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Home is where the heart is: Bayleys moves away from the money, dials up the emotional aspects of property

Real estate is, typically, all about the money. How much it costs, how much the prices have risen, how ridiculous those prices now are (in Auckland, at least). And there’s been plenty of money around for the real estate companies during a period of high growth. But Bayleys believes “that the true value is in the people and the relationships forged” and it’s trying to illustrate that with its new brand campaign. 

Featuring a young boy who wants a bit more space, looks at a few options online and eventually successfully sabotages the sale of a house he wants to buy with his vast riches, before being taken home by the real estate agent (and eventually being rewarded for his malfeasance with the house), the 60 second ad is the first piece of work created for the brand by The Collective. The ad was shot by Robber’s Dog. 

As it says on the YouTube clip: “It’s a world of possibilities out there, so it’s great to know that Bayleys can provide all the market knowledge, knowhow and support you need to get the result you want.” 

Bayleys says it is “New Zealand’s largest and most successful commercial and industrial real estate agency” and is a “strong niche market performer in residential, apartment, project marketing, country, waterfront and tourism related property and business sales”. It is also one of the country’s biggest property managers, “with approximately NZ$1.2 billion worth of property under administration”. 

According to the NBR, which put the Bayley family in its latest Rich List, it negotiated “8,245 property transactions, with a total gross value of $7.89 billion across all market sectors” in the 2014/2015 year and it “now employs some 1523 staff nationwide across 79 offices – including two in Fiji”. It also has a partnership with Christies and can call on its more than 650 overseas offices to help get its listings in front of a global audience that it says is increasingly enamoured with New Zealand property. 

On its website, Bayleys says its marketing team achieves “unprecedented reach” through its tailored campaigns. Its exclusive Property Picks feature lets clients put a listing on the home page of nzherald.co.nz, which gets it in front of an average 360,000 unique browsers every day. And, as property hunting increasingly starts online these days, it says its web-based marketing is concentrated within “five leading property websites that have been proven to reach the most buyers in the most cost-effective way for vendors”. 

It also uses all the classic real estate marketing tactics and produces inhouse magazines Preview, Country and Waterfront, which are distributed to a targeted database of past, current and prospective clients, and are handed out at Bayleys offices around the country. 

​As for what its competitors are up to, Barfoot & Thompson, which claims it is “Auckland’s leading real estate company” (and the “largest privately owned property group in the country”), launched a brand campaign in 2013 via Big Communications that is heavily focused on print and outdoor and is still running today; Harcourts, which recently went through a controversial pitch process, also calls itself the “by far the biggest real estate group in the country” with 180 offices and its brand is already on TV, it’s pushing hard on digital and it was also, famously, the topic of a hashtag hijack a few months back (which led chief executive Hayden Duncan to take steps to fix the industry’s perception problem); LJ Hooker is also running a campaign asking customers to rate their agents; and Ray White’s chief executive also mentioned the perception problems of real estate agents—and New Zealand’s performance in its international awards—in his August comments

Correction: this story originally said The Collective had taken over from Work Communications after a pitch, but it didn’t pitch for the TVC and is still working with Bayleys at a tactical level.

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