Notorious R.O.B.

One of the finest online journals around is @Issue, which usually deals with topics surrounding design but with strong forays into advertising, marketing, and branding. I make sure to check up on it periodically, because of gems like this:

This amusing graphic is from Marty Neumeier‘s book Zag: The No. 1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands (which I haven’t read yet but will be picking up on the strength of this post on @Issue — hey, social media marketing in action!).

The editors of @Issue note:

His book was published before social media caught on, so we don’t know how Twitter would fit into this comparison? Maybe a courtship between two emoticons.

So what would “7. Social Networking” look like?  Would it be any different from the six already here?  In some ways, it would be closest to #3 – Public Relations and #6 – Branding.  But there are elements that are missing; I’m trying to think of what those elements are.

Any thoughts out there in Notorious-Land?

-rsh

I believe in zeitgeist.  Things seem to happen in groups, where one conversation is followed by another on a similar vein.

Last night, I have a great conversation with Stacey Harmon about a presentation she’s giving to realtors on the value of social media for real estate.  We explore the difference between branding and lead generation, based on this post of mine on branding and social media that Stacey found interesting.

Then today, I see this epic video blog by David Gibbons of Zillow — a response to this post by Courtney Cooper — on the topic of whether “Blogging is Dead”.  The video itself is below:

The gist of David’s video — which, sadly has no transcript and no bite-sized snippets I can post — is as follows:

• It isn’t enough to have a blog in 2009; you need to have a remarkable blog.
• Blogs require customers come to you in order for it to be useful as a marketing vehicle.
• Are home buyers and home sellers spending their online time on your blog?  If not, rethink.
• Most realtors aren’t great writers.
• The status-sphere, specifically twitter, is more important for conversation.  Photos, videos, and status updates on Facebook are becoming more effective.
• David’s noticed that starting around February of 2009, conversations on Twitter and Facebook started to exceed conversations via blog.
• Think way beyond blogs; look to other channels elsewhere on the Internet for people with real estate problems to solve.

There’s actually a lot more so I urge you to watch the whole thing.

David is a smart guy and he knows the Internet and social media marketing, so when he declares blogs to be 2008, and the “statussphere” to be more important to online marketing and conversation, it’s something to take seriously.  I happen to think he’s right in many respects, but due to a critical confusion, taking David’s advice at face value could be a bad thing.  The key is to understand the difference between branding and lead generation in your marketing efforts.

Read the rest of this entry »

At the recent REBarCamp Orange County, I found myself staring at the board listing the sessions and enjoying the wonder of discovery.  The discovery was that apparently, I was supposed to be leading a session with Stacey Harmon on “Social Media and Branding”.  As they say, anything and everything could happen at a BarCamp.  That joy of discovery was followed by the joy of improvisation, as I learned that Stacey had to stay behind to finish up a session on using Twitter, and I had been planning on being Vanna to Stacey’s Pat Sajak.

So I got up and did a bunch of verbal tapdancing.  For those in attendance, I promise to refund your registration fees.  [ED: Rob, BarCamp is free, you idjit.  Yeah, well, it's the thought that counts.]  To my surprise, the session ended up being one of the better ones for me, in part due to the awesome people who didn’t seem to mind that I was speaking completely off the cuff, and in part due to the warm rays of the incredible southern Californian sun.

I wanted to expand on some of the concepts we discussed, however, because we didn’t really get into how social media and brand interact.  It also appears that we need to discuss things further because prevailing misconceptions on how social media fits in to an overall marketing scheme.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is NOT for a Thrift play...

In part 1, I started to talk about marketing in a consumer environment when the middle is disappearing.  My basic hyopthesis is that the American consumer today operates in one of two modes: Thrift and Aspiration.  Thrift mode means a focus on price above all; Aspiration means a focus on luxury, lifestyle, or something more than “mere product”.

To apply these thoughts to the marketing of real estate, I asked a few questions, of which the first one is the topic for this post:

If the Middle is disappearing, and the two dominant modes of consumers are Thrift and Aspirational… have you considered how you are positioning properties not only to demographics, but also to psychographic profiles?

Let me attempt to tackle this question and explore what real estate marketing of a property in a post-middle era might look like.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last night’s Lucky Strike Social Media Club (LSSMC) dinner featured a presentation by Phil Thomas DiGiulio (@holaphil) of Wellcomemat on “Video and Social Media”.  I thought it was an interesting topic in and of itself, and am grateful to Phil for coming by to have the conversation with us.

