Watch this video. As you do …
Replace the branded beverages with branded brokerages.
Replace the content of each beverage with listings, data, content.
Replace the typical fountain dispenser that offers limited selection and significant backroom dependency with IDX rules.
Replace freestyle integration of complex flavor cartridges w/micro-dosing technology with a freestyle integration of apps, data, and content without restrictions.
Replace the appeal this rich graphical interface offers its users with the appeal non-broker owned search sites offer.
Freestyle Real Estate
Folks, this is space-age technology build around $1.00 beverages aimed at making life just a little simpler and easier for the consumer. There’s a reason Coke is the world’s most recognized brand. They don’t rest on convention. They don’t live off the past. They don’t fear change.
I bet this all began with a simple what if? conversation. We all have them. They are born out of frustration. Or the desire to produce or create something that currently doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s to make things better. Transform the status quo. Or rule the world.
That’s how brands think. It’s what the best ones do. They conjure. They act. They deliver.
That’s the spark that launched Zappos, which I am sure Alfred will tell you about when he speaks at Real Estate Connect San Francisco in a few weeks.
So I offer the video to help stir the drink of inspiration. To help break down the barriers that keep “Traditional” brokers from giving the innovators of the industry a hug. That keep MLSs from allowing their data to mash up with… anything. That keep you from partnering with the most unlikely entities.
Don’t get bogged down by apples and oranges, real estate is to soda pop, etc. Get inspired by how similar these ideas are.
And the result that can come from thinking freestyle.
- Davison
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Freaking...
Marc, I am having a bit of trouble understanding your statement – are you really suggesting the following?
“Replace the branded beverages with branded brokerages”
Thanks again for the inspiring blogs Marc. I have really been taking them to heart.
I am impressed you got through this post without having to mention “thinking outside the box”. I swear, if I hear one more person overuse that term again, well, I guess I will hear it one more time! But you know what I mean.
I get it! We either think and act outside the box, or we take the chance we will be living in one underneath a bridge somewhere.
Replace, as in exchange one for the other – branded beverages with broker brands.
What a concept! I sometimes like to think that consumers can go into an online shopping virtual world for real estate brokerage without any limitations on data. Did you ever wonder if real estate will become one single broker brand? We now have the AMC. What’s next?
Marisa,
“Did you ever wonder if real estate will become one single broker brand? ”
God help the real estate consumer if that every happens!
@ Jeffrey – I’m curious why you would say that? Can you take us through your thought process?
Also, for the sake of this post built off the notion of “what if”, argue the other side of the debate and consider why one brokerage house 800,000 independent contractors would be a good thing?
Hmm Marc, where do I start….
I guess my statement stems from the following:
Competition is a good thing; too much power corrupts. Having the Coldwell Bankers, C-21, RE/MAX, Redfin, and small Brokers is a good thing. Different models for different goals and consumer tastes. Some consumers are service driven, others focus on commission costs, and others want an advocate. The market place will sort out those that will survive, and not all will.
How is a brokerage housing 800,000 agents able to provide Agency to all those Clients? It’s bad enough now that many consumers end up with Dual Agency, can you imagine one Company with no alternative but dual agency?
Do you really think that today’s Brokers are offering what the consumer is looking for – can that be accomplished by one company? Being inside the largest, most successful brokerage in San Diego I can tell you it would be a scary place if they had total control.
The real estate industry dodged a bullet by not allowing big banks into our business. Do you really think that the big banks have not really messed things up, and are now reaping the benefits?
Marc, there are too many real estate agents, too many broken real estate models, and too much separation between what the real estate consumer wants and needs, and what we as an industry are providing.
Your last comment regarding the 800,000 independent contractors may be the most telling – I can tell you that gathering real estate agents are like herding cats and it’s unlikely we would all gather together in one mega brokerage.
Real estate needs more efficiency, less office space, and less real estate agents, not some bloated monolithic monopoly mega-broker.
Just a few thoughts!
I am so looking forward to the opposing argument!
Hi Marc,
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog. Interesting post, but a tough analogy to follow in some ways. I certainly get the “freestyle”, “what if”, “innovate or die” spirit of things, but when I watch this video I don’t really see this as an offering as a consumer play at all.
Sure, I can see that this thing offers the consumer lots additional beverage choices (as long as they are Coke products) and a snazzy touch screen interface that presumably makes it fairly easy to navigate these choices. Novelty and selection are nice, but does the consumer want or value 150 drink choices or do they really just want a few of their favorites? Is it really “simpler and easier”?
How consumers value breadth of choice in this market aside, it struck me that this whole thing might really be about Coke seizing control of the fountain “channel”. I can’t claim any knowledge of the industry, but it seems to me that soda fountains are pretty standard, almost “open source” contraptions. You can probably buy them cheap new or used from a million different vendors and get tanks of soda and syrup in standard configurations from any distributor. Mix and match. Pump whatever brands and flavors you want.
Not so with this. Looks like a totally closed platform. With proprietary “flavor cartridges,” data feeds directly back to Coke, and probably overflowing with patents, if Coke starts to get these into food service and retail suddenly they have upset the balance of power and they start to own the fountain channel. On the open standard platform of traditional soda fountains, the brands presumably compete for a spigot (through local distributors) on the basis of branding, channel incentives and price. Close the platform and suddenly Coke has locked out the competition–they don’t have flavor cartridges that fit or with the right RFID chips! Or more likely, they are now able to further monetize the channel through licensing or some other method of pay-to-play for other brands, plus capture some of the profit that the distributors and fountain machine vendors and servicers previously had. Not a bad deal for Coke, but I am not so sure the consumer really benefits. Channel partners almost certainly don’t. Maybe this is your point?
