The Insider: Issue 020

Good Monday morning, all. This week, we explore what happens when brands spin up big stories and someone then periodically fact checks on how that’s going, and of course a little magic with words and design.

 

Last Week This Week

Zillow is calling a time-out on iBuying for the rest of the year, citing labor and supply shortages. Mike Delprete dug into the data and concludes that Zillow simply bought too many homes for too much money over the past couple months. Our take: this is a swing and foul tip in the first at bat, in the first inning, of a 162-game season. Brilliant people with a household name brand and nearly illimitable access to capital will figure it out.

First American put another $150 million into endpoint, the online closing company it launched in late 2018. Doma and Qualia are the other big players in this space. All are running hard through the regulatory and behavioral gap opened up by the pandemic, which brought the digital transaction goal line a whole lot closer. These companies aren’t as “sexy” as the consumer facing ibuyers and cash offer players, but their potential is every bit as transformational.

NAR President Charlie Oppler published an editorial calling on the DOJ to honor the settlement agreement it struck with the trade organization in 2020, then backed out of in 2021. NAR’s messaging on this issue has gotten better, and we can expect some pre-emptive MLS rule changes to come out of the upcoming NAR annual expo aimed at inoculating the industry from regulatory action. But reading this most recent piece gives you a sense of just how high NAR thinks the takes are.

Have You Heard About This?

When Brand Promises Fail
This one hits home. On the one hand, we’re brand people. We believe in the power of brand to help clients break free from the pack, make an impact, and attract the type of people they want — as staff, customers, affiliates and partners. On the other hand, we are fully aware that sometimes brand promises and stories — especially when they take aim at big societal problems — fall apart. We’re talking about ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft, which promised a new frontier in transportation that would include fewer cars and less carbon emissions, less time commuting, and even driverless cars. A recent New York Times editorial cites new studies and research that measure the impact Uber and Lyft have had on cities and the environment, and explores how each of their brand promises has fallen short. In some cases, they’ve moved us backward from the goal. (Think: more cars on the road, more drivers circling around in traffic dumping emissions into the air, fewer people on public transit, basically no one sharing rides, and a taxi industry completely ripped apart.)

What's Inside

Lap of Luxury
A $26 coffee decanter and a word to which we’ve assigned all the wrong meaning sparked a fresh take on a tired real estate trope. Marc makes some incisive observations and challenges us to stretch out of the old luxury zone in the Inside LinkedIn group.

Join this discussion in the Insider LinkedIn Group.

Speaking of Luxury
We’re dropping a new Original Research report this week. We asked real people some questions about luxury real estate, what luxury really means to them, and whether or not it matters if you use a luxury sign. The responses might surprise you.

Buyer commissions: Yep, we went there
The feds and lawyers are in the industry’s face about buyer commissions and the system of cooperation and compensation in which they are set. So we thought we’d ask actual recent buyers what they think about how they paid their agent. If you haven’t read the Original Research report, take a peep.

Inspiration Point

 
Ads Imitating Art Imitating Life
What a clever delight to scroll upon the above post from The Chicago International Film Festival on Facebook. In a sea of colorful images, selfies and news headlines, this post gets an A+ for pulling our attention into its totally different, unadorned, black-and-white format. Thinking outside the sandbox often works wonders. In fact, there’s a lot of interesting stuff happening on this group’s Facebook page.

 
Maybe Just Say Nothing
For contrast’s sake: sometimes it’s not about the words at all. Case in point is the McDonald’s ad above, which juxtaposes colorful imagery quite beautifully to tell a story. What a cool way to message the fact that you do business on mobile without saying “we put listings on mobile.” Think about it.

Quote of the week

“The best advertising will be great because of an indefinable quality that communicates with us as humans, not consumers.”

— Bob Hoffman