Proptech Pulse

Proptech Pulse Podcast: Beyond the Logo - The Science of Real Estate Branding with Marc Davison

• Lone Wolf Technologies • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Episode Summary
In this insightful episode of PropTech Pulse, hosted by Jake Hamilton, welcomes Marc Davison, co-founder of 1000watt and a 25-year veteran of the real estate industry. Davison shares his expert perspective on the science of branding in real estate, distinguishing between true branding and simple marketing tactics. The conversation explores common branding mistakes, highlights companies that excel at brand building, and offers practical advice on creating meaningful connections with clients beyond transactions.

Topics Covered

  • The fundamental difference between branding and marketing
  • Common branding mistakes in real estate
  • Examples of successful real estate brands
  • The importance of customer-centric storytelling
  • Technology's role in brand enhancement
  • Creating "reasons to believe" through actions and content
  • Strategies for standing out in a competitive marketplace


Key Quotes

  • "Branding is the action you take as a company to create some kind of emotional connection with your audience."
  • "You can't say something that you are and then not have any activated proof that that exists in the world."
  • "There are very few brands in real estate, really. Most of them think they're brands. But if you were to say to somebody, 'What do they do besides sell real estate?' no one would be able to answer that."
  • "What a brand does... is it tells the stories of the success of its clientele—the hero's journey. The customer is the hero."
  • "If there's no room for me to see myself within your story, brand is not happening."
  • "It's not that you have tech, but it's the ingenious ways in which you can use your tech to blow somebody away."


About Marc Davison
Marc Davison is a co-founder of 1000watt, a creative agency dedicated to helping real estate companies build meaningful brands. With over 25 years of experience in the industry, Davison has worked with numerous brokerages, MLSs, and technology companies to develop and refine their brand strategies. His expertise lies in helping organizations move beyond surface-level marketing to create authentic emotional connections with their audiences.


Highlighted Real Estate Brands

  • Slifer Smith & Frampton (Colorado)
  • Hawaii Life
  • Michael Saunders & Company (Sarasota, Florida)

https://www.lwolf.com/podcast

SPEAKER_02:

From the entrepreneur's desk to the industry from the lines and into real world operations.

SPEAKER_03:

I'm Aaron Cardell, joined by Kyle Hunter and Jake Hamilton. And we're here to take the pulse of real estate technology in just 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_02:

