Just before Christmas, comedian Louis CK released his latest comedy special, Live at the Beacon Theater, on a website of his own creation. For $5, you can buy a couple of downloads and some video streams of the show. You can watch it on your computer or iPad, or burn it to a blank DVD.
In short, you hand over your fiver, get the video, and do as you please.
There’s been a lot of dialogue recently around raisingthebar – a stirring of ingredients that, if boiled to perfection, could transform the industry. Continuing education, sales coaching, licensing standards and more are in the mix.
These are things that real estate typically outsources to outside experts, and everyone seems OK with that.
Yet along the way up the bar, most choose to manage the marketing and packaging of their brand themselves – an odd contradiction, if you ask me.
A real estate Brazilian
Brand campaigns aren’t cookies you bake at home. Or a pot of goulash into which you throw pinches of this and that. It’s the singularity you weave into everything you do to stand out.
Technology has gifted us with many implements with which to work at this. They empower the user, but can also falsely lure them into believing they are “building a brand” when in reality they are simply making a mess.
You risk sliding down the bar you wish to climb. You’ll gravitate to that which is convenient, or free. You’ll write words that you would never speak to people.
Perhaps you will fail to realize that the stock image of a handsome couple you chose to portray buyers on your collateral may also be the erectile dysfunction models found on a pamphlet at RiteAid’s prescription counter.
Technology has been generous. But it can’t provide strategy – and the discipline required to wax your real estate brand to a perfect Brazilian.
Great brands don’t skim edges. They meticulously groom their campaigns to evoke desire within people who want their product or service. And when that personal connection occurs, when what you do matches how you appear, you create something timeless: A brand.
When you fail you become just another nameless, faceless agent. Or brokerage. Someone or something that just sells real estate.
Climbing
Maybe you have gone the distance. Honed your brand to perfection. Raised your personal bar. You’re ready to rock in 2012.
Why risk the final, grand reveal of who you are through a do-it-yourself, arts and crafts marketing campaign? Leaving your brand obscured beneath a tangle of shoddy marketing and expecting, hoping, praying, that people will search for it is too grand an expectation.
You don’t cut your own hair. You don’t build your own cars. You don’t cobble your own boots or manufacture your clothing – the things with which you adorn yourself to create the picture of who you are to the world. You seek professionals to help you look great.
So find seasoned marketers.
Let them do their job.
So you can spend more of your time climbing.
My shirts are monogrammed, my sweaters are cashmere.
When I fly to Scotland each year to play St. Andrews, I come back with at least a case of the good stuff. In May, my wife and I head to Louisville for the Derby, where we talk about interesting things with other couples while sipping mint juleps.
Sometimes, when I’m down in Palm Beach, I get a pedicure.
Life is good.
But I am not a man. I am a fiction.
A finely tuned instrument of lifestyle branding.
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Honesty. Sophistication. Integrity.
These words might read elegantly on an “About Us” page of your Website. And they may look handsome inside a picture frame hanging in the corridor of your office.
Your corporate values
They form the building blocks of your business. They are the promises against which you must weigh every decision. They are reflected in who you hire, or who you don’t.
They manifest themselves in the reassuring phone greeting people hear when they call after hours. Or they are perhaps degraded by a pulp-filled plastic box affixed shabbily to one of your yard signs.
See, the words mean diddly, unless everyone who comes into contact with your brand leaves with a smudge of them on their shirt.
I was listening to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts recently. The discussion ranged from tech issue to tech issue before settling momentarily on real estate. The hosts were puzzled by an email one of them had recently received from their Realtor, exhorting them to check out their website by using an attached QR code.
Take a moment to let that sink in. An email with a QR code to their website inside.
It’s no wonder these tech savvy hosts were befuddled.
In midtown Manhattan during the 1970’s, pedestrians clustered around street corners where “not from the neighborhood” kids spun upon flattened cardboard boxes to beats pulsating through gargantuan music boxes.
Street poets (MC’s) chanted their stories over these beats – rhythmic tales of a ghetto life that pulled an unfamiliar audience inside a world from which these young performers sought escape.
This street machine blasted Rap, Hip Hop and its many derivatives into public awareness.
A few days ago, my Twitter client chimed. A new tweet hit my dashboard.
“Portland friends, we’ve launched Urbnlivn Portland, a housing blog. Check it out and please spread the word! http://portland.urbnlivn.com/”
I clicked through and was greeted by a stark, minimalist design. Clean, almost Scandinavian in its simplicity, the site was packed with gorgeous photos of downtown Portland condos.
It drew me in. I started clicking around and reading.
Zillow bought Diverse Solutions this week, a great company that offers refreshingly usable IDX products.
What does it mean?
My relationship with social media has been mutable. My enthusiasm has become more cautious over time. It has, honestly, been something of a struggle.
Twitter frustrates me. The 140-character hiccup is too limiting. Facebook is like a 1960’s British sports car – marvelous, but way too much maintenance. LinkedIn is my savings account. I make periodic deposits there but won’t withdraw until the day I look for a job. And Foursquare… well, I prefer turning on to checking in.
Go back with me.
It’s 1964.
And something important has happened in the broadcasting industry. Something so disruptive it will change things forever.