During the dinner — as is normal for LSSMC — a topic came up that I thought needed more elaboration and discussion.  One of the sub-themes of social media and its impact on marketing is how professional it ought to be.  Should companies, for example, have an “official” corporate Twitter handle, like @onboard?  What topics are appropriate for a corporate blog?  And so on.

Video, as it turns out, is directly implicated in this sub-theme.

Professional vs. Confessional

One of the biggest barriers to implementing video as a marketing strategy is cost.  I have priced out what it would cost to have a professional video made for my employer, and the ease with which one can spend $15K on a 3 minute video is staggering.

Video is inherently a more difficult medium for an amateur.  Video editing — even as it is made easier with technology — remains a more technical, a more difficult, and a more expensive proposition than editing text.  Simply consider the fact that you may need to buy a piece of software to edit video.  And that’s assuming that you have the visual aesthetic sense, a talent for crafting narrative using motion pictures, and skill with blending sound and image and motion — all of which are somewhat specialized skills.

Phil usually recommends that you hire a professional to do a well-crafted video, and for good reasons.

On the flipside, however, there has been a growing trend in the world of video towards a more intimate, more amateur, and more “raw” approach.  Perhaps the explosive popularity of reality TV is reprogramming our cultural expectations.  Perhaps the wide availability of cheap equipment and editing software is bringing “moviemaking” to the masses.  The popularization of sites like YouTube certainly helps to spread video works that wouldn’t have seen the light of day in earlier times.

For example, Nigahiga is one of the top subscribed channels on YouTube.  This is a typical video:

While Nigahiga videos are hilarious, with decent editing, a story, and some really funny actors, part of the appeal is its extremely amateurish production values.  The exact same script, exact same actors, exact same everything, but done professionally by a TV production crew would be horrible.  Audiences would be making fun of the terrible script, the bad acting, and the not-so-funny jokes.

Why is that?

Audience Expectations: Artifice

I think the reason is that the modern audience grew up in the era of mass media.  Few of us remember a time before movies, a time before television.  The Millenials don’t remember a time before the Internet.  Few Gen-Xers remember a time before VCR’s.

Movies and TV are a part and parcel of our culture, our memories, and even our identities to some extent.  As we grew up surrounded by filmed entertainment, our knowledge of and expectations of motion pictures have also grown.  We are no longer fascinated, as the first viewers of movies were, by grainy black and white footage of a train pulling into the station, over and over and over again.

As filmmakers advance their art, as TV producers get savvier, as actors and directors and lightning and sound engineers and editors and the rest of the production industry continue to improve their art and technology, our expectations of professionals continue to rise as well.

Just last decade, CGI was a big deal special effects wise.  We audience members oooh’ed and aahh’ed at movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.  Today, we take CGI for granted, and harshly criticize crappy CGI work.

The result of all this improvement and sophistication on the part of the audience — as a direct response to the continual improvement by industry-leaders in film and television — is that we hold professionals to a far higher standard.  We are so jaded by movies, by TV, by big explosions, by car chases, and special effects that to break through our awareness and make an impact requires something extraordinary.

For example, this Sprint ad:

From a marketer’s perspective, having worked at an ad agency, the level of execution on that video/ad is incredibly high.  The amount of thought that went into it, the CGI-work, the models, the video shoots, the ad copy, the script, the voiceover work… all of it likely required thousands upon thousands of manhours of work by some of the best and brightest in the advertising industry — namely, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the winner of the 2008 Ad Agency of the Year by AdWeek.

That is the level of skill, of art, needed to break through with professional video.

In contrast, when the audience is confronted by video that is clearly not professional, and is intended not to be professional, then the expectation changes.

Audience Expectations: Humanity

The Nigahiga video on YouTube embedded above is a perfect example of changed expectations.  The martial arts fighting sequence in the Nigahiga video is hilarious precisely because it is so amateurish, and intentionally so.  What the viewer is responding to isn’t the technical perfection of the fight scene, but the humor and the personality of the actors (and the filmmaker) as evidenced by their staged “fight scene”.

What the audience expects in an amateur production is humanity, not artifice.  They want authenticity and personality, rather than perfect execution.

