Branding a real estate company – the right way

Marc Davison

Partner

1000watt Consulting

What is a brand?

“A brand is a name, sign or symbol used to identify products or services that differentiate and distinguish one competitor from another”

“A brand is a set of assets or liabilities linked to a name/symbol that adds too or subtracts from the value provided by that product or

service.”David Aaker

Professor of MarketingUniversity of California at

Berkeley

What is a brand?

“A brand reflects a documented promise backed by trust experienced by the masses and built over time. It

regards expectations met in the mind of the consumer.”

Walter Landor (Coca-Cola, General Electric, Shell Oil,

British Airways)

What is a brand?

"A brand own a valuable piece of real estate in the consumer's

mind"

Me

What is a brand?

Enter the Real Estate Zone

Please note: The images contained herein are not offered for laughs, or to disparage any individual. I have found that it is important to offer dramatic examples to get people to realize just how dramatically our industry has strayed from the basic rules of brand care.

Let’s start with the basics:

Will the real brand please stand up?

What does this do to the Realty Executives brand promise?

Is trust built here?

What does the Realtor brand is the corner mean?

Or here?

7 components of successful branding

Execution

Positioning

Repositioning

Experience

Standards

Marketing

Brand

Equity

Image

Execution

Delivering upon expectations which define the core benefits of using your brand

How important is managing expectations to creating and maintaining brand equity?

High expectations: A weekend at the Four Seasons

You enter the lobby. You’re greeted graciously by the desk staff. You take in the luxurious surroundings associate with the brand. You ride the elevator up to your room, put the key the door and …

http://www.1000wattconsulting.com/

This sort of disconnect happens all the time in real estate. It is brand

death. RE/MAX corporate

site: great experience, access to

millions of homes. Expectations met and

promise kept

RE/MAX broker site. Email address required

for access to any information

Positioning

The placement of the brand in the consumer’s mind

Quick – what do these mean?

Image It can help - or hurt - a brand

RepositioningChanging market position to reflect a

change in customer tastes

A necessity when a brand’s image and promise have:

Grown tiredIts original market has matured or gone into decline Its offering has evolved.

Cadillac did it

Experience

What you do to make consumers love themselves for loving you

Starbucks reinvented the coffee experience. Who will reinvent the real estate

experience?

Marketing

Aligning consumers’ perceptions through a clear, cohesive and uniform definition of what the brand is and what it does.

Standards All participants inside a company must

enforce the brand’s value, imaging, positioning and service guarantees --

especially in a service businesses where people represent the brand

How standards work: When you think UPS …

Do you expect this? Or this?

Is it possible to wake up from the real estate branding nightmare?

What distinguishes you from everyone else?

What’s your symbol of trust?

What’s the promise connecting you to a consumer’s core need?

Can you meet the expectations you create?

Can you afford not to enforce standards?

Start by answering these questions

The future for real estate belongs to brands that create meaningful

relationships with customers by playing by the tried and true rules of

branding

It can be done

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