New Delhi, Dec. 21 -- Real estate firms have long preferred traditional advertising and marketing messages-choosing billboards over Instagram ads and sticking to celebrity endorsements and the promise of an exotic, often foreign, lifestyle. The House of Abhinandan Lodha (HoABL) is attempting to break the mould in two ways. First, it is attempting to create a brand around plots of land, rather than already built properties. Two, it has moved the bulk of its marketing and sales online, a rarity in the real estate business.

HoABL's chief marketing officer Saurabh Jain talks about addressing this challenge amid the orthodoxy of real estate marketing. Edited excerpts of an interview:

We are India's largest branded land developer, and one of ...