MP: What do you consider to be the company’s most important brand attributes?
Andrew Strickman: The new realtor.com® brand is about the things we hold very dear to us as core attributes: human; accuracy; personal; engaging; current; informative. Also, another attribute based on the July NAR Board vote: comprehensive. Those are the attributes of realtor.com®. And if you took the “.com” away, those are also the attributes of a good REALTOR®.
MP: So you are clearly making a strong statement about your partnership with the REALTOR® community…
Andrew Strickman: In the aftermath of the NAR vote, NAR has made the decision that NAR marketing and Move marketing will work more closely together. This already manifested itself in an ad campaign that NAR ran over the summer, where at the end of the ads, the call to action was to go to realtor.com®. We started getting inbound calls and communications from brokerages and REALTORS® asking for our brand assets to incorporate into their brochures—even their lawn signs. That speaks to me about the power of this brand.
The Main Messenger
Alison Schwartz
Vice President of Corporate Communications
Maria Patterson: Please discuss your approach to internal and external communications.
Alison Schwartz: It’s crucial to identify both internal and external stakeholders, which can be a combination of employees, board members, subsidiaries and partners, as well as customers, shareholders, analysts, media and influencers. Once the audiences have been identified, we determine key messages and develop tactical execution plans working backward from the outreach date.
MP: How do you leverage the company’s vast array of data in your work?
Alison Schwartz: At realtor.com®, we are lucky to have the most accurate and comprehensive data in the industry, which allows us to leverage that data in many ways. Each month, we release our realtor.com® National Housing Trends Report, which has grown into a widely anticipated piece of research, utilized by quite a few tier-one media outlets. Additionally, we put out a quarterly Turnaround Towns report, which has a similar following.
