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For those of you younger than 30, this is how we used to sell houses.
Or rent apartments
Or sell cars.
Compelling, isn’t it?
Makes you want to just run out and buy the thing.
In the olden days, when there were newspapers, this is the way people advertised stuff.
Ads like this only work if all the ads are like this. When you start to add photos, then the ads with the photos drive out the ads that are only text. This works not only for houses, but also for cars, boats, hotels, and most certainly for dating services.
Then comes video.
Ads that have good video will drive out ads that only have photos. But the video has to be good
And what is ‘good video’?
Most of the video I have seen on real estate websites are not really video at all. They are stills that are cut together under an appalling soundtrack.
The people who are looking at these ads watch an average of 5 hours of TV a day, every day. (That is the US average now).
They have a very high expectation for what video is supposed to look like. When they click on the ‘video’ box on a real estate companies website and they get a pile of stills with music stolen from the waiting room in a funeral parlor, it tells them something about the real estate company and the house – it tells them that perhaps these people selling this house don’t really know what they are doing so much. This may not be fair, but it is what the real estate agent is telegraphing subconsciously.
Thus, there is a great opportunity here to re-invent (or to my mind invent) exactly what a short video to sell a house (or a car or a boat or a date) should look like.
Here is what it should not look like:Â It should not look like a pile of stills or pans with bad music and a dead track.
What should it look like?
It should look like a surrogate trip to the house.
What does that mean, a surrogate trip to the house?
It means that if you went into the house, and really liked it, what would you do? What would you be looking at? What catches your eye? The best way to learn this is to try it with a clear and open mind. Do it. Go into a house (even your house) and show it to someone that you want to impress. “Hey, check out this Sub Zero Fridge”. Would you then open the door to the refrigerator? I bet you would. So do that. When you go into the bathroom do you turn on the tap to see the water pressure? I do. So do that too. The more we can ‘create’ the ‘real’ experience of visiting a house for the first time – create it for the viewer, the more comfortable and compelling the video is going to be.
The problem is that houses don’t move. (And neither do cars, unless someone is driving them), so let someone ‘drive the house’. Let someone walk you through the house and show you all the great stuff. Interact with them. Have a conversation.  A REAL conversation, not a narrative of a script that some real estate agency has written which is nowhere like the way that people talk.
Then, cut the whole thing together like a mini reality show – with great music. Driving music. Houses don’t move and rooms don’t move but music does. And should. The music should be powerful.
Watch HGTV some time and listen to the kind of music that they use. It rocks. It’s full of stings. It reaches out and grabs you and says ‘hey, wake up you!’
Do that here.
The deadline for the real estate contest is the end of the month, but that’s only the beginning, because once I have a great real estate video that really rocks like a sizzle reel for pitching a show should – then I am going to take it to every major online real estate company in the world and show them what they should be doing.
And who should be doing for them.
Many will not ‘get’ it, but all we need is one.
And I am willing to bet that I can find that one.
And one is all it takes.
To start a whole new industry.
“VJ can make GR8 Sales Videos 4U” …so to speak.
