Tractors, trailers and duck soup branding
He’s a farmer, cyclist, writer, trainer, father.
Meet Gary Chambers.
He’s also a real estate agent.
What branding isn’t
A few weeks back, while reviewing some collateral for a client in Los Angeles, I came upon a full-page ad for a Realtor named Freedman. White teeth. Well groomed. A phone held to his ear. The headline read: Let Freedman Ring.
Bill Bernbach stirred painfully in his grave.
I’m not certain what agents did to brand themselves in a pre-Hobbs Herder world, but the past 10 years have burned whatever value personal branding had in real estate to ashes.
But from the ashes, a phoenix rises.
The Gary Chambers brand
Gary lives on his 2,400-acre family farm in rural Drumheller, Alberta. Population 8,000.
Some days Gary dresses in overalls. From atop his yellow and green tractor he farms grain, wheat and barley with his father on his 100-year-old farm. Other days, he dresses in a suit and tie and lists and sells property as a broker/owner.
If Gary were like everyone else, his marketing would feature him posing beside his tractor. He’d have his phone pressed against his ear and a tagline that reads, I’ll plow through any negotiation to get you a great deal.
Gary is not like everyone else.
For him, branding isn’t about talking the talk. It’s not about reaching inside a grab bag of clichés and going with whatever cheeseball nonsense comes out. Branding is something real and it must live well beyond the collateral.
Branding is riding the ride, which Gary does as flawlessly as I have ever seen in real estate.
Scan Gary’s Tractor View blog. Designed in a color palette familiar to farmers (think John Deere), Tractor View is a farmer’s almanac of content. Topics include farming, technology, insights on commodities trading, advice on social media marketing (a burgeoning platform for farmers), and real estate.
Don’t just stop there.
Gary’s nailed all the digital touchpoints: Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. The consistency across these channels is dazzling.
Meet Gary in the flesh and it all comes together.
I met Gary for the first time last week at AT&T Park in San Francisco the night before Real Estate Connect began. He was sitting with about 20 people, each wearing custom John Deere tractor caps Gary brought with him.
“Branding isn’t about doing weird stuff to get attention,” Gary explained. “Neither is it trying to be all things to all people. I’m a farmer. I list and sell homes to farmers. That’s my brand. It’s as honest as I can get.”
Seamless Consistency
Brands aren’t manufactured. While the individual components (logo, mark, tagline, packaging, promises) are, branding occurs when these tie directly to an underlying meaning.
The Apple brand isn’t about the devices or the cool packaging. The brand is the accumulated feelings about Apple because of those things. The brand is powerful because everything we come in contact with from Apple gives us the very same feeling.
Seamless, flawless consistency.
Agents who brand themselves with turned phrases, made-up slogans, props and personality marketing aren’t creating brands. They’re just making fools of themselves.
Gary Chambers understands that.
Tractors, trailers and duck soup branding
I Skyped with Gary on Saturday. He schooled me on the needs of farmers across the world who subscribe to his blog, the fluctuation of commodity prices, the state of local real estate and the fact that farmers are far more adaptive to technology than many of the Realtors he’s met in his career.
He’s the real deal.
Gary’s brand components aren’t duck soup constructs created on the assembly line inside real estate’s branding factory then spread across the masses. Instead, they exist as a full extension of something real.
Gary the farmer, the Realtor, the cyclist, the father, the writer, and the brand are all aligned.
I can’t wait for my John Deere cap.
Tags: Branding, Marketing, Realtor branding
This brought a huge smile to my face, Marc. A farmer girl in me from the old days has always wanted to meet Gary. Well earned write up here:-)
Here is to hoping that agents and brokers who need to read this the most stumble across it and take it to heart. Uncheesisying the state of real estate branding is long overdue.
Marc, thank for the stimulating blog post that will hopefully serve as a splash of cold water in the face of our industry. Though this is the first time I have read about Gary, he sounds like a Realtor after mt own heart. Live, work and play your profession whether it’s the farm or the beach.
I loved this comment: “I’m not certain what agents did to brand themselves in a pre-Hobbs Herder world, but the past 10 years have burned whatever value personal branding had in real estate to ashes.”
I can tell you that I started pre Hobbs/Herder and what I did was just work expired listings, FSBO’s and open houses. I cold called on pizza nights at the office, door knocked whenever possible and generally worked my ass off to contact people to find out if they needed real estate help. When I found someone who did need help, that’s exactly what I did. I helped them and then they told their friends.
Branding was the furthest thought from my mind in the mid 80′s to mid 90′s.
Good post Marc. Sorry we didn’t manage to find each other at #icsf.
