David Fleming, PACE
Communications Group

You know what’s frustrating? It’s the VidPics in real estate video that are passed off as actual videos. Like when you click a link that says “watch video” and I’m anticipating an experience that moves me…but it’s just another video of still pictures that our 12-year-old could have recorded.

Sadly, VidPic is still state-of-the-art in so many of today’s real estate videos. VidPics leave you wanting more. Not just more facts, but more of a connection. A story.

Tell Me a Story

A friend of ours named Bill Shander of Beehive Media recently got us thinking about storytelling. Bill collaborates with organizations to use storytelling in their data visualization for presentations and messaging. Storytelling is the foundation of all language. When used well, storytelling helps move your audience from papers and presentations to a feeling of connection and impact.

In real estate, an effective video not only captures what your property looks like and what makes it special, it takes your potential tenant or buyer into the heart of why your property is where they should be. Video, with a good story, can move you and your client from the conference table littered with aerials, 2D maps and stale cups of coffee and transports them to your location. And, along the way, you’ve created the connection that makes them eager for the next step.

Make Me Care

In his TED talk on storytelling, filmmaker Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, WALL-E) pleads with storytellers to “make me care.” Because somewhere within a good story, Stanton believes storytellers make a promise. A promise that the story “will lead somewhere that’s worth your time.” Further “storytelling is knowing that everything you’re saying from your first sentence to your last is leading to a singular goal.”

Ask what’s your goal? What do you want your video to accomplish? To show a vacant space or a property? Maybe it’s to highlight an entire neighborhood and help people understand what makes it unique, and why they should go there. Eat there. Connect with friends there. Live there. Work there.

Stanton goes on to talk about creating a sense of anticipation among viewers and quotes British playwright William Archer who said, “Drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty.” Is your video creating anticipation? Are you making your audience wonder what will happen next?

Supercharge with Video

Remember your last tenant meeting using traditional site maps and aerials to explain your property? “It’s in an amazing location at the center of the city. As you can see on this aerial, here’s Route 1 and here’s the off ramp just a quarter mile away. The Acme Shopping Center is next door, the Downtown Sports Stadium is across the street, and the new high-tech office building with the health club just opened at the corner. Filled with great retailers, ACME is always buzzing and the office and health club are active all day. Nighttime lights up with stadium games and concerts that bring thousands of people year round. And, there’s a great new public park underway.”

Still trying to hold onto your audience as they shifted in their seats, you continued “Ok, here’s your space. It’s got great site lines and is beautifully built out. Imagine your store next to the market and just to the left of the new cinema.”

Now imagine using video in that same meeting. You’re immediately adding an entirely new, visually rich layer to your story and showing things that 2D maps, aerials and photos simply can’t. You’re connecting your client to the project and enabling them to visualize their space. And an added benefit – your audience can watch it at their convenience from just about anywhere as many times as they like.

Digital Video is Exploding

Cisco predicts that video will actually reach around 90 percent of global internet traffic by 2019. Robert Kyncl, YouTube CBO reports that “already the youngest millennials are watching more digital video than TV. In fact, it has now overtaken social media as their top online activity and is growing around 25% a year.”

With more people watching video, it’s more important than ever to add it to your marketing mix. Viewers spend an average of about 50 seconds on a website, but more than five minutes on a website with video content.

Take Me There

Video takes your clients to your project and tells them your story in a captivating way. A great example is Sam Park & Co.’s The Point, a 540,000-square-foot mixed-use project in Littleton, MA. Conveying the project’s location to retail tenants was proving to be a challenge. Aerial maps with the 495 badge simply couldn’t tell the story of its prime location directly on I-495.

Sam Park & Co. needed a script that screamed, “It’s right on I-495!” And, to keep the story going with critical information like “IBM and its 1,600 high-tech employees are directly across from The Point on I-495.” PACE Communications Group, located in the Greater Boston area, provided drone video to tell The Point’s story. And, sure enough, people got it. In fact, a restaurant tenant that had been on the fence for months signed a lease shortly after viewing the video.

Will 2016 be the year that you use video? If so, we encourage you to tell a compelling story; one that’s worth your audience’s time. Use video to take them there. And make them care. Your results will be amazing.

David Fleming and Lolli Pettitt Fleming are principals at PACE Communications Group, Boston, Mass.