Did you see the movie 'Best Man?'  One part of it should be required viewing for any REALTOR®.  The movie shows a real-estate advertising campaign that is based on demographic comedic stereotypes.  The campaign was silly—the movie’s a romantic comedy, after all—but it worked: it made the agent’s phone ring.

The concept of advertising has taken many new directions since the advent of the Internet.  Prior to the internet, it was about using your time, space or resources as effectively as possible.  Creativity always has and always will play a role, but the message seemed to be upfront and to the point (queue 1950's Public Service Announcements). Now with the advent of Internet, Tivo and people’s ever-diminishing attention span, advertising needs to do more - it needs to catch their eye and pique their interests.

Who watches television ads anymore?  Tivo lets you fast forward through life—and your favorite television shows.  Now, when people watch ads, it is because they choose to.  They have gotten  caught up in a viral marketing campaign, where a link to the ad winds up in their inbox directing them to the uploaded video on YouTube - or, maybe even simply started there and never on a typical media outlet. Take the New Jersey Association of REALTORS® new campaign.  I'm not sure whether or not
this is a mass media outlet campaign.  But I suspect that, as a Chicagoan, I am probably outside of their demographic market.  Yet, via Twitter and an email forward, I got swooped up by the buzz of the
campaign.

Here’s what happened.  Through Social Media awareness (email), I got the 'seal of approval' from one of my colleagues that these ads were worth my time and attention.  On that recommendation, I chose to visit the YouTube page and watch the ad.  Guess what— my colleague didn't lead me astray.  Because he knew me, he had a better idea of what I'd find informative, clever, or amusing, and he was right.  In fact, his instinct was perfectly on target.  I was so amused by the video clips
that I watched all of them—and each had their own humor and appeal. Now this is the kind of thing I'm talking about with new media advertising.  The message was there, but the ad was done in such a way
that the message became the by-product of the entertainment.

With listings ads, whether in print or new media, you may have a trickier time pulling this off —but you should be able to do it on the level of the agent/broker.  Google AdWords and strategically placed
banner ads are still, in my opinion, the proper way to advertise (always make sure to check your ROI).  Sure, we have all trained our eyes to know where the ads are on each of our most frequently visited
sites.  But having a clever banner or witty AdWord may be enough to draw  a viewer’s attention and get that desired click.  I’m not going to lie: every once in a while I will try to hit the monkey with a
hammer when I see that banner come up on Yahoo  It’s fun and I know I will get 3 seconds of glee!

So the moral of this story is, as the Internet and technology matures, the way we think about advertising needs to adapt.  As a society, we may simply wind up having prospective clients judge us by our humor and our ability to engage as opposed to being direct about the services or solutions we offer.  People have heard it all before, and so they want more than just high quality service, they want to laugh and be entertained.  After all, isn't this the technique Frankly Real Estate used in
the early 2000's (Tennis and surfing)?  And don’t forget - stay tuned to the CRT blog and our Twitter account  for updates on the release of the 2009 REALTOR Technology Survey, the First Annual REALTOR Technology Spotlight Award, as well as our new RETS download client, simpleRETS.

Chris McKeever
cgmckeever@realtors.org