Gary is also a huge contributor of his time and talents to organized Real Estate…
True, many realtors are hoping that a cheap chuckle will get them a sale…sadly it does work as there is a significant market segment that enjoys this branding. Even if you get a sale through these ‘cheesy’ tactics, it diminishes the value of the profession as a whole. Hats off to Gary Chambers for keeping it real
Why can’t all agents be like him? To just let their expertise do their branding for them, be professional and treat this business like a business. You know helping people with the most important financial decision of their lives. That business.
I remember being in Southern California in 1988 – I was a marketing coordinator for then Merrill Lynch Realty – and my colleague and I attended one of the first Hobbs Herder seminars and hid in the back where we witnessed our agents being told that the Broker/company/brand they worked for meant nothing. That “it was all about them.” And they went on to show “designer” options including full page agent photos with cats, bunnies, phones and (then) pagers as part of the agent branding message. Silly slogans and incomplete thoughts that talked down to the consumer in hopes to get their attention with a sing/song phrase or two. I leaned over to my friend and said, “this is going to change our industry.” And it did for while – one swirly graphic at a time – positioning the business of real estate alongside the “used car salesman.” My belief is that agents are smarter now. They are working harder and know the importance of their reputation.
Full circle? Maybe not. But man it feels good to believe it.
@Wendy,
“Why can’t all agents be like him”? It’s exactly why I published this. It’s one thing to write about things that aren’t sensible but it’s another to provide people a vision of what is possible.
Your description of a HH and what they have created and done to real estate agents is part of the greater problem I see in real estate – specifically brokers who do not take the time or care to invest in their agents training and or providing them strong branded marketing collateral to promote themselves. Left to their own devices, its easy to see how susceptible they would be to what HH offered. I would too if I didn’t have formal brand/marketing training.
I once watched you speak to a crowd of agents (in Scottsdale) about brand standards and the power of co-branding with the brokerage and it has stayed with me since.
We need to find the Gary’s of real estate and present them as shinning examples of what good, smart, powerful, real, brand marketing is.
HI Marc,
I have seen you speak several times at Tom ferry’s events and just love your message. I loved the post about the farmer, agents branding. As an agent who wants to be smart about our branding it’s tough as an agent in a regular city to find out how we should create our brand. Tough to really decide how to create the message we feel really tells our clients who we really are in our brand.
What would you suggest as the best way to create a brand?
Lisa Doyle
Lisa,
Thanks for attending the event and reaching out.
First steps might appear like this:
1. Understand the arduous nature and big difference between developing a product or corporate brand versus a personal brand, which is typical of what a single agent attempts.
Historically, agent branding has been skewed and appears more like a sales pitch rather than a true branding effort.
This is because branding is a sincere exercise that plays towards emotions versus a sales pitch that plays to an analytical thought process. Also, branding is built off the collective feelings of the target customer base rather than some artificial notion the brand creates and hopes to sell it to the audience by “telling” that audience what the brand is.
“Telling” is advertising. That typically doesn’t build brand. Brand is built by inviting the audience into the brand experience and giving them something they want, need and yearn for.
Therefore, to answer your question, the first step in building a brand is to determine if you possess a special sauce that evokes emotion and if so, is it unique and does it resonate with people.
This is the critical problem with typical agent branding. Branding around a blue hat or a dog or many of the comical elements taught in real estate might make the agent stand out but it doesn’t build brand because none of these things are unique or truly desired by people. Of course there might be a contingent of consumers out there who are all emotionally moved by a blue hat wearing agent.
And that gets us to what your real first step is. Survey your past clients. Discover what they think of you. What common adjectives do they use to describe you.
Compare that with what you believe you deliver and you are and see if there are real commonalities. If there are, then your branding play is to highlight those few things and build on them. Over and over and over and over. Relentlessly. Until you no longer have to “sell” yourself to anyone.
Best I can do in a limited environment as a blog comment. But I invite other readers to contribute and expand on this.
Having started my real estate career with a traditional real estate broker, I never concentrated on coming up with a concept to make myself “more” memorable. I never cared to do so. I was satisfied with my broker’s brand propersition since it aligned with my values. I suspect the agents that come up with the cheesy slogans are trying to find and make meaning separate from their broker; they are trying to be “more” memorable in a world where the average person is exposed to 2500 marketing messages a day. How could I ever fault them for trying to feed themselves and their family? There’s a fine line between what’s defined as good marketing and branding. The guy with the John Deer caps is living his brand without the slogan. In fact, without the slogan, he’s probably more effective since other people, his clients, friends, us can take meaning from his actions. We get to describe him and that type of labeling is more powerful than any cheesy slogan. People will always remember you for what you do and not for what you say you do is what I take away from this post.