In its new television ad campaign, launched this week for the spring selling season, Coldwell Banker Real Estate is focusing on the deepest, most personal meanings of homeownership.
The new ads feature the voice of "Magnum P.I." television star Tom Selleck, whose father had served as an executive with Coldwell Banker for 38 years. When Selleck found out he was selected for the ad campaign, he reportedly told his mother that he "was at last in the family business."
"All we see is negativity in the market," said Coldwell Banker Real Estate Chief Marketing Officer Michael Fischer. "People are putting their life on hold," he said.
"No one’s talking about the positive aspect of homeownership." That’s where Coldwell Banker wanted to be a leader, he said, to bring the industry’s conversation into the emotional, psychological realms of homeownership.
A 60-second anthem anchors the campaign. There is a visual montage of sunny, family- and home-filled, and sensory-brimming images, and a slow crescendo of whistles followed by a chorus and guitar-chord melody, with Selleck tallying up the values of homeownership.
"Start by taking the smell of pancakes on a Sunday morning and times that by the sound of kids laughing from the bottom of their bellies … minus the struggles of the outside world; add the power of a bedtime story; and times that by the square root of a grandmother kissing her grandchild," Selleck says.
"Multiply all this by about 50,000 memories and 100,000 smiles, and then you have a value of a home."
The campaign, which will air March through June on ABC Wednesday prime-time programming, NBC, HGTV, ESPN, A&E, FX and USA, also includes three 15-second TV spots featuring pets, kids and backyards, and a 30-second spot focusing on innovation. The Siltanen & Partners ad firm directed the campaign.
See the ads below: