy places communities at the centre of every development, with a commitment to Net Zero carbon by 2050 and delivering at least 10% Biodiversity Net Gain across all sites.

Absolute Agency, a leader in creative and digital innovation, celebrates a record-breaking 2024 with key promotions and strategic hires to reinforce its growing digital department. Spearheading the expansion is the promotion of Gemma Illidge to Head of Digital, alongside the addition of two industry experts to support the agency’s mission of delivering cutting-edge digital solutions.

Gemma Illidge, who joined Absolute in 2023 as Senior Digital Account Director, has quickly proven her proficiency in leading digital strategy and transformation. With over a decade of experience, she now steps into the Head of Digital role, where she will drive the agency’s digital operations, growth, and innovation for its diverse and expanding portfolio of clients.

Illidge said:

I’m thrilled to be stepping into this role at such an exciting time for Absolute Agency. With the momentum we’ve built this year, it’s an incredible opportunity to push forward with digital innovation and deliver transformative results for our clients. I look forward to leading our talented digital team as we embark on some ground-breaking new projects—including the launch of the next version of Absolute Control.

Joining Illidge’s expanding team are two seasoned professionals who bring a wealth of experience to Absolute’s digital offerings. Aaron Hargreaves, a UX specialist with a user-first approach, joins from top-tier brands like FOOTASYLUM and Netflights. His design expertise ensures that every digital experience crafted by Absolute is both intuitive and impactful.

Also reinforcing the team is Sam Austin, a front-end development expert who joins from SCAN Computers. Austin’s technical expertise will further enhance Absolute’s web development capabilities, ensuring seamless delivery from UX strategy through to full digital build.

Chris Hodgen, Managing Director of Absolute Agency, expressed his excitement about Illidge’s promotion and the agency’s continued growth.

Gemma has been an absolute game changer since joining the team. Her tech-savvy, resourceful, and hard-working approach has been instrumental in shaping our digital offering. 2024 has been a transformative year for us—investing heavily in developing the next iteration of Absolute Control, our proprietary CMS, has led to a 48% increase in digital turnover. With Gemma at the helm, we’re poised to deliver even more ground-breaking solutions for our clients.

Absolute Control, the agency’s proprietary Content Management System, has been a cornerstone of its success since its initial development in 2012. The current version, v6.2, has already yielded outstanding results, with the eagerly anticipated v7.0 set for release in December 2024. This new version integrates AI-driven tools, streamlining content generation and website updates, as well as an updated data dashboard solidifying Absolute’s reputation for innovation in digital development.

This exciting phase of growth and innovation reaffirms Absolute Agency’s position as a leader in both the creative and digital product spaces.

Applethwaite Homes turned to Absolute Agency and trusted the brand specialists with an overhaul of its brand positioning.

The home builder develops beautiful homes in rural settings, but its branding did not reflect the quality of the properties and the stunning, unique locations.

Absolute Agency was brought on board to conduct a workshop with an in-depth look into what Applethwaite stood for and the audience they wanted to attract.

The final branding look and feel is now more higher end, with a clear colour palette of luxurious dark blue complemented by a secondary, set of paler colours. Ornamental graphics were developed to represent the development locations and the bespoke font used to add to the quality look and feel of the brand positioning.

The branding includes a full suite of material for each development, brochures, signage, graphics, promotional items and packs for new home owners. The graphics and typography are complemented with Applethwaite’s lifestyle images, which bring to life the various happy moments that home buyers experience when they’re choosing their new home.

This branding has so far been implemented on sites throughout the north west including Inglewood near Preston, Davyfields near Darwen and Brackenwood in Blackburn.

Chris Hodgen, MD of Absolute Agency, said:

We have extensive experience within the home builder and property sectors and when Applethwaite Homes approached us with such a unique challenge it was a great project to work on. Our team worked seamlessly with theirs to really get to the heart of what Applethwaite is about and hearing the internal and customer reaction to the new branding has been fantastic.

Colin Hetherington, MD from Applethwaite Homes, said:

We have always been extremely proud in the quality of the homes we build, however we identified that our existing brand identity and marketing materials didn’t match up to this high quality. We wanted to strengthen our position in the marketplace, whilst delivering a unique customer experience from enquiry through to moving in, which truly represented Applethwaite Homes. We wanted to work with a local agency who had experience in the housing sector, but who also took the time to understand our team, our ambition and who could support us on this journey as an extension of our marketing team. The feedback from customers and internal staff has been really positive and our outside visual identity now matches our internal values.

Applethwaite Homes builds family homes in small and exclusive developments that have individual character, their aim is to provide comfortable homes that reflect the quality and style of times past and satisfy the needs of modern living.

Bolton’s Absolute is behind the brand refresh of a premium homebuilding company, Redrow. As one of the leading home builders in the UK, Redrow design their homes with character, spacious open plan living, and only use quality fixtures and fittings.

But it doesn’t stop there. They also develop thriving communities by putting their customers at the heart of everything they do.

The new brand was first launched in Redrow’s De Clare Gardens development in Caerphilly, Wales, and featured a new-look and digitally focused Customer Experience Suite – already in Redrow’s future plans however 2020 and the COVID 19 pandemic meant a digital-first sales approach was accelerated to meet the demands of the changing landscape.

Simon Allman, Absolute’s Creative Director, said:

Redrow provides premium homes and first-class customer service, but its brand wasn’t aligned with its offer. During our full brand audit, we discovered there was an overcomplicated system that had too much focus on the sub-product identities, diluting the core Redrow brand.

We took a ‘less is more’ approach, stripping back the color palette, fonts and introduced a geometric brand pattern inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement. We also developed a new personable tone of voice that has the ‘A Better Way to Live’ brand purpose at the core of all marketing communications. The result is a more understated, but confident brand, with a lot more character.

Absolute worked closely with Redrow’s marketing team throughout the 18-month project to define a collective vision for the home-builder which better reflects the homes they sell. This included the launch of a new brand marque created by Redrow’s in-house creative team, headed up by Dave Armstrong, to bring a more contemporary and modern look and feel to the brand which is better suited for digital platforms.

Matt Grayson, Redrow Group Customer & Marketing Director, adds:

We’ve worked closely with Absolute for the past few years on a variety of projects, including our ’Why do up’ TV campaigns, and in that time, we’ve had a shared vision for where the brand needed to be. Our biggest focus has been to change the way we sell our homes, taking a digital-first approach and improving the customer experience overall whether that’s online or in-person.

This has enhanced the engagement with our customers at all stages of their home buying journey. Although a lot has changed, everything is rooted in our Arts & Crafts heritage, ‘A Better Way to Live’ philosophy, and 5-star customer service.

The digital focus means that Redrow is perfectly placed for future marketing, leaving the door open for future-proofed technology with new and exciting ways of selling its premium homes to its customers.

The brand refresh is the biggest change in over 40 years and will continue to roll out across all new Redrow developments, Customer Experience Suites, and show homes, as well as all digital touchpoints and social media.