Brand Building

As the headline reads, I am the proverbial “new guy” on the Better Homes and Gardens® Real Estate team. I came to this brand from the travel agency industry where I learned the importance of lead prospecting, strong customer relationships, recruiting talented agents, and referrals.

My role as vice president of Internet marketing will essentially encompass everything we do on our Web site(s) and how we drive Jane and John Doe home buyer/seller to it. The ultimate goal will to be to develop a robust digital toolkit that will enable real estate pros to do their jobs more efficiently. We’ll embrace technology, try new things, and never sit on the sidelines idly… all with the goal of finding a consumer on the Web and delivering him or her to our franchisees via their contact method of choice. We have our finger on the pulse of emerging Web 2.0 real estate trends so that we can help foster social network development through Linkedin or Twitter, or even experiment with services such as bazaarvoice to allow consumers to provide reviews of their experience with an agent. We are totally open to new things.

On a personal note, I’m fortunate to be a “case study” since my family and I are looking to sell our home and move this summer. I have been on just about every Web site and blog under the sun to find a place to live and a broker to help us find our home.

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Posted by Kevin Doell

Last week I immersed myself in green by checking out an EcoBroker training event in Kingston, NY. The event lasted three days: one day on health issues, one day on energy conservation issues and a third on marketing. In all, it was a lot of ground to cover. During breaks I would take the temperatures of the attending brokers and agents who all seemed to be enjoying the course and getting something from it.

As expected, there were all types in the crowd with backgrounds that ran the eco-gamut – from “super die hard,” to “looking for a new angle,” to “professionally intrigued.” And though the famed Woodstock, N.Y. was just a stone’s throw away from our digs at the Quality Inn, not a Birkenstock was to be seen amidst the group. It seems that some of the old badges and trademark apparel of green has fallen by the wayside. There needn’t be a visual cue present for a green spirit to lie within.

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Having participated on a number of advisory boards, I learned firsthand the power of putting together a group of talented people who can help build or grow a business. The opportunity to hand-pick an advisory board to help us get this brand up and running was exciting, given the fact that real estate brands typically don’t have individuals who are not directly involved with listing and selling real estate give advice. Nicolai, Wendy, and I put our heads together and collectively came up with a short list of people whom we know and respect and reached out to them. Each has different strengths and strong ideas on how our brand should look and feel. They all agreed to join, and so, our Advisory Board was born …

I found a great web site called “TechPresident.com” where I read that “the Internet is the dial tone of the 21st Century.” (not sure who gets credit for that gem of a quote: either Andrew Rasiej and Micah L. Sifry, or David Weinberger. Read platform.) This site outlines a platform of all the good things that can arise if the U.S. develops a top tier Internet infrastructure.The site’s outstanding little hook is to provide a dazzling array of social media tracking charts and graphs on the narrowing field of presidential candidates. For example:

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Posted By Wendy Forsythe

Recently I’ve been devoting a fair bit of time to the development of the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Awards and Recognition program. Agents take their awards very seriously and I’ve often heard complaints from brokers and agents regarding various awards programs. So, after soliciting years of input (either wanted or unwanted!) here’s the chance to start fresh. If only it were that easy!

What and how many categories of awards should we have (individual agent, partners, teams, office, regional, national, specialty, etc.)?

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Posted by Kevin Doell

This is cool.

Tomorrow I’m kicking off a company-wide employee green Task Force and, wouldn’t you know it, someone sent me a link to Earth Hour 2008. Great timing. Check out the video above.

It’s a pretty simple idea that is intriguing, though immensely complicated to execute I bet. On Saturday, March 29th, the organizers at Earth Hour (the folks from the World Wildlife Fund, WWF) are asking everyone to turn off their lights from 8-9 p.m., local time, in the fight to reduce global warming.

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Navigating the Corporate Social Responsibility Platform of Being Green

As we build out the real estate arm of the BH&G brand, we are faced with wading through a sea of options when it comes to being green. The challenge lies in the fact that green extends into almost every facet of business and life. It’s not as if you can simply hold a fundraiser once a quarter for some particular cause and cut a check. That approach might just smack of greenwashing (scroll down to see NBC Today Show Video). To be really green, a company needs to consider its operations in their entirety:

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David Pogue, technology editor and blogger of the New York Times, sings “I want an iPhone”

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Posted by Sherry Chris

You can’t imagine how many people I have spoken with since the October 8th announcement that Realogy was re-launching the Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Brand. Some of the people I spoke with had something to sell or license, some of them were looking for employment opportunities, some wanted to join as franchisees or agents, some wanted to offer advice as to how to launch the brand, and some were just genuinely curious as to how you decide what a brand is going to look like when you literally have a “clean slate.” The last group is why we named our blog “Clean Slate.”

There are a lot of people out there with a lot of opinions… and that is something I am personally grateful for. You see, we decided up front that we would talk to as many people as we could, and entertain all of their products, services, ideas and opinions. You never know when a good “out of the box” idea will be the end result of a conversation or presentation. We are also doing a lot of research into the habits of home buyers and sellers, the consumers who will actually be using a lot of the tools and services we develop. Reports such as the NAR “Profiles of Home Buyers and Sellers” are very helpful in confirming demographic information and statistical information around buyer and seller preferences.

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