I had the opportunity to speak at one of my local boards this week at their RPAC Fundraiser. I sat next to one of principals from Coldwell Banker Premier Real Estate in Berlin, Connecticut. Bob Fiorito has created some create videos for his company and his agents. You can see them on Youtube Channell called Youtube.comcbpremoves. I asked him how the process happened and he was very willing to share. A shout out to Bob, thank you. He hired a local video company called Mazzarella Brothers and they came in with a green screen, and charged each agent $300 for a 45 second video they can use . . . everywhere. At first everyone was squeamish about the cost, but Bob reasoned, “my sales associates pay for ads all the time that are seen once. If they really added up all the money they spent they would see this was a great return on their investment.”
The video company took scripts from everyone and rewrote them. Everyone was nervous about getting in front of the camera, but then out came the teleprompter, and everyone revived!
What convinced them to make this big investment was that video is where everything is going. And . . .people like to do business with peopel they like. And if you see and them on video they may just like you a little bit more!
They also did interviews with their agents and will their vendors and affiliates as well. Check them out!
Joe Zekas
September 27, 2009 at 12:18 am
Judging from the view counts on YouTube, these videos were a waste of money.
No surprise – who wants to watch a talking business card?
For what I think is a far more effective Realtor use of video, see the channel we just created for a local Realtor:
https://youtube.com/streetervillerose
Vincent Socci
September 27, 2009 at 12:44 am
Thanks for sharing the article, Amy! Congratulations to the CB Premier team in Berlin for the great videos… very impressive!
Glenn in Naples
September 27, 2009 at 8:11 am
IMHO – videos will be used more extensively in the future as the fear of the camera becomes less or people are forced in the video world.
Fred Romano
September 28, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Seriously now… these are some lame videos. What a waste of marketing money. I can’t imagine any buyer or seller being interested in this.
Bob
September 28, 2009 at 3:29 pm
“And if you see and them on video they may just like you a little bit more!”
How is anyone going to see them?
houseyourmom
September 29, 2009 at 9:52 am
Conquered Video?
Coldwell Banker’s approach, while more progressive than most was likely a wasted effort. Fred’s right, these are lame. And Bob’s right. How is anyone gonna see these things?
What Coldwell Banker should do is this:
1. Work out a deal with Flip or Vado so that their agents could by cameras at a discount.
2. Help each of their agents set up a Youtube account and understand how to upload videos from their cameras and do some very basic editing using Youtube’s built in features.
3. Assign each agent a theme to video around. Examples: Neighborhood Driving Videos, Interviews With Home Sellers, Interviews With Home Buyers, Featured Businesses, etc.
4. Give each company agent a Video Blog page featuring a youtube gallery similar to the approach on display over at PropertunityKnocks.Com.
5. Make sure effective lead capture elements are built into these video blog pages.
6. Promote the overall video blog site to the public via a massive Facebook ads campaign.
The result?
Coldwell Banker does something that would accomplish a lot more for their agents (and the company as a whole) then working out some sleazy affiliate relationship with a vendor and taking a little something more from their agents.
Sorry for being skeptical here. But doesn’t it seem more like CB conquered their agents wallets here a little more effectively than they did video?
houseyourmom
September 29, 2009 at 10:59 am
Just wanted to apologize for the last part of that comment. Not fair to assume their was an affiliate relationship. Instead, I should have given Mr. Fiorito props for at least giving it a go…
Amy Chorew
September 29, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Thanks for all you comments – wow some quite emotional. If you read my post closely, you will see that I didn’t say the videos had losts of views or that they were “amazing.” All I am saying it that they are trying. they learned from their first try. I did get a response from Coldwell Banker that I want to share:
Hi Amy. I came across your blog post about “how one company conquered video” and wanted to reach out to you about what Coldwell Banker is doing nationally. You featured one of our local companies but as a brand CB has made a huge push in online video with the creation of our YouTube channel called Coldwell Banker On Location (https://youtube.com/coldwellbanker).
We launched it in May and thru our intranet site agents/brokers can upload video listings, agent videos, community videos and more and populate our mapping feature on our the Youtube channel. In the first 4 months, we’ve had nearly half a million visits to the channel making it the most visited real estate channel on Youtube. Also our agents have uploaded over 4,000 video listings and nearly 5,000 total videos to the channel.
We’re pleased to see what Bob is doing in CT because it matches our national initiative. Not sure if there’s a bigger story here that interests you but just wanted to pass that along.
houseyourmom
September 30, 2009 at 9:21 am
Cool Amy. Just hooked Coldwell up with a featured collection page at PropertunityKnocks.Com: https://propertunityknocks.com/featured-video-collections/coldwell-banker/
Coldwell should consider building their own similar video gallery page and routing the leads generated off of it to agents who produce video?
David Marine - Coldwell Banker
September 30, 2009 at 11:53 am
Thanks Amy for sharing in these comments what the Coldwell Banker brand is doing from a national level and @houseyourmom I appreciate your insights. It’s ironic that you mention the Flip Cam because we actually did just cut a deal with Flip to provide discount codes to all our agents across the country to get Flip Cams.
We’re also providing training on producing video listings, agent videos and community videos. All these videos can be uploaded through our intranet site and displayed on our national YouTube page as well as be featured on the appropriate listing or agent page on coldwellbanker.com.
A lot of the comments have referenced the content or style of the video, so while initially we were focusing on getting videos onto our site the push is now getting the RIGHT type of videos on our site. There’s a learning curve as you can imagine but we feel we’re headed in the right direction as a brand and to give our agents a unique marketing platform.
David Marine - Coldwell Banker
September 30, 2009 at 11:58 am
I forgot to add the fact that from each agent video and listing video on our YouTube channel we drive visitors to view more details or contact an agent on coldwellbanker.com to help drive leads back to agents who produce the videos.