In that situation, I believe that the bad lighting, the bad acting, and low production values are a bonus rather than a detriment.  They help to create authenticity.

The Nigahiga videos would not be improved by professional lighting, or a soundstage.  They would be hurt by it.  Getting professional actors to act out the skits would not make the videos more interesting or more entertaining; I rather think professional acting would make the videos less entertaining.

This is, frankly, the connection to “social media”.  Video, I think, has a unique ability to help viewers assess the honesty and authenticity of the person on camera.  Visual cues, speech patterns, the facial expression, gestures — all of these things help a viewer decide whether the person they are viewing is “keepin’ it real” or faking it.

If you understand social media properly — that is, as an expression of the Cluetrain concept of authentic human connection, rather than as a collection of technology tools — then you will implicitly grasp that video is just another tool for that expression.  Based on that, you can make decisions on whether and how to use video to maximum effect.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

There is, however, real danger with video, and one that I don’t think is well enough understood.

The danger is not the unprofessional video with shaky cameras and bad lighting.  No, the real danger is the mediocre professional video.

Because the audience expectation is so high when it comes to professional work, in order to avoid looking like an idiot, your execution must be extraordinary.  This is both prohibitively expensive and incredibly difficult.  The difficulty is easily illustrated with this video from Cyberhomes (which is a good company of good, smart people):

The cheesy stock photography, the horrible music, the “professional” voiceover, all combine to make what is a deadly boring corporate video.  This is not to say that the team at Cyberhomes didn’t do a good job — it did.  But the video is not extraordinary, and it couldn’t possibly be — it isn’t a Goodby Silverstein campaign costing millions of dollars.

Once the decision was made to go the “professional” route, Cyberhomes could not help but fall into the “crappy corporate video” hellhole, not because of anything its team or videographer or editor did, but because what they could not possibly do given the likely budget for something like this.

There is a price for artifice.  A rather significant one in the current media environment.

If you are unwilling or unable to pay that price, then your video project is doomed from the start.  It may be a better strategy to go the other way and go for an amateurish, human connection driven video play instead.

I think Jim Duncan‘s “hey, I’m talking on camera while I’m driving somewhere in my car” videos are absolutely fascinating.  Unfortunately, I can’t embed them on a WP.com blog, so go view a sample here.  An embeddable sample is from Robin Greenbaum, of Prudential Douglas Elliman, in New York:

The parts where Robin’s real voice comes through, when she’s giving her opinions and views rather than when she’s reading off some description of the Windermere, are fantastic.  She sounds like a human being, like an interesting person with strong views, with whom one might be able to have a conversation.

And that, my friends, is social media.

-rsh

I had a roommate in college who was an architecture major as an undergrad.  He was such an insufferable snob — for example, in the entire year we lived together, he never watched any movie that wasn’t by Fellini — that my view of architecture and architects may have been unfairly colored.

Thankfully, I recently learned just how fascinating architects are, especially in the post-Green era.  So I started to dig around just a bit.

And I must ask… why aren’t architects blogging more?

I asked this question on Twitter and LinkedIn and got some interesting responses, but thought to expand on them here.

Seriously Compelling Content

Blogs are, of course, for those who work with the written word.  At the same time, there’s no denying that pictures and graphics liven up what would otherwise be a wall of text.  Architecture is inherently a visual medium, but one that requires quite a bit of explanation (via words) to appreciate it fully.

For example, look at The Visionaire, a new building by the Albanese Organization, designed by Rafael Pelli.

The Visionaire, by Rafael Pelli

That’s a beautiful building.  And a beautiful image.  There are more stunning images of gorgeous buildings in the world of architects.  Look at this image from Centerbrook:

Discovery Research Center, Dekalb Plant Genetics Corp.

Unlike artists, however, architects have to create buildings that people work in, shop in, play in, and live in.  There are layers upon layers of things going on that I had no idea even existed.

For example, solar path.  It makes perfect sense once it’s explained, but until it is, it’s one of those things that a normal person rarely (if ever) thinks about.

Solar path diagram

Architects routinely think about stuff like this, as well as all of the engineering that goes into a project.  I heard Stephan Kieran of KieranTimberlake spend a good 5 minutes talking about a wall.  With cross-section diagrams, showing heatmaps.  I rather think he could have gone on for a good half-hour just about a wall.  Maybe more.

