“2011 is the year that Content = Commerce. Back in television’s early days – advertisers were content creators. Remember when ’soap operas’ where produced by soap companies? Well, now that era is back – and it’s going to be explosive. With content creation tools now easy to use – brands and ecommerce companies will find that they’re going to begin to tell their story in video, and in long form.
BestBuy will produce content (and gather it) about consumer electronics, Whole Foods will teach cooking, Pepsi will empower their users to tell stories about the Pepsi Refresh campaign.
And – given the newly connected world of social media – consumers will Like the newly conversation brands that they interact with.” Steve Rosenbaum, Ceo, Magnify.net
What’s wrong with Real Estate Video today? Pretty much…everything.
And we’ll get to that in a moment. 2011 will be the year video ‘arrives’. After eight years of pushing the medium, now we finally get to see it take off.
Within four years, Cisco Systems predicts over 90% of data over the Internet will be video. As leaders in the field, we see our role in 2011 as re-defining what a real ‘real estate’ video is about.
This our own ‘napkin’ SWOT on how we see property video. The Strengths are obvious.
Video is a very effective medium. Weaknesses. Most videos on real estate lack creativity. They’re not ‘ads’. They’re very safe property ‘tours’.
They’re also dialogue driven ‘literal’ tours – “This is the kitchen. It has an island bench-top” or music montages, with titles superimposed like ‘The Kitchen’. What’s worse, they’re chock full of adjectives. Adjectives are for print. Not for film.
Let the audience make up their own mind as to whether a water view is “awesome”. The Grand Canyon is “awesome” – not a water view. At the end of the day, the audience determines what’s “awesome” based on their own individual experiences. And unless you’re being paid to promote Miele appliances, why plug it in a V/O?
Finally. Few are designed to compliment ‘traditional’ property marketing collateral: photographs, floor plans and web copy. Which means all collateral ‘repeats’ much the same message. Over and over again. We see the kitchen ‘in’ the video – and again ‘in’ a still photograph. Opportunities. Let’s make ‘Ads’ not Tours.
Pick the best feature, visualise it with a scene – like a kid throwing a crab pot off a jetty at sunset, and wrap it up with – ‘Like mud crabs?’ – 22 Broadbeach Waters. Mud Crab Heaven! Let’s be creative.
Let’s make creative films that sink an emotional hook. Let’s help ‘Drive’ the audience to the Client web site, to reveal more photographs, or drive them to pick up the phone, and call the Agent.
Let’s aim to work to much shorter durations with 60 seconds being a maximum and 15 the minimum, with one powerful selling point dedicated to every 15 seconds.
Research shows: Videos of 15 seconds or less are ‘shared’ 37 percent more than those between 30 & 60, and 18 percent more than those over 60 seconds. FACEBOOK dominates ‘sharing’.
People share videos on FACEBOOK 218% percent more than Twitter and email combined. Women account for nearly 57 percent of social media video views and share social media 30 percent more than men. Source: Jun Group. www.jungroup.com.
Threats. Technology will increasingly make it easier and easier for anybody and everybody to shoot, edit, compress and upload video. To be relevant, we have to be creative.
We have to be creative film-makers.
Which brings us back to our Strength. Bring on 2011.