Videos using real people bring neighborhood lifestyles and amenities into focus for home buyers.

Source: BIG BUILDER Magazine
Publication date: 2006-11-01

By William Gloede

There's an old expression in the advertising business that says nothing sells like sight, sound, and motion. It was a mantra that emerged in the early days of television as stations began selling advertising time against newspapers and magazines, where most advertising was carried in those days. Television allowed advertisers to show their products being used and enjoyed.

So began the “slice of life” commercial, which dominated television from the late '50s through the '70s and into the '80s. Not coincidentally, that was the same period that consumers began to concern themselves with a new concept called “lifestyle.”

And it is that very concept that builders try to sell today. Until recently, though, selling the lifestyle of a project or subdivision required drawing customers into a sales center and physically showing them the amenities inside the home, as well as in the community at large. However, the Internet changed all that. Web sites are static representations of physical properties that can show pictures, give virtual tours, and convey almost unlimited amounts of information. But it still can't demonstrate lifestyle.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION: The expense of producing VOD is minimal compared to traditional ads. Cost for first video is around $10,000; additional videos drop to about $2,500.

Television can, but for builders, the confines of the standard 30-second commercial greatly restrict what can be shown. And commercial time is very expensive. As the market shifts to a buyers' market, tried-and-true selling techniques, with a lot of hand-holding and face-time, are making a huge comeback. But many potential home buyers simply want to find their own way to their dream and television and the Web are often the pathway to that first critical visit.

“Hot On! Homes” (www.hotonhomes.com) is a weekly half-hour TV program that airs in 10 markets, including Dallas; Houston; Austin, Texas; San Antonio; Denver; Las Vegas; Baton Rouge, La.; Oklahoma City; Phoenix; and Washington, D.C. It's a professionally produced real estate show featuring new homes from builders such as Centex Corp., KB Home, D.R. Horton, K. Hovnanian, Pulte Homes, Brookfield Homes Corp., Beazer Homes USA, and Ryland Homes. It usually runs on local broadcast stations on Sunday mornings.

Crozier & Henderson Productions, the Dallas-based producers of “Hot On! Homes,” have recently branched out into video-on-demand (VOD), also known as streaming video. VOD is, in essence, a high-quality, two-minute lifestyle marketing video created specifically for viewing on a builder's Web site. It can be used as long as the information is relevant and the community is being actively marketed.

The first customer for this service is Centex, which is planning on using VOD for its Minnesota; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix; Northern California; and Los Angeles Central Coast divisions. “We just recently started using VOD,” says Amanda Larson, marketing director for Centex's Los Angeles Central Coast division. “We've shot pretty much all of our neighborhoods, and it's been a really easy and pleasant experience.”

The VOD segments are now up on its Web site (www.centexhomes.com/Los-Angeles/), and Larson says, “I just got the first report yesterday. We are getting increasing hits. We are seeing that people are actually viewing the video on our Web site. The salespeople are providing us with positive feedback that it is helping to increase traffic.”

Tom Bevins, Crozier & Henderson's multimedia general manager, says the cost of doing VODs is minimal compared with the expense involved in creating and airing traditional advertising. Each video costs about $2,500 and costs less for larger volumes. For the first video shoot, between setup and production costs, the bill is going to come in somewhere around $10,000.

In contrast, the monthly rate for running in “Hot On! Homes” runs between $10,000 and $30,000, depending on the market the show runs and how long the contract runs. The bigger the market, the more it costs. Contracts usually run for either 26 week or 52 weeks.

The primary goal of VOD segments is to show prospective home buyers the lifestyle available in a particular community. Although homes and physical amenities are shown in the video, they are not the focal point. Instead, the video opens with a look at the overall environment, including the surrounding community and its amenities. A series of salespeople, real estate agents, and homeowners are featured through the program.

“It's not just, ‘We have three bedrooms, three baths,'” Larson says. “We're helping people relate to how they are going to live there.”

The Los Angeles division just began including development superintendents to the mix to explain some of the quality features of the homes and neighborhood infrastructure. It comes off as a typical segment on the local TV news.

“We don't script it,” says Bevins. “Consumers will make the most remarkable statements just off the cuff. We do have to prompt them to speak in complete sentences, though.”

The builder provides the talent, which lends an aura of credibility to the production. Larson allows that “not everyone is a film star,” but she says, “They get a little nervous at first, but they do a great job.”

Another “top five builder” was in discussions with Crozier & Henderson as this column went to press, according to Bevins, but he would not identify the builder.

“Hot On! Homes” first began airing in the Dallas/Ft. Worth market in 1999. Houston was added two years later; Austin, Texas shortly after that. The production company has since done more than 1,400 weekly shows featuring more than 8,000 communities.

The company finances its growth through cash flow, so it moves into new markets as its revenue stream allows. It expects “Hot On! Homes” will be on the air in seven more markets by the end of next year, says Bevins, with Orlando, Fla., coming up first. Other markets the company is eyeing include Atlanta and Chicago, as well as other cities in California and Florida.

In the markets where it is currently running, “Hot On! Homes” often wins its time slot, which is unusual for what is ostensibly an infomercial. According to ratings from Nielsen Media Research, which tracks television viewing for advertisers, the programs reach 2.5 million viewers each month and reach 11.7 percent of all homes watching television in its time slot, Bevins says. Those are significant numbers considering it airs in only 10 markets.

Builders that advertise on the show get to use the segments about their properties as VODs on their Web sites and can create DVDs for distribution to real estate agents and prospective home buyers. Crozier & Henderson also puts all of the segments up on the show's Web site and allows consumers to search them by various criteria. It also directs people to builders' Web sites (32,000 click-throughs to builders during August were tallied in Dallas alone). The company also hosts “Hot On! Homes” parties for real estate agents and distributes DVDs.

There is a significant difference between television production and Web production, however. On the Web, “Nobody gets to builder community videos by accident,” Bevins says. “Before they click the play button, they've clicked on the builder's home page, the state page, the city page, and the community page. That's four clicks before they hit play. VOD is video produced specifically to be effective in the web-viewing environment. The mistake that many companies make is repackaging effective television and expecting it to work on the Web.”

Larson believes VODs and the show are a good fit with Centex Los Angeles' division marketing plan. “I just e-mailed them yesterday to find out about the status of the show and when it was going to roll out here,” she says. According to Bevins, a broadcast version of the show is not likely in Los Angeles because of the size of the market and the number of TV stations needed to cover it. He says the company is considering cable.

“Having a good mix of media helps you to target everybody out there,” Larson says. “These videos are a little bit more impactful than, say, a print ad.”

<i>William Gloede, BIG BUILDER'S Digital Home editor-at-large, lives and works in Camden, Maine. E-mail: billgloede@adelphia.net.</i>