The key to finding a brand’s story is making sure that consumers, brand agencies, and competing agencies all agree on how they view the brand, Marin told Inman Connect New York attendees. .
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David Marine, chief marketing officer at Anywhere, knows a good story when he sees one.
He has helped lead some of Anywhere’s biggest campaigns for brands including Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, and ERA.
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At Inman Connect New York on Wednesday, Mullin spoke with Inman’s Jim Dalrymple II about how they find the right stories for each brand and how those stories reach the right audience. He told me how he found out.
Before launching a new brand campaign, Marin asks, “What is the story of each brand?”
He mentioned some of the Anywhere brand’s recent developments, including Century 21’s “The Joy of Home” (which happened to be featured on a billboard in Times Square), ERA’s “Move Up” and BHGRE’s “Nobody Knows Homes Better.” campaign. ” (in conjunction with Lifestyle magazine), and Coldwell Banker’s popular Thursday Night Football Move Meter matchup.
Mullin added that the Movemeter matchup was a “huge success,” as real estate brands compared the two cities competing on Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football game on everything from cost of living to accessibility. did. The ad has been so popular that it’s now the No. 2 ad outside of Gillette on Thursday Night Football, Mullin said.
Of course, Anywhere is a huge company with a lot of resources, Dalrymple pointed out. So how can other small businesses effectively measure the success of their marketing efforts?
“The dirty secret is that measurement is no longer limited to the biggest advertisers,” Marine said. “If you pay $100 a month, you get access to the same data points.”
Marketers and other stakeholders must first establish campaign goals and then put systems in place that can reliably measure ad traffic and completion of that specific goal, Marine said. This means you can measure engagement on social campaigns or add pixels to your website to track visitor data.
Of course, finding a brand’s individual story is another matter, Dalrymple and Marine agreed.
“If you know what your story is and can communicate it clearly and effectively, it becomes timeless marketing,” Marin says.
The key is to determine how consumers view brands, how brand agencies view their own brands, and how competing agencies view brands, and analyze where those views differ. Marine said. He does this by conducting a survey among all parties.
“And you have to ask, ‘Is that what we want?’ [the story] Will that happen as a brand? ” Marine said.
He also advised writing down your brand’s value proposition in one sentence. “Even if you can replace this subject with other brands, it’s not good,” he pointed out.
“You want to make sure your value proposition and story is unique to you,” Marin says.
By analyzing data points and consumer feedback mechanisms, marketers can determine if there is a disconnect between the story a brand is trying to tell and the story consumers are receiving, Marin said. .
“What you really want to do is dig a little deeper and ask, ‘Why did you want to use us?'” Marine says.
“A/B test your messaging to see what people respond to best. Then you’ll identify some gaps.”
After a turbulent year in the real estate industry, including a market downturn and antitrust lawsuits, Dalrymple wondered if these big events in the industry had an impact on the way Anywhere ran its campaigns. Ta. Marin’s answer was that even though crazy things are happening in the world, a good brand campaign shouldn’t be influenced by external factors.
He pointed to the fact that Coldwell Banker was planning a new brand campaign to launch in March 2020 long before learning of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the pandemic hit, brands wondered whether to move forward with their campaigns, but it turned out to be the right time to do so.
“Does it make sense to talk about this in this environment?” Marine said the team was wondering at the time. “And what we discovered was that it was the perfect time to do that, because that message resonated with consumers at a time when home was paramount.”
“The great thing is we didn’t plan to launch this service during a pandemic. We planned it for a normal market,” Mullin added. But they learned that if it works during a global pandemic, it’s a campaign that works anytime.
“This is timeless marketing that works in any market situation,” he said.
Email Lillian Dickerson
