Marc Davison

• Manage |RSSReal Estate Brokerage of the Future

Might we look at the real winner here to be the real estate industry and the reward it received - namely two killer apps that only a week and a half ago didn't exist?

Guys, Let not turn my effort into a gang bang of bad vibes typical of what occurs on other real estate related blog sites. I am not a professional speaker. Not in a million years. I have declined all offers to speak at Connect for that reason alone. And I have not positioned myself as an expert. If that moniker is associated to me, it is not my doing. I'm sorry that Vito found little value to my contributions. I'm sure others have as well. If anything, you all can view my contributions as you would a bag of flour. There's not much to flour but look at all the great things you can make with it. If this article was flour, I'm cool with that. Use it as such - an ingredient to create something great. Peace out.

@Derek, "This got me thinking Marc. Is the brokerage model broken from a brand perspective because of the nature of the relationship between the brokerage and the agent?" ... IMO, that is a big part of it. From a brand perspective yes. A brand is a unit of meaning. If that meaning is splintered into a 1000 fragments, the brand becomes disjointed. "How does a brand flourish if the very agents who "work" for that brand diminish its value by making it a secondary aspect to their own brand?" ...The brand doesn't flourish. Look around you. Who is flourishing? "Hobbs Herder has made a good business out of teaching agents to promote their brand over the brokerage they hang their license at. So when they become successful, the brand that they "work" for doesn't really matter and they can set up shop pretty much anywhere." ... Yup. Don't get me started on HH. Not a fan of their ethos. What they do inst branding. Its fabricating a personality that isn’t real. “Branding” has been vastly misused in this industry. You cannot create a brand around similar visual components shared by 10,000 other agents in the same industry do. The agent known for her Red Hat for instance is not a brand because there is no unit of meaning behind the red hat. Especially where there is also a blue hat agent and a green hat agent. It’s just stupid. "The independent contractor model has always fascinated me from a marketing perspective because you never know which brand is the primary focus...the agent or the brokerage." ...From the consumer perspective, neither brand is primary for the most. They reach out to who of the two parties are more accessible to consumer. The reason is simple. C21 for example brands around the "gold standard" which would be cool if that notion was more than a fabrication created by their ad agency and something that lived consistently in real life. But it isn’t. And as a result, each time a consumer works with a C21 agent who isn’t the gold stand, the brand dies another death. But this is not the case everywhere. There are some very special brokerages around the country that have been diligent in who they hire, how they train and how the enforce standards. My guess is, those brands never let Hobbs Herder enter their facility but rather, employ a branding department within the company to assist the agents in creating a workable co-branding . "I think that this is a much larger part of the issue than any technology or social media implementation." ... And it’s one that requires much consideration, research and experimentation before something truly workable and successful is manifested. Marc 1000Watt Consulting Turn On!