Top-Notch Creative Sets New Record for Real Estate Brokerage

PROBLEM

In the hyper-competitive Silicon Valley real estate industry, Pacific Century Realty (PC Realty) was having a hard time breaking through all the noise. With the big brokerages throwing millions of dollars into advertising, the cost of competition for an upstart new company seemed prohibitive. The challenge with which I was presented was to figure out how to break through all the noise without breaking the bank. SOLUTION

In a way, the solution to the problem struck me as quite simple: the cost of competition was indeed prohibitive — but only if you engage the competitors on their own terms. By that I mean, real estate advertising is notoriously basic and boring, to put it politely. Pictures of properties, “adorned” with smiling faces of over-eager agents and sprinkled with a few trite often-repeated headings. To break through the banality, PC Realty needed first to clearly articulate its “unique selling proposition” (USP) — something that no other company, of any size, was really doing — and then to effectively articulate that USP through marketing collateral that positioned it obviously above the mediocre majority. It needed a Madison Avenue caliber campaign along those lines, which is what I delivered.

RESULT

I developed a series of high-quality mailing pieces targeting a carefully culled mailing list, two samples of which are offered here for brief analysis.

The first sample piece, an oversized postcard, asks, “What’s Oatmeal Got to Do with Selling a House in Palo Alto?” (the city targeted for this campaign). It engages readers on the front side of the card by posing this intriguing question and offering an online “IQ Test” for home sellers (the specific population being targeted). The back side offers “social proof,” in the form of a selection of positive reviews/testimonials, encouraging readers to follow a simple designated path: (1) watch the short videos, (2) read the Yelp reviews, (3) request a free consultation. The second sample piece, also an oversized postcard, asks, “Why Are All These People Smiling?” with eight individual headshots reflecting the city’s demographics. The same three-step path is offered, underneath the company’s domain name, where additional information could be found. The back side prompts the reader to physically engage with the promotion, with a “Scratch Here” patch underneath the heading, “How Low Could Your Commission Be to List Your Lovely Palo Alto Home?” The point is driven home by a call-out box with a humorous yet mathematically accurate comparison to the Powerball lottery.

Curiosity, fun, humor, engagement, USP, social proof, call to action (CTA) — with all of these elements effectively combined, it’s no wonder that this campaign broke existing records for the company that deployed it.

As you can see from the description above, there were many “moving parts” to this campaign but what ultimately made it successful was its high degree of persuasiveness. THE SAME GUIDING PRINCIPLE PROBABLY APPLIES TO WHATEVER PROJECT YOU MAY HAVE IN MIND AT THIS TIME: Regardless of the nature of the project, success will hinge upon effective messaging — PERSUASION of your audience, in other words, into believing what you are telling them.