The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and creative agency Union have created a new TV spot to get potential buyers to understand the value of having a realtor.
To do that, they brought out the heavy artillery.
“The goal is to get Canadians and homebuyers to understand some of the pitfalls that are unknown to us in buying and selling a home and some of the skills real-estate agents bring to the table,” says Subtej Nijjar, a partner at Union. “The goal was to show the value of what a real-estate agent brings to the process of buying and selling a home.”
The 60-second spot that’s airing online shows a SWAT team raiding a hose in the middle of the night – a misunderstanding that a realtor may have helped to avoid.
The video is running as online pre-roll while a TV version is airing nationally, Nijjar says, along with supporting print and radio ads. He adds they want the commercial to feel similar to the content you watch everyday on TV and not simply like a generic commercial.
“We wanted to make the concept feel like a natural part of the viewing content people are used to,” says Nijjar.
The ad has attracted a considerable amount of attention outside of Canada. Randall McCauley, vice-president of government and public relations at CREA, says much of the praise and attention has come from England and Australia, and the reaction has played itself out on twitter.
Canadian ad turns moving house into something from a Tom Clancy novel, SWAT teams and all @CREA_ACI @UnionLocal416 http://t.co/YzzH2Rv2iq
— Little Black Book (@LBBOnline) March 18, 2014
New ad: The Canadian Real Estate Association: Raid: Two new homeowners discover that sometimes saving a few do… http://t.co/iFEoE1rUwk
— Bestads (@bestads) March 19, 2014
The new spot is part of an ongoing campaign, but is the first wave of communications that Nijjar calls the “video strategy approach.”
