Coldwell Banker Tours a Home In Cyberspace
In one of the more interesting announcements to come out of Connect last week, Coldwell Banker announced it had modeled a real life listing inside of the virtual world Second Life. (You can see the full property details here)
As far as a publicity gimmick, it was inspired - but as far as a practical way to market a listing it strikes me as an expensive, time-consuming practice.
Second Life, which claims over 8 million virtual residents, has been a hotbed of corporate activity recently trying to get a handle on Web 2.0 environments. This is not new territory for CB either, as it has already opened a virtual office in the world. (see Coldwell Banker Opens Office in Second Life)
But as a recent issue of Wired magazine reported, this push by Fortune 500 companies has been largely ignored by most residents (see How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life) who seem more interested in exploring the seedy side of cyberspace.
If CB really wanted to explore marketing listings in a virtual world, they would be better advised to use a tool like Google’s SketchUp to create a 3D model of the home and populate inside of Google Earth. (see It’s a Google world)
This approach has several advantages. One, it’s free.
Secondly, Google Earth is far more accessible to average consumers. Users do not have to register with the service, a simple download to their desktop suffices. Further, users do not have to create an ‘avatar’ and subject themselves Second Life’s unituitive learning curve, with it’s bizarre teleport and flying behaviors.
Google Earth is a complex 3D rendering of the real world, but one that ultimately is easy to navigate - and a listing inside its confines has the necessary context and relevancy missing in Second Life.
Marketing a property with Google Earth doesn’t have the headline pull of putting a listing inside Second Life - but at the end of the day, could be far more practical and useful.
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7 Comment(s)
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- From HouseReview • View topic - Google maps go 3D | Aug 10, 2007
- From Executive Conversations | Aug 10, 2007
- From 3D-Web и маркетинг недвижимости | CREshka.ru - креатив для коммерческой недвижимости. | Sep 5, 2007
Steven Groves | Aug 10, 2007 | Reply
Joel - I read your post in my Google Reader feed this morning and you know I love everything you write, but on this post I think you may have missed a few salient points.
There are some technical / design issues that you may have been glossed over in comparing Sketch 3D with a Second Life build, but I’ll bring those up later on my blog at http://www.StevenGroves.com.
On the marketing side of the equations you and I agree on this type of presentation becoming more and more relevant - if you believe as I and many other so that the 3D interface will become more popular, this kind of exercise is very important. Whether or not it is Second Life will be the markets decision.
You may not have caught my recent posts / podcasts on the CB efforts around this SL project, but in the interviews with the agent, the marketing VP, as well as a soon to be posted interview David Marine Manager of eMarketing for CB. I do these multi-session interviews so I can get a ‘360′ view of what they are trying to accomplish and what they are expecting out of the effort.
Aside from your own experiences in SL regarding avatar setup and in-world navigation (which BTW, I agree needs to improve) there is no comparison in terms of the rich-media experience possible with these tools. Perhaps more to point is to employ them both - one for the 2D Internet user and the other for the desirable demographic audience that SL represents.
John Schroeder | Aug 10, 2007 | Reply
Pushing the boundaries in online marketing is a good thing. Maybe they can use something from their Second Life marketing experience in some of their other marketing. To me for now the initial ROI seems a bit low.
Joel Burslem | Aug 10, 2007 | Reply
@Steve - I agree that their are probably aspects to Second Life that eclipse the static experience of Google Earth. But putting a home into a virtual world like SL leaves out much of the real world context. What is the neighborhood like? Where’s the closest supermarket? etc. These questions can all be answered by layering in data with Google Earth. To be sure it’s not the same as touring virtual rooms or wandering virtual hallways but it’s relevant information that’s missing in SL, unless the developer renders the whole neighborhood.
For the average listing, Google Earth brings a much more realistic ROI, in my opinion.
Interesting exercise nonetheless. I suspect we’ll see more experiments like this in the future.
Steven Groves | Aug 10, 2007 | Reply
@ Joel - SL will never be the answer the question of the home in context to the neighborhood - but it is a dang sight better that a 2D pic / video walk though and that is what I think this build was about. If your post was about the kind of context you cite with schools and groceries, I missed it.
We all need to be cognizant that each tool in the Agent2.0 toolbox will support a diff aspect of the flow of information from an agent to a prospect / client. Kind of like you would not use a putter off the tee box in golf.
I have talked to people already who suggest that the real proof of this tactic will be not on the first instance of this type of presentation, as it is now. It’ll be on the third, fourth and fifth effort. The question will become how effective is it when the shininess’s of the effort wears off and the press doesn’t care anymore… keep up the good work!
dave | Aug 11, 2007 | Reply
I have tried using Google sketch up and it’s far from simple to use. An average agent would spend at least a couple hours learning the tool and then a couple more hours trying to create an entire home in it. What agent has that time? They’re better off paying someone to do it. There goes your point about it being free.
Also 3D is far from becoming prevalent today. But in a couple of years I’m sure we’ll see prices go down for creating 3D models and it will become more prevalent.
Chrischun Fassbinder | Aug 18, 2007 | Reply
To take a tour of the virtual home, just visit Coldwell Banker Headquarters within Second Life located in the Ranchero sim (200,250), use the following SLURL http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ranchero%20/210/229/32/ or search under places for “Coldwell Banker”.
For the record, design, execution, and ongoing maintenance of the Coldwell Banker presence in Second Life is handled by Code4Software LLC http://www.code4software.com
Max Christian | Aug 22, 2007 | Reply
The problem with marketing real estate in Google Earth has been, as Dave points out above, that SketchUp is not practical for use by estate agents, as it’s too time-consuming particularly for a successful agent with many properties on their books.
Metropix are launching a solution to this in mid-September which completely automates the creation of Google Earth 3D models from conventional floor plans. This results in furnished models which can be explored internally in a very similar way to SL using the new version of Google Earth that came out today.
For more information, please view this following blog postings:
http://metropix.typepad.com/metropix/2007/08/properties-in-g.html
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2007/08/cool-real-estat.html