Back to the specifics of the analogy. Are you saying that in the context of 1000 choices, branding is diluted and brands become commodities, simple flavor choices? That the point of differentiation, the value becomes the actual choice experience, delivered by the search engine (Coke dispenser or real estate search portal)? That the channel is eclipsing the “product”?
I took this article a whole other way. I didn’t look at it as Marc encouraging that there become a single brokerage. I read into it that Coke is doing something to serve their customer base. They are creating a dispenser that will give us all more choices. And with a click of a button, we get the soda we want to drink every time.
When I go to my favorite burger joint, The Bobcat Bite. I order a world famous green chile cheeseburger. They ask me what I want to drink, I have five choices, one of which is coke. Guess what, I don’t want a coke. I don’t want a sprite. I want a frosty A&W root beer served in a frosted mug. Can I have that? I can!? Since when? ahh that shiny new dispenser made it happen! Well done Coke! Well now, you just made me the happiest customer this side of Santa Fe, bring on the green chile!
So how does this relate to real estate for me??
Well for starters, real estate is one of the most consumer centric businesses in existence. Could we all agree on that? Why is it that we do not allow the consumer to dictate how we run our brokerages? Oh yeah, because we have the data all locked up in a federally secure building so the consumer can’t see our precious data and it thwarts any attempts at innovation. We have hundreds of associations who do not understand IDX rules and they just make them up as they go. We don’t need a single brokerage, what we need is a single MLS, or at the very least a single MLS for each state. And they need to standardize the data and the rules already!! OK, that’s a whole other subject.
Back to the topic at hand, why are we forcing our customers to a horrible web site and why do we give them little to no choices that will effect when and where they will buy? Beyond that, why don’t we focus on the buying process itself and make it enjoyable?
I don’t see this article as encouraging us to form a single brokerage. I see it as telling us we need to focus on our customers. We need to build our business around giving them choices. We need to innovate beyond the obvious that buyers are starting their search for a home on the internet.
Does the consumer want Zillow Zetimates? Well then give it to them. Do they want a map search, or are they comfortable with a traditional list search? Give them both and let them decide. Do they want to get immediate gratification and get an idea on who much their home is worth? Plug in Cyberhomes and let them do their thing without them ever having to contact a broker.
The soda choices in this article are to me the hundreds of APIs that we have at our disposal. We need to use them and plug them all into a shiny web site (just like the shiny coke dispenser)! And then we need to create a slick user interface that the consumer can go to with a click of a button and serve themselves with the data they want, when they want it, how they want it.
It could be that if and when Coke pushes this out into the public it will create an unfair advantage. But why?? Because they are focusing on their customer. It is going to force all the other soda manufacturers to either do the same, or pay Coke to have their products added to the mix. Coke making money serving Pepsi? Brilliant!
We can all do the same with our brokerages, and the ones that do will most definitely have that advantage as well.
I think I will grab a green chile cheeseburger for lunch, but I guess I will have to have it with a coke. DAMN!
Folks,
Don’t get bogged down by the literal sense of a soda dispenser and whether is will be accepted into the mainstream or not. Brian is correct. I drew some analogies to place a far reaching idea into a context. Coke is rethinking how it dispenses soda. Google rethought how we ought to browse with Chrome. Radiohead rethought how to distribute music.
How are you, your peers, your industry rethinking real estate?
Recently a few Midwestern agents attempted to rethink how they market listings so they can sell their clients homes which triggered one of the more backward thinking events I’ve seen since entering this industry as dictated here on Jay Thomspon’s blog http://www.phoenixrealestateguy.com/you-have-full-permission-to-advertise-my-listings/2311 and here on Agent Genius http://agentgenius.com/g-rants-insanity-more/real-estate/did-google-scrape-my-website-you-be-the-judge.
So… I’m not for or against one brokerage. I’m pointing out how new ideas and change are being experimented with to improve the consumers experience across many verticals. Why not here in this industry?
This article is about “what if”? What’s your what if? In the grander discussion of real estate of the future, what would be your grandest vision?
[...] real estate space thinking along those lines. Marc Daivson from 1000watt gave us this blog titled Real Estate Freestyle – what if? that draws paralles between the Coca-Cola dispenser of the future and real estate of the future. [...]
I’ve been mulling this one over for a while now too. Trying to keep on the cusp of these changes and accepting them is an advantage, but not quite knowing what consumers are wanting in my region is the biggest challenge. Seems like here in Keene, NH we are slower to catch onto some of these tech changes and many people are still on dial up.
YET, so many are there already. So there is a wide spread between real estate consumers as well as agents here too.
There seems to be a lack of new agents in the field, keeping status quo for how real estate is “done” pretty much that…status quo.
It seems the real need is for talent atraction in this field to seek agents who are going to be innovative, new blood and ready to think like the new generation of consumers. I’m trying, but what power in us if there were move of us! Just think, a whole company built on the movement of the next generation of agents who “get it”. (social media- thinkers )
That’s where I want to be!
Your blogs always get me out of my box. Thanks again and again.
Aloha,
Keahi
Replace, as in exchange one for the other – branded beverages with broker brands.