And all of it is fascinating, because so much of it is simply a brilliant exercise of human ingenuity.  Intelligence, applied.

Plus, architects write.  Centerbrook has published a freakin’ book.  And here’s the whole list of their publications.

And last, but not least, non-architects are genuinely interested in architecture.  It is an art form, after all, and one that impacts the average person’s life in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Every New Yorker knows that a part of his identity is tied up with the skyline, the buidings, the iconic ones like Empire State, and the forgettable brownstones lining 11th street.  Every homeowner lives every day with the result of decisions made by some architect or three.  People are interested in architecture.

The whole heady mixture says to me, “Blog!”

Thankfully, some architects are starting to get into the blogosphere.

KieranTimberlake has a blog.  Unfortunately, KT seems to use it mostly as a repository for press releases, which makes it basically useless.  I learned through LinkedIn that Modative has a blog, and it’s quite good.  (I’ve linked to it in a new blogroll category.)  Most of the other architecture blogs appear to be written by critics, academics, journalists, and so on, rather than by practicing architects.  If you know of blogs by architects, please send along the link, or post it in the comments.

Effective Marketing?

Turning to the topic as a marketer, rather than a new kid-in-candy-store enthusiast, I confess that I am puzzled why more architects wouldn’t blog.  It strikes me as almost the ideal marketing vehicle for the profession.

Perhaps the bigtime developers who hire architects for the most part grow up in the industry and know all the architects they’ll ever want to know.  Maybe the plethora of design and architecture magazines makes it unnecessary for architects to market themselves.

If you’re Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, maybe blogging just isn’t something you need to do.

But what about all those who aren’t already world-famous architects?  How would a potential client know to hire you?  What does he judge you on?

I ask because I genuinely do not know, never having hired an architect, nor having been one.  But since architecture is still a services-based profession, where one’s intelligence, wisdom, judgement, aesthetics, philosophy, and temperament all come into play, it seems to me that letting people know who you are, how you think, what interests you, and what your design philosophies are would be an excellent way to let like-minded clients find you.

Sharing knowledge, sharing insight, and being a genuine, authentic person are proving to be the most important method of marketing in the post-Cluetrain world.  Architects have knowledge, have insight, and are human beings — get on the cluetrain!  Let the world know your views on things.  Talk about projects as an insider.  Let us see that you’ve put in hours of thought into just how sunlight should strike the window at a precise angle at 3PM on a Friday in April.

Let us behind the curtain.  We may have no idea what you’re talking about, but we will recognize that you do.

So architects of the world, unite in blogging and social media!  You have nothing to lose but your aura of mystery.

-rsh

[Because Teri Lussier hath commanded me to do this post, and her wish is my command.]

RE Bar Camps are one of the fastest growing events in the real estate industry.  What the hell is a RE Bar Camp?

Well, start here.  The first one was put together by Andy Kaufman, Brad Coy, Mike Price, and Todd Carpenter in July of 2008, prior to Inman San Francisco.

It is, basically, an “un-Conference”.  Any number of people get together with no preset agenda, no preset speakers, no preset topics.  Then, anyone can basically post a panel or a presentation or a discussion topic, and whoever wants to go participate just goes there and does just that.

It’s very fluid, very dynamic, and the format lends itself extremely well to a give-and-take, open-discussion that is so sorely missing in other event types.

I’ve now been to a couple of these RE Bar Camps (hereafter, “REBC”) and they’re really quite fun and educational.  It helps that all the REBC’s so far have been free to attend.

As a result, there are REBC’s popping up all over the country.  Next week, I’m going to Virginia for REBCVA.  I missed going to Seattle, but looking at Phoenix, Los Angeles, maybe Houston, and there are REBC’s coming up in Portland and Denver as well.  I suspect we’ll see more.  (Although I’m still waiting on REBC Virgin Islands and REBC Oahu.)

My employer, Onboard Informatics, has sponsored a few and will sponsor a few more this year as well.  We support the REBC movement itself, and frankly, the sponsorships aren’t very expensive.

They are, however, from an events standpoint a bit of a pain.  Because each REBC is organized by an ad-hoc committee of volunteers, each and every sponsorship is a separate thing we have to work out.

At the same time, it would be a bad thing to deprive each local organizing committee of their passion and their commitment.

