No doubt that advertising needs to be looked at carefully in the context of the message environment. One of the future sections I’m working on deals specifically with adaptation, and I think it’s a critical point.

@John -

I’m not suggesting that greed isn’t part of nature. What I am suggesting, however, is that greed impacts a professional’s image and integrity in profound ways.

When the Internet bubble happened, and it came out that Wall St. analysts were providing favorable reviews of dotcom stocks their firm was peddling, that destroyed in-house research.

Wall St. learned from the debacle, and came back with statements of conflict or ownership or whatever. All of a sudden, reporters and guests on financial news channels were divulging information about their stock ownership, their company’s client rosters, etc. when talking about a stock.

I don’t think they ever truly recovered from that initial blow, and certainly this latest bubble in real estate destroyed whatever credibility they had built back up. At least this time around, we’re not accusing Wall St. of evildoing — just of stupidity. /shrug

No one wants to say “hey, this ride is gonna end soon — you should sell now”. What provides professional integrity is that you did it when you didn’t want to do it. If you want to justify the failure of real estate professionals to sound warnings back when they knew the market was unsustainable, then… well, that’s fine, I guess. But then you gotta answer this:

If a realtor didn’t know the market was unsustainable, then in what way is he an “expert” for whose advice I should be paying?

If a realtor did know but didn’t advise me out of greed, then in what way is he an “ethical professional” I should trust?

Idiot vs. Crook are the only labels available if you just “went with the flow”.

Individual agents — like Jay Thompson — did sound the warning in 2005. Individual agents have advised their clients to sell, or to hold off on getting that $1.5m house on $35K of income. I’ve heard the stories from them. But not one Big Real Estate that I know of has ever done anything like it.

Bye bye, brand integrity; bye bye, brand value.

Either way, repairing the damage from this is going to take some of the steps I’ve outlined above, and a lot of time. If you look at the history of the American engagement in Iraq, you’ll note similarities there: initial strategic failure, horrible info ops failures (Abu Ghraib being the biggest one), reform and a new COIN-based strategy, followed by years and years of work to restore credibility.

Two conclusions I draw from the military experience. One, things can be turned around. Two, it will take a lot of hard work, and a fair amount of time.

-rsh

Unfortunately when everything’s going great and the money’s pouring in, no one wants to say “stop, we should sell now”. Greed is part of our nature, whether it’s real estate, stocks, or tulip bulbs, everyone wants to hold out for that last nickel. We’re all human (I think), and as a society in general, our propensity for greed will never change. Without greed we’d all still be gathering nuts and berries in the forest!