Underscoring its aggressive growth pattern and reinvigorated strategy in the online real estate space, Tuesday, realtor.com® unveiled a new logo, branding, and national consumer ad campaign featuring popular film star Elizabeth Banks. The announcement was made in Washington, D.C. Tuesday afternoon by Move CEO Ryan O’Hara in keynote remarks to more than 2,000 industry leaders and real estate professionals gathered for the 2015 Realtors® Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo.
With the new tagline “Real estate in real time.”, realtor.com – operated by News Corp subsidiary Move, Inc. – believes the new graphic identity and national advertising campaign position the brand as the best – and truest – provider of real estate information and services for buyers, sellers and renters of properties in the U.S.
“We thought long and hard about our branding, and we wanted to emphasize the ‘real’ in real estate,” said O’Hara during an exclusive press conference held earlier on Tuesday. “We’re the real deal in real estate and deliver real data in real time. This is what makes us different from others in the space.”
The new graphic identity will immediately become a centerpiece of realtor.com’s communications on its website and mobile apps and in its advertising. The new look hinges on a two-tone logotype in which the “real” in realtor.com® is called out in bright red letters and the rest of the name is presented in black. It is intended to communicate that while competitors may feature conflicting or inaccurate information, realtor.com® stands for what is real in real estate by delivering fresh and accurate listings and connecting people with the data, tools and professional expertise they need to discover their perfect home.
“The accuracy gap has never been greater,” said O’Hara. “The holes in our competitors’ data are substantial and the consumer feels it.”
The new realtor.com® campaign was created by Pereira & O’Dell New York, the company’s advertising agency, under the direction of Andrew Strickman, Move’s head of brand and chief creative. As Strickman explained, consumers are becoming frustrated with increasing instances of falling in love with a home online, only to discover it is no longer on the market. “The ‘real time’ branding really resonates with consumers.”
To go with the new logo and branding, realtor.com® wanted a “fresh face” to represent the brand and chose Banks, who produced, directed and stars in the soon-to-be released Pitch Perfect 2, and will appear later this year in the Netflix series, Wet Hot American Summer, the next installment of the Hunger Games series, and who will also play tennis great Billie Jean King in an upcoming film about her life. Banks will appear in a series of 15- and 30-second TV spots and longer-form web videos for realtor.com®.
According to Strickman, in developing the new campaign, “We made a concerted effort to break away from the traditional approach to online real estate, where there’s a lot of sameness. There aren’t as many things as important and intense as the home-buying process, so we wanted to infuse some humor across all our advertising.”
In her spots for realtor.com®, Banks is, “smart, funny and informative,” added Strickman. The ads are directed by former Wonder Years star turned director, Fred Savage.
Regarding her interest in participating in the realtor.com® campaign, Banks said: “I’m a little house-obsessed and looking for a new home right now, which made the opportunity to work on the new realtor.com® ad campaign a great fit. I love the accessibility of realtor.com®. My husband and I email each other photos of houses to look at and the other person can pull them right up – no matter where they are. The realtor.com® app literally allows you to take the home-buying experience with you everywhere in your daily life.”
In it, Banks portrays a real estate-obsessed version of herself and delivers the message with humor, smarts, glamour and sass.
The TV ads debut May 18 and will run across major broadcast networks and cable channels, including CBS – where a 30-second slot has been secured on the eagerly anticipated final episode of the Late Show with David Letterman on May 20 – as well as HGTV, Bravo, TBS, Comedy Central and Spike, among others. The web videos featuring Banks will break later.
The campaign represents the biggest and boldest marketing initiative in realtor.com®’s nearly 20-year history and unfolds against the backdrop of a marketplace that has been seismically altered by the recent acquisition of Move by News Corp and the merger of competitors Zillow and Trulia. At stake are online home listings and homes-for-sale ads exceeding $9 billion annually, according to a recent research report by Goldman, Sachs & Co. The campaign also coincides with the continued surge of realtor.com®’s business, which has seen record growth in web and mobile visitors and the brand’s recent ascension to the industry’s No. 2 position.
While realtor.com® will continue to align themselves for “decades to come” with the National Association of REALTORS® and its members, O’Hara and Strickman explained that it’s important to reach consumers with the new campaign. The new ads are intended to appeal to a wide consumer target – from millennials looking for small, low-priced homes for themselves and their pets to young couples looking for more space on tight budgets to families looking for bigger, longer-term homes.
“Our job is to bring in more and more consumers and reaching them begins online,” said Strickman. “It’s important to introduce people to us in the right way, then when the time is right, help them choose the right REALTOR®.”
“Serving buyers, sellers and renters of properties with the best information and tools anytime, anywhere and communicating the value brokers and agents provide as trusted guides through the process is our utmost priority,” said O’Hara.
Watch the videos below:
For more information, visit realtor.com®.