So I’m thinking, what would be great is some sort of a single, national (global?) clearinghouse for things like sponsorships.  Such a clearinghouse makes it easier for national players to sponsor REBC’s — I could see someone like BHG willing to step up with a national sponsorship.  So could someone like, say, Trulia.

Such a clearinghouse could also help the local organizers get bulk discounts on things like tags, T-shirts, posters, and other supplies.

I don’t think it should become the organizer, or start putting rules and such into place (except the obvious unavoidable ones, like “don’t run off with the money”).  But it would be helpful for those of us interested in sponsoring REBC’s.

-rsh

In all sincerity, the best and the brightest our nation has to offer.

It may be completely inappropriate to compare the life-and-death work of our military in Afghanistan to the buying and selling of real estate ensconced in our safety… but I could not help but read this with interest:

We also must strive to be first with the truth. We need to beat the insurgents and extremists to the headlines and to pre-empt rumors. We can do that by getting accurate information to the chain of command, to our Afghan partners, and to the press as soon as is possible.Integrity is critical to this fight. Thus, when situations are bad, we should freely acknowledge that fact and avoid temptations to spin. Rather, we should describe the setbacks and failures we suffer and then state what we’ve learned from them and how we’ll adjust to reduce the chances of similar events in the future. (Emphasis added)

General David Petraeus

That is from a recent speech that General David Petraeus gave at the Munich Security Conference talking about the very real, very serious problems of fighting Al Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.

But if he were speaking at just about any real estate industry conference, I don’t know that those words would be any different.

How often have we heard condemnations of NAR, and specifically of David Lereah, former Chief Economist for NAR?  There are even whole websites set up to rant at Mr. Lereah.

And according to at least one real estate professional, David Lereah and the whole ‘head-in-sand’ approach to the RE market hurt her directly by undermining the credibility of the profession, forcing her to un-educate then re-educate consumers, and establish her own credibility as a realtor.

What’s more, not one big brokerage or big brand in real estate was sounding the alarm back in 2005 or so, while individual realtors were starting to get real skeptical of home values, and blogs like Patrick.net were in full bubble-warning mode in 2005.

What has that done to the brand image of all Realtors?  What has the failure to freely acknowledge that situations are bad, the failure of so-called ‘real estate experts’ to warn about the housing bubble, the failure of so-called ‘mortgage experts’ to warn about the credit bubble, and the failure of so-called ‘ethical professionals with fiduciary duty to clients’ to properly advise buyers during what was obviously a bubble done to the industry?

Post-bubble, has there been any major statement by NAR or by a major brokerage acknowledging the “setbacks and failures” and stating “what they’ve learned from them and how they’ll adjust to reduce the chances of similar events in the future”?  If so, I missed it. Read the rest of this entry »

Conservative? Us?

Lawyers — probably the most risk-averse group of human beings on the planet by training, vocation, and personality — are starting to embrace social media and web marketing principles.  There are some rather interesting lessons from that world for realestistas.

For example, this article from Lawyers USA (h/t What About Clients?) titled, “Are you overlooking your best marketing tool?”:

Many law firms are missing a marketing tool that is right in front of them: their own staff.

While all law firms believe the mantra that every staff member is an ambassador for the firm, few make it an explicit element of firm culture.

In fact, your staff is already marketing all day long – they just need to be reminded of it.

“If you really believe, as I do, that everybody is marketing from the moment they wake up to the moment they sleep – meaning that you are persuading someone as to the validity and worthiness of your idea, whether the idea is ‘Hire me,’ or the idea is selling your story to a judge or jury –then everything that involves your people and you is marketing,” said Edward Poll, founder of LawBiz Management Co. in Venice, Calif.

But lawyers and law firm management have not successfully transmitted this message, said Tom Kane, principal of Kane Consulting Inc. in Sarasota, Fla. and author of www.legalmarketingblog.com.

“Everyone needs to understand and buy into the idea that they have a significant impact on the firm’s brand,” he said.

For small firms, whose clients more often visit the office in person, it’s even more critical that everyone from the receptionist to the paralegals to the people in the copy room know that they represent the firm. [Emphasis added.]

This brings together two separate, but related, strands of something I’ve been talking about on this blog for a while.  One is the notion of a integrated real estate brokerage modeled after law firms.  The other is the idea that a broker’s brand is in the hands of the weakest, least competent agent.  Every broker, indeed every company, talks a whole lot about customer service.  You can’t read a corporate mission statement these days without hearing about how they’ll be focused on providing excellent customer service.

