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”
 What is a brand?

“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 Marketing
University 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
 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 Repositioning

Brand
Positioning Standards
Equity

Experience Marketing

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 …
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.

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 Positioning
The placement of the brand in the consumer’s
mind
Quick – what do these mean?
 Image
It can help - or hurt - a brand
 Repositioning
Changing market position to reflect a change in
customer tastes

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

Grown tired
Its 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?
Start by answering these questions

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?

 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
1000wattconsulting.com