Online and mobile real estate service Zoocasa has launched a multimedia advertising campaign in the Greater Toronto Area to support its newly revamped website.
This is the first mass effort from the Rogers-owned service since it launched in 2008. Previous marketing efforts from Zoocasa included mostly online and media outreach programs. But this time around, Zoocasa is launching a multiplatform campaign – radio, homepage takeovers, newspaper, Facebook ads, transit shelters – that speaks to the obsession Torontonians have with the real estate market.
The campaign, created by Toronto agency Rain43, highlights service features such as a directory of top-performing real estate agents and a rebate program.
Carolyn Beatty, Zoocasa’s president, said she asked her team to “do something that would breakthrough and position us differently and stay centered on the consumer and not make it about us.”
In a release, John Farquhar, chief creative officer at Rain43, said the obsession with real estate in Toronto is obvious from the amount of construction sites and cranes dotting the city.
“Zoocasa’s product brilliantly combines all the tools anyone needs to feed their real estate addiction, and we’ve tried to capture that in the ads we’ve designer for them,” he said.
The campaign is running in Toronto through the summer, but Zoocasa hopes to expand the service and advertising campaign to other areas of the country by August. Beatty said Zoocasa would track the success of the Toronto campaign and apply learnings to other markets.
The company also hopes to produce local efforts that will use unique, city-specific advertising opportunities, said Beatty.
“We’re a micro-local industry so we think trying to do things as locally as possible even if you see our advertising we try and call out neighbourhoods, it’s important it resonates with consumers because it’s about them and where they want to live,” said Beatty.
OMD handled the media buy.