Real estate marketing has been largely a soulless activity. It's a necessary and specific type of work — which is why real estate marketing really exists in its own category. However, real estate isn't immune to a changing world and adaptation is on the horizon.
During my brief foray into real estate marketing, I remember engaging with a new development — a high-rise project worth hundreds of millions of dollars bringing hundreds of new units to a growing community. Early on, we were trying to understand the vision for the project and get some background on the target audiences to maximize the marketing spend and show our client an effective return on their investment.
After a long-winded pitch, we were told point blank by the client that "No one cares. These units will sell anyway. I just need to hire you guys so I can show my bank that marketing is taken care of." I mean, this person wasn't wrong. The real estate market in Canada being what it is, for many years it seemed like you just needed to have four walls on a piece of dirt, and if you had a pulse you could probably sell it.
So, all of our ideas for tech-enabled marketing approaches and a highly differentiated brand strategy, fell by the wayside. No one cared.
Yet, many large-scale development projects — high-rises to planned communities — will begin life as a glitzy identity and a design aesthetic projecting some vision, some perspective on the world, and even some personality. Invariably, once the project is sold and the building is delivered, a brand-level amnesia sets over the whole thing and there is no connection to the personality and promises that were made by the initial brand launch for that property. Who is there to uphold that? Certainly not the strata corporation.
In this way, it appeared that real estate marketing was at least a little dishonest — not because anyone was selling anything insincerely or being outright deceitful, but because the purported level of care and intention that the fancy visuals were communicating didn't reflect the reality of what happens when all the units are sold.
That was our last real estate marketing project, and for good reason. When we learned that the methodology that we hold most sacred was seen as entirely superfluous in this industry, it was apparent that real estate marketing wasn't a good fit for us. In our work and in my personal practice, arriving at the authentic, values-based expression of an individual, team or organization is the bedrock from which we build brand strategy. No amount of tech-enablement or go-to-market strategy happens, until we have a solid foundation.
And without that, all we're left with is advertising masquerading as meaningful brand-building, to sell a commodity for which there is so much demand, that advertising isn't even necessary. This work seems easy to do, and we could have done it, but what's the point?
So, over a decade ago, we chose to focus on brands and companies in transition. We naturally gravitated to them because they were either about to launch something new or required a major rethinking of how and why they exist before re-entering the market. Skyrocket has worked across 30+ industries in that time, and the greatest common denominator in all of these engagements was that we were working closely with leadership teams trying solve fascinating challenges: catalyzing growth, outpacing competitors, leveraging technology.
Today, I believe the real estate marketing industry is in transition — but continues to live in some denial of it. Project marketing firms leverage digital platforms and content production with the agility and speed of media houses, while real estate agents have fashioned themselves into influencers and regularly flaunt their "celebrity" personas on social media. Distrust is on the rise and audiences have long since seen through the lack of substance in all that goes into real estate marketing. Glitzy presentation centres leave consumers in fear of construction-time cost-cutting measures, and with flashy agents, consumers see the blingy visual assault of the commission fees they're paying.
Communication tools, AI, and yes, even blockchain, have enabled the large-scale distribution and transaction of value in many other realms. There's no reason real estate would be any different. Yet, like many other industries, real estate just hasn't faced the same economic pressures to innovate and hasn't been forced to become more resourceful... yet. A booming market and skyrocketing prices meant that everyone in the industry was making money hand over fist, and that doesn't really incentivize the players to make transformational changes. No one was "broke", so why fix it.
Much of our economy (and civilization!) is built on property and that property changing hands. So, real estate as an industry can't really go extinct. However, as Tesla showed us with direct car sales, and as we've seen in so many other realms, adaptation arrives at different speeds depending on the market forces involved. Real estate marketing is due for a revolution, it's just a matter of when.
