There’s no place like home, and Re/Max Canada wants to be where the burgeoning millennial homebuyer is looking for advice: online.
The real estate company has developed a reality TV web series called “#HomeGoals,” which follows young homebuyers through the highs and lows of the purchasing journey, guided by an agent and hosted by YouTuber Ashley Bloomfield.
Melissa Clemance, director of PR & communications at Re/Max of Ontario-Atlantic Region, says that it was important to convey a “warts-and-all” approach, as typically, similar fare offered up on channels like HGTV follows couples as they find a dream home, absent the pitfalls.
“We wanted to show real struggles, rather than create a façade,” Clemance says. Millennials are now the biggest segment of home-buyers, and many face challenges when they enter the highly competitive and expensive real estate market.
[iframe_youtube video = “xrtrtdZ2IJM”]
The first episode of the five-part series debuted this week, featuring a couple talking about their house hunting experience, as well as their expectations. Throughout, tips from Re/Max appear on screen, as the couple talks about the role their real estate agent has played. Bloomfield also quizzes the couple on terms related to the purchase journey.
Clemance says the web series will feature both new and repeat home buyers. As the millennial audience moves up market to their second home purchase, she says it was important to address different challenges, such as buying one property and selling another at the same time.
The series is part of a longstanding effort by the brand to convey the importance of working with a realtor, Clemance says, who can help navigate having to compromise in order to be closer to a quality school, or sacrificing size for budget. According to Clemance, one of the biggest challenges in the market is that there is so much info out there, so the brand is looking to build credibility as a guide for millennials, who have less experience with Re/Max than Boomers and Gen X.
The campaign builds on previous efforts by the brand to show that its agents can “de-stress” the homebuying process, with a branded content approach helping to convey how an agent could help through the buyers’ own words. Clemance says there was a gap in the marketplace for this kind of content, as this demo is consuming media in a different way. The episodes will air on both YouTube and Instagram’s long-form IGTV platform, the latter of which has become a better platform for discoverability since content was recently made available on the social network’s main feed.
Clemance says the web series is one of the brand’s bigger spends in terms of content creation, in response to the millennial demo growing in prominence and exerting its earning power. Re/Max also wanted to reach consumers before they are looking to get an agent. It worked with Apex PR and its digital division Ruckus on the series, with Route Eleven on production.