And yet… how many companies actually go beyond pretty words on the corporate website, or lofty phrases of the mission statement, and do something about service?  The reason, as the author of What About Clients blog points out, is that customer service is hard to do:

Client service is very hard, and most businesses don’t even know it. So they don’t build it, they don’t work hard at keeping and improving it, and they don’t enforce it.

The author is Dan Hull, a partner at a law firm in Pittsburgh, who is quoted in and written about in the article above.  I think his suggestions are something brokers might consider.  I think they can be summarized as Train, Evaluate, and Enforce.

Train

The first suggestion is to make client service an official policy of the firm, and to let your people know what is expected of them.  And if you’re training everyone to be client-centric, then you may as well let it influence your hiring decisions as well:

“Teach your staff that they are marketing the firm. Give them instructions on how to answer the phone and interact with people and the standards of care you would like to see,” said Poll.

This message should come across as early as the hiring process.

When Dan Hull, a partner with Hull McGuire PC in Pittsburgh, interviews potential employees, he introduces “The 12 Rules of Client Service,” a 30-page book of required reading created by his firm that includes such items as Rule #6: “When you work, you are marketing” and Rule #9: “Be there for clients – 24/7.”

Evaluate

Training, of course, merely sets the table; to implement it, you have to evaluate the impact and create a system of incentives and disincentives.

Employees at his firm know they will be evaluated based on their customer service skills and are encouraged to evaluate the partners on the same.

Presumably, at Hull’s firm, annual bonuses, perhaps even raises and promotions, are based at least in part on how the employee has carried out client services.

Metrics FTW!

A lot of policies fail in implementation because there is no evaluation, no metrics.  No matter how great the idea, no matter how thorough the buy-in from people, if you can’t measure how someone is executing on the idea, then success is highly unlikely.

Furthermore, talking about evaluation and metrics forces you to get real.  “We’re client focused!” is easy to chant.  But it’s meaningless.  “We have 95% client satisfaction rating” is harder as a slogan, but it’s meaningful.  “I return all client emails/phone calls within 5 minutes” is pretty uninspiring, but it’s something that really can be measured for an individual.  And talking about metrics and evaluation forces the idea-guys to boil down the ideas to specific actions.

Enforce

Perhaps the most illuminating suggestion, Hull is absolutely clear and absolutely unforgiving when it comes to enforcing client service:

He bluntly tells everyone in the firm the rules are not a gimmick and anyone who doesn’t buy into them will be fired.

“The only way you can get fired in my firm is to make a joke about client services. We are dead serious about it,” said Hull, author of the blog www.whatboutclients.com.

And he has followed through on that promise, such as when he fired an employee on the spot for refusing to take a phone call from a client over a weekend when both partners were out of town.

For what it’s worth, without enforcement, it isn’t client service; it’s lip service.

It’s all just pretty words, and useless metrics, unless there’s actual enforcement.  Now, “enforcement” has a strong punitive connotation, but it really needs to be both positive incentive and negative punishment.

If an employee is doing great, performing awesome client service, then he needs to be rewarded — and the rest of the firm told how, why, and how much that reward is being given.

Of course, in contrast, if someone isn’t following the firm policy on client service, then that person needs to be punished, even terminated.  Lack of enforcement simply means that the organization understands that all the “client service” hoopla is just hype.

Medium, Meet Message

Due to some recent conversations on the topic of social media, the idea of client service really strikes me with some force.  Social media, after all, is still a channel for communication.  It does not, by itself, bring a message forward at all.

And amidst the buzzwords, the strategeries and tactics for using social media, doesn’t it sometimes feel like we’re all learning how to speak in all directions without thinking of what to say?

So here’s a thought: client service is the message.

Whether you use social media, Web 2.0, Web 1.0, telephone, U.S. Postal Service, or stone tablets, the message remains the same: client service.  Whatever that might mean, however you might measure it, and however you go about the business, at the end of the day, doesn’t the practice of real estate services come down to providing some sort of client service?  And beyond the whole small-is-beautiful or bigger-the-better, isn’t the determining factor for victory superior client service?

So ask yourself this: Is your company, your business, about client service?  Or lip service?

-rsh

I’m reasonably sure that none of you currently reading this has ever thought that those three terms belong together. But they do!

