C21’s ‘drumbeat’ marketing campaigns gives its network something to tweet about Brand uses 2-year-old campaign to fill in the digital gaps of its larger national advertising

initiatives

May 26, 2015

To help its broker and agent affiliates beat in time with graduation season, Century 21 Real Estate

released a series of “#EmptyNesters” videos, the latest instance of the brand’s 2-year-old real-time

marketing campaign.

Beginning in 2013, the large franchisor, which has over 100,000 agents in its global network, began

creating videos featuring cost-efficient, timely, shareable content to fill in the digital gaps of its massive,

national marketing campaigns that span Super Bowl TV ads to ads in the Olympic Games.

Providing social media marketing content through these real-time marketing campaigns is one way

Century 21 looks to differentiate itself from the hungry pack of real estate franchisors looking to attract

brokerages and agents. Re/Max, Century 21, Coldwell Banker Real Estate and Berkshire Hathaway

HomeServices have all launched national TV campaigns this year.

One of Century 21’s latest “drumbeat” marketing videos, “Listen to Your Mother.”

In addition to distributing “#EmptyNesters” videos to its network using its relatively new partnership with

the social media management platform Hootsuite, the firm uses its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google

Plus and YouTube accounts to get the word out to consumers itself.

In this campaign, the brand targeted Facebook ads to people who liked its Facebook page and who were

45 years old or older and who have adult children, Century 21’s social media director, Matt Gentile, told

Inman. He uses the adjective “drumbeat” to describe the campaigns.

“The average cost of our digital drumbeat campaigns inclusive of production and advertising is

approximately 200 times less than a mass media buy similar to the Super Bowl,” Gentile said.

But one of the key focuses of the campaign is helping affiliates stay top of mind with their spheres of

influence, Gentile added.

Thanks to data from the firm’s C21 Social for Business platform, powered by Hootsuite, Gentile could

share that Century 21 affiliated brokers and agents shared the “EmptyNester” campaign 390 times on

Facebook.

Edward Berenbaum, president of Washington, D.C.-area Century 21 Redwood Realty, is one broker who

uses the “drumbeat” campaign fodder on a regular basis.

Since the brand makes the raw files of the “drumbeat” campaigns available to its network, Berenbaum

uses the raw videos as material for its email marketing campaigns, powered by the video-based email

marketing firm BombBomb.

(Gentile pointed out that the brand is looking to make it easier for its affiliates to access the raw files of its

campaigns with a soon-to-be-completed integration with the cloud-storage service Box.)

Berenbaum views the real-time marketing videos from Century 21 as a “clever, lighthearted” way to stay

in touch with the contacts in his firm’s email database. For example, there’s only so many times the firm

can suggest houses for potential buyers, but these videos give the firm the content for a “friendly touch.”

Berenbaum views the campaign less as a lead-gen tool and more as a way to warm the leads his firm

already has.