Trulia TaxiCab Advertising in New York City

January 2nd, 2008 | 1 Comment


Trulia NYC Taxi Cabs from rudy bachraty on Vimeo.

Last month I wrote a guest post on the Inman News Blog covering Trulia’s Taxicab advertising campaign in New York City titled Because Paying Rent Sucks. After seeing those sexy Trulia cabs everywhere, I finally decided to go out and capture them on video. As luck would have it, I found a few people who were willing to share their thoughts with me about taxicab advertising. The results were mixed.

I asked Trulia if they could measure the ROI of the campaign. According to Pete Flint, the Founder and CEO of Trulia:

To your question about measuring the ROI of the campaign. It is of course less accountable than most online advertising, but I think that many readers would be surprised at the amount of measurement that we can do to figure out what is working and not. We relentlessly monitor both our geographic searches, types of search, on site activity and location of searchers. By comparing trends, we can get a fairly accurate picture of what is working or not.

This data is very useful for our own evaluation of marketing initiatives and also extremely important and valuable for our advertisers to enable us to offer geographic and behavioral targeting.

No matter what the ROI is, this campaign is about building brand awareness offline. Sure it costs money, but it’s something others should consider if they have the means to do so. Believe it or not, your average consumer isn’t as hip to all the online home searching choices available today as we geeks are. In order to get serious traction, these types of campaigns are necessary. I’m looking forward to getting some feedback about the campaign. I’m sure we’ll all learn something from it. The good, the bad and the ugly.

What do you think of the ads?

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Posted by Rudolph D. Bachraty III | Filed Under Advertising, NYC Video 

REBNY Reminder - You Can’t Advertise Other Real Estate Agents Exclusive Listings

December 12th, 2007 | 2 Comments

ducks.jpgBait and switch? Have you ever heard of it or quite possibly experienced it? Well, if you ever searched Craigslist, The New York Times online or other such real estate listing sites for a home then the answer might be a resounding yes. In open non-regulated listing venues such as these, real estate agents with no exclusive listings, get shall we say, a little creative. They poach other agents exclusives and advertise them without the listing agents permission. Shame on them!

You know, the listings without the exact address. The ones that sound too good to be true. They use this sleazy tactic in order to get customers - buyers or renters. Most of the time, the customers don’t even realize what’s happening. They just want the place and shrug it off as the cost of doing business in New York City. Yada Yada Yada…

An agent friend of mine who’s been in the business for quite some time told me a story of how they learned about this tactic the hard way. After they had consummated a real estate transaction as the listing agent (their exclusive right to sell listing) they were informed by the buyer how they actually found the listing and the buyers agent. Apparently, the buyers agent had placed an ad online advertising the other agents exclusive listing. After the buyer found out, they didn’t want to lose the deal so they closed their eyes and proceeded. My friend the listing broker was pissed, but did not do anything about it. And you wonder why crap like this still happens.

Recently, REBNY sent a reminder notice to all it’s members regarding our co-brokerage agreement.

Reminder - Change to the Universal Co-Brokerage Agreement

The Board of Directors of the Residential Division has approved an amendment to the Universal Co-Brokerage Agreement that provides for the imposition of monetary penalties on those firms and agents that violate the rules pertaining to the advertising of another firm’s exclusive listing. The fines range from $2,000 to $5,000 and upon a fifth conviction a firm/agent will not have access to the RLS for a period of 30 days.

The only part of the memo that makes no sense to me is that they give you five chances to break this rule. The monetary penalties are too low. Then, they really drop the hammer on you by denying you access to the RLS - REBNY Listing Service for 30 days. Is this really a deterrent?

In order to really prevent this type of behavior from happening, should the penalty be more severe - like revocating their real estate license ?

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Posted by Rudolph D. Bachraty III | Filed Under Advertising 

How Much Does it Cost to Advertise Your New York City Business Offline?

November 8th, 2007 | Leave a Comment


Source: YouTube via HipHop-Ads via Good Magazine

Let’s face it, advertising your business offline is pretty darn expensive in New York City. Those who have deep pockets benefit by exposing their brand to the masses. It’s more about brand awareness than anything else. Measuring the ROI of an offline ad can be difficult. Online ads have analytics and metrics that help advertisers gauge the success - or utter failure - of their campaigns. Guerrilla tactics have their place and can do more for a company than any bus ad or billboard. I wonder if offline ads are really worth it?

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$3,000 per month above ground train station display ads

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$44,000 per month to cover 25% of the trains interior ad space

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$40,000 to cover 200 train stations per month - below ground poster ads

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$500 per month for an an on the side of a bus

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New York City Taxi Cab Advertising - $45,000 per month of every 15 minutes for every 100 taxis

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Bus stop display ad - $1,000 $5,000 per month

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Plane banner ad per flight - $1,000

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Street Lamp banners $360 each per month

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Starbucks Coffee cover sleeves 12-4 cents each

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Tall wall banner ads - $20-$100k per month

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Billboard - $175,000 per month

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ResidentialNYC has their New York City bus ad campaign live since last week. It will be interesting to monitor the success of the campaign and whether of not it brought awareness to the REBNY sponsored ResidentialNYC brand and more importantly, buyers to the new website.

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Posted by Rudolph D. Bachraty III | Filed Under Advertising 

Barbara Corcoran on Real Estate Ads - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

October 31st, 2007 | Leave a Comment

Real Estate Video by - Real Estate Blogger


Source: WellcomeMat

Barbara Corcoran provides us with some great tips on how to create a good real estate ad and how to avoid creating bad real estate advertising. Manhattan real estate agents are you listening? Buyers are.

As always, Barbara’s advice is priceless. Creating a killer ad for your real estate listing is crucial to attracting the best qualified buyer - quickly. The ad content varies depending on the medium it is placed in so use the space you have wisely.

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Bad Real Estate Print Ad

If you are one of the dinosaurs still using print advertising you must be extremely creative with the limited space you have. Forget the fluff. Give the reader meat and potatoes. And for peeps sake, please don’t exaggerate. Fluff is easily construed by home buyers as red flags. If you oversell using ambiguous lingo, buyers will call bull$%t. And please, don’t use all CAPS and numerous exclamation points!!!!! Don’t waste your clients time with amateur advertising copy. Get a pro to help you if you can, your clients will appreciate your effort.

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Good Real Estate Print Ad

Advertising your clients listings online in a must - we all know that. Doing it effectively is where most real estate agents have problems. The traditional mentality of including vague descriptions, one or no photos and basic information to get the buyer to call is a thing of the past. Multiple photos, detailed listing descriptions, video, slide shows, Google maps and more are all necessary when advertising listings in today’s slowing real estate marketplace. You and your listings need to stand out.

Consumers are savvyer than ever. Information about every aspect of real estate is out there on the world wide web. All you have to do is enter a keyword into Google and click search. But we already know this don’t we? Surprisingly, many real estate brokers are not hip to even the basics of searching for real estate or even listing real estate online. Who’d a thunk it? But that’s a whole other blog post.

The days of limiting information to consumers is long gone - and thankfully so. Consumers need to make informed decisions when buying and selling real estate. Real estate agents who provide home buyers and sellers with detailed listing, building, neighborhood, city and state information are providing value - not just taking orders. Can I get Fries with that Shake?

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Posted by Rudolph D. Bachraty III | Filed Under Advertising 

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