The Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) continues to use humour to try to warn Canadians about what it believes are potential pitfalls of buying and selling property without the expertise of its agents.
CREA, with the help of its creative agency Union, has launched a new multichannel campaign, including a TV spot featuring a couple who didn’t realize they moved into a neighbourhood dominated by a biker gang.
There’s also an unskippable ad shot specifically for use as YouTube pre-roll, targeting people searching for do-it-yourself home buying and selling tips. The ad outlines various reasons why CREA believes they shouldn’t skip using a real estate agent for “the largest transaction of your life.”
This year’s campaign centres on the idea of “No regrets,” and includes a specific page on the CREA website with video stories of real people who wished they used an agent to buy and sell property in the past.
It’s the latest installment in an ongoing campaign CREA has been pushing the past four years, amid increased competition in the industry from low-fee agents and people looking to list properties on their own.
CREA wants Canadians to discover the value of having a realtor, and consider what bad things could happen if they don’t.
“The concept is the same, it’s one of empathy,” Randall McCauley, vice-president of government and public relations at CREA told Marketing. “Emotions are key to advertising and this year’s ads have a range of emotion.”
McCauley said the message is meant to drive home the point that buying and selling a property is a big decision, “with little room for error given the sums involved.”
He spoke with Marketing the same day CREA reported the average price of a home in Canada in February was $503,057, up 16.4% from a year earlier.
“It’s a big financial investment,” McCauley said, “and we don’t want people at the end of it, having tried to go it on their own, sit up and say ‘oohhh’ I shouldn’t have done that. There isn’t’ a lot of leeway there. If you’re trying to do a minor repair to your house that’s one thing; if you screw up a half-million dollar purchase, that’s an entirely different scale.”
Kimberlee Welch, group account director at Union, said the campaign leveraged previous campaign spots that also told cautionary tales of homebuyers who didn’t use an agent.
“Every year we are trying to find a theme or a value proposition that people look for in realtors. This year it was their market knowledge and expertise,” Welch told Marketing. “Instead of showing the happy-go-lucky side of things – showing the problems that can happen when you don’t use the expertise of a professional has been much more motivating.”
The 60-second biker ad will appear in movie theatres starting later this week, as well as 30-second versions on traditional and specialty TV. The other campaign elements will be featured across social and digital media.
