Commercial real estate meets cinema: gimmick or goldmine?
The promotional film for the sale of Kryal Castle, in the Victorian town of Leigh Creek, runs more like the trailer for a high-grade feature film than a real estate advertisement.
With scenes of knights jousting on horseback and women in decadent costumes cast to a soothing narrator quoting poetic verse, its a distant cry from the scratchy real estate copy that once lined the classifieds.
And that’s the point, according to listing agent Colliers International Australia.
The film is representative of a broader digital strategy for the firm, a move away from plain video marketing to branded content and a new product line for high-end properties designed to play on an increasing consumer demand to learn the story behind their real estate listings.
“Our whole country is obsessed with property. It was residential, now it’s broadened to commercial, rural, hotels,” Colliers’ national director of corporate marketing and communications Belinda Scott said.
The Kryal Castle film may be the one making national news and being seen by international audiences – segments from the film were featured on the Seven Network’s Sunrise program and it was translated into several other languages – but the the focus of Colliers’ video strategy is its Iconic Buildings series.
The series, with five episodes so far, covers buildings deemed to have architectural significance and features interviews with the building’s original architects or their representatives in order to provide an insight into their planning and design.
The latest is One Wharf Lane, Sydney.
“It’s targeting all of our high-value clients and giving them the opportunity to feature one of their assets or a portfolio of assets, ones we can tell a story about,” Ms Scott said.
“Clients who are trying to fill their buildings or to reposition their buildings in the market.”
It sounds like the tactic has plenty of value for Collier’s brand image – but is it actually helping with lead-generation in the real world?
Yes, according to the company’s national director of leasing, Cameron Williams.
Kryall Castle may be yet to sell, but the Building Icons series has helped secure deals in the past, Mr Williams said.
“If you’ve got something online it gets cut through, it allows for a consistent message through to the marketplace, and it creates a platform for people who are not necessarily based in the city where the building is based – it’s a way we can get to decision makers,” he said.
He cites the example of a foreign buyer making a decision on a property in Sydney’s CBD based on viewing its associated video.
“We had a campaign last year at 2 Park Street, the Citigroup Centre,” Mr Williams said. “We put together a video for that and there’s no doubt that that helped us get a result there.
“The decision-makers were offshore, we were able to provide them with a video and they were able to get an appreciation of what we were offering within a short period of time.
“It’s one thing to have people on the phone, another thing to see if for yourself.”
It might be working for now but Colliers will only maintain its focus on high-production video as long as the competition stays away from the space.
“It’s a competitive thing. In our industry, you continue to stay relevant for as long as it takes for the competitors to copy you. You have to keep developing new things, watching the trends,” Ms Scott said.
“We’ll keep pushing it as long as it’s exclusive to Colliers.”
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