Recently, I got into a discussion with the inimitable Teri Lussier about Fred Astaire vs. Gene Kelly. Well… to be fair, it wasn’t much of a discussion. More of Teri beating me about the head rhetorically speaking. So naturally, I went searching for information on the difference between Astaire and Kelly.

And found this:

“People would compare us, but we didn’t dance alike at all!” Kelly said in a 1994 interview, quoted in the Associated Press obituary. “Fred danced in tails – everybody wore them before I came out here – but I took off my coat, rolled up my sleeves and danced in sweat shirts and jeans and khakis.”

It was the natural quality that was so attractive in a Kelly musical. While most of Astaire’s films existed only as a framework for his great dance numbers, a Kelly musical was more likely to pretend to be a “real” story in which the characters spontaneously burst into song and dance, almost to their own surprise.

In fact, here are the differences made visual:

Fred Astaire is just… ethereal. He doesn’t even look like he’s dancing in some cases, as if twirling and tapping his way across the floor were the most natural thing in the world.

And yet, there is something of real artifice in his dancing in a strange way. I simply can’t relate to the man, in some ways because of his perfection. Some of it may have to do with the characters he’s playing, or the time when those movies were made, but there’s really something unapproachable about Astaire, something forbidding in the purity of his perfection. As Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, Jeder Engel is schrecklich (“every angel is terrifying”).

Now, here’s Gene Kelly:

Gene Kelly’s style is much more muscular, much more physical, if you will. I’m always aware that Kelly is actually dancing in his dance numbers, in a way that I sometimes forget that Astaire is doing.

But I’m also able to relate to Gene Kelly in a way I never could with Fred Astaire. This is a man doing something that is unnatural, and doing it exceptionally well. But you never forget the essential humanity of Gene Kelly as a person in his dances. Yes, he’s capable of incredible athletic and acrobatic and balletic feats — but I feel that I’m watching a person do those things.

With Astaire, I sometimes feel that I’m watching a spirit, an angel, a personification of dance, do those things. And it isn’t the same.

I realized there’s a rough analogy to be made here between “traditional” marketing and “social media” marketing for real estate. Fred Astaire to Gene Kelly is like “traditional” marketing is to “social media” marketing.

Fact is, in the 21st century, there is no longer such a thing as “traditional” marketing — one would be hard-pressed to find a broker or agent who completely rejects web-based marketing initiatives in favor of only print, open houses, and MLS books. The books themselves no longer exist, after all.

The question, really, is one of perfection vs. authenticity.

The best of ‘traditional’ marketing — for example, sites like Corcoran.com, is reflected in its execution. Something like the Virtual Book is a pretty slick implementation, as is something like My Dream Home. Neither of these things are “social” in any way, but you can’t help but admire the execution. Even if we don’t go so far as to call it “perfect”, fact is that perfection of execution is the goal of these kinds of marketing campaigns.

Done right, they evoke admiration from the user, as well as a measure of, “Gee whiz, I wonder how they did that!”

In contrast, ‘social media’ marketing tries — Gene Kelly-like — to go for authenticity in lieu of perfect execution. The goal with blogs, for example, shouldn’t be to present a perfect face to the world, but to present a human one. It isn’t about the professional quality of the photographs, but about the opinions of the realtor who is presenting the property. It isn’t about the beauty of the market report, but about its genuineness.

Of course, the best ‘social media’ marketing is pretty admirable too — just like Gene Kelly isn’t exactly a slouch in the dance department. The point is that the goal is different.

There is one further point to be made.

Gene Kelly was still a dancer, one of the best of his generation (or any generation). He wasn’t just some random guy who ran around prancing and pretending that was dance. He still put in the time, understood the principles, and practiced being a dancer.

Having a blog does not make you a ‘social marketer’ anymore than simply throwing your body around makes you a dancer. Twittering 24/7 does not mean you’re engaging in ‘social media’ anymore than prancing around makes me Gene Kelly. And ‘social media’ is not an excuse to completely ignore basic rules of marketing.

On the flipside, the true marketers in our industry (myself included) need to raise our game some. If we’re not going to go for authenticity, then by golly, we’d better shoot for perfection of execution like a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers number.

Perfection vs. authenticity. Here’s another look — watch and be inspired:

-rsh

UPDATE: Teri Lussier has posted a response that is worth reading in full.  Don’t miss more singing and dancing!