All right. Well, want to welcome everyone to this episode of Prop Tech Pulse. We're here with Mark Davison, one of the founders of Thousand Watt Real Estate Vet. He's been in the space for over 25 years and brings a ton of value to brokerages, tech providers, really everyone in the industry through the insights he brings to brand, to marketing, and to really delivering on the experience that we all look for as both real estate brokers and agents and then tech companies as well. So, Mark, it's it's great to have you on the show. Yeah, thank you, Jay. Happy to be here. Awesome. Well, we're super excited. Mark has helped Lone Wolf with our rebrand. Super excited to unveil new colors, new logo as we launch into this next generation of real estate. And as part of that, we just wanted to bring Mark to our listeners, to our customers, uh, to share some of the insights he has on real estate branding and on the experience as a whole. So, Mark, really excited to get your perspective. Um, you know, in the time you've been in the real estate space, branding has evolved significantly. What are the biggest changes you've seen in how real estate branding has changed and how real estate brands connect with their consumers?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh boy, you're just throwing me right into the deep end, huh? Absolutely. That's that's what we do. Uh okay. Um well, I think fundamentally branding has not changed. Um I I'm a big advocate for um what I would call the science of branding. It's a science. Um because when you think about what branding actually is, it it is the action you take as a company to create some kind of emotional connection with your audience. So somewhere in the transmission of information, you're radiating out and creating a connectivity. That's what branding is, your branding, or like it's like we're talking right now, it's the same thing. Companies communicate through this thing we call branding, but it's communication. Um, and if people on the other end pick up on it and feel something from it, uh then then brand happens. Um and uh so it's kind of a chemical, it's a there's a chemical reaction there. So branding as a thing has been a consistent reality for you know for eons. Um it's it's uh I think the ancient Egyptians were the first culture to invent the idea of like literally branding their livestock. In other words, saying this livestock is ours by putting a mark on it. Well, brands do the same thing. It's saying these customers are ours and we are theirs through this transmission of branding. So that has not changed at all. What has changed in real estate, I think, has been a um maybe a slightly deeper layer of understanding that branding is something more than just putting a lot of like yard signs around and having people recognize your uh you're now. Oh, oh, there's broker A. I see there's signs everywhere. People used to think that that was branding. That's not branding, that's just name recognition and it's marketing. So I think what's changed is to a degree, there's a slightly deeper layer of understanding around what I just said and how to actually do branding beyond just like making signs or putting flyers. In other words, branding is something deeper than just marketing.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's that's great. I really love the point there on branding being that first defining part of the relationship between you and a customer, and a customer and you. Um and it's this area that's fraught with ways that you can stand out, ways that you can appeal to different consumers, different profiles, uh, different people who might come to your business. But it's also this area where you can make meaningful missteps and mistakes that tarnish your brand and reputation. What are some of those mistakes and some of the pitfalls that you see agents and brokers fall into that you you'd advise people, hey, watch out for this. What's most important when they're thinking about those components?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, okay. I'm gonna have to wheel out a 55-gallon drum of a list. All right, I'm gonna stop in no particular order, but this is hitting me most importantly. The first mistake you make is having somebody running your marketing department who doesn't know what branding is. So I we got very lucky with like this project with Lone Wolf because Lisa knows what branding is. Like her and I share the same understanding, which is the understanding that every brand agency or every brand person at a company understands that it's it's a scientific, chemical thing, and companies have to actually do things to manifest branding. The biggest mistake I see is that there are people at the helm of marketing departments who think marketing is branding, uh, and who think that branding is just recognition. Um, and that's all they know. And so, if that's all they know, then everything you're attempting to do to manifest that emotional connection with the world, it's not going to happen. You're not creating any of it. And and that cascades into all the other things then that go wrong, which is inconsistent everything. Um, so I'll give you an example. I ran into this just the other day. Uh, we sent a new client a questionnaire to fill out, and they fill out all these questions that I'm asking them about their brand. In other words, I'm trying to dig into the personality of the company, and I see all these answers, and then I go to look for proof to substantiate whatever they've told me. I can't find a single aspect of proof. So, like one of the questions was um, what do you do besides, you know, what if you were to answer the question, what is it that you do? But you can't say we help people buy and sell real estate. Um their response was, well, we help people um navigate and find themselves, find that they're find themselves within the community that's right for them. Okay, that's a great answer. So I go to their website, there's not a single stitch of information at all about the community. So this is the this is illustrative of like you can't say something that you are and then not have any activated proof that that exists in the world. So if you say you're into X, then everybody should see it, feel it, there should be proof, or we call like reasons to believe. Real estate is very good about broadcasting lots of good sounding sound bites. But then when you go to try to find living proof of that, uh it's not there. So, you know, the the uh the syndrome of like best kept secret. Like we're such a great company. How come nobody knows about us or no knows what we do? It's like because you don't tell anybody, it's not evident. Uh and um I think that back to your first question, what's starting to happen is people are starting to realize that they need to manifest their value in ways that become a little a lot more evident to the world.

SPEAKER_01:

Um and there's somebody in real estate that's doing a really good job of that right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, Lisa, that's a fantastic question. And I want to think about that. I mean, my first response would always be to go to like a client we've worked with. Yeah, because A, I'm aware of what they're doing intimately, so I can speak to it. Plus, like they came here to help us to help them do that. Right. Okay. Well, I think about you guys. Like, do you remember after we got done with the logo work? We began working on all of this documentation, and and this was your agenda. We have to create living, breathing reasons to believe. So to work through all the copy to make sure that like all the great things that we do as a company, it's very evident to the people who come and read different things. Um, there's a brokerage in Colorado, uh, Slifer Smith and Frampton, who are extraordinary communicators of their value proposition. Uh, Hawaii Life is probably um, I'm gonna say something controversial because I'm you know, I can't help myself, but it's it's also truthful. There are very few brands in real estate, really. Most of them think they're brands, but like if you were to say to somebody, well, what do they do besides sell real estate? No one would be able to answer that. And uh, if you were to ask somebody, what does Nike do besides selling shoes, there'd be an answer to that. Um, or what does Apple represent in the world beyond devices? You'd be able to answer that. But there are some brokerages that when you look at their logo, hear their name, you conjure up bigger, different stories above and beyond the utility or their functionality. Um and uh so Hawaii Life is an absolute uh brand of perfection in my mind. Um, they represent something bigger than buying and selling real estate. Uh Michael Saunders in in Sarasota, Florida, an awesome company that is uh um known for more than just the utility. So yeah, um I think there are some tech companies. Uh I mean, obviously you guys, uh, and I'm not just saying that, but you know, we did the work, so we know that like Lone Wolf is a brand. Um people tie, so how how do I apply that to you guys? If I were to say to somebody, what does Lone Wolf do? They say, well, they provide a lot of technology. Um, if I were to say to them, well, what do they do for you? Like describe the relationship or the benefit. Uh, because we've done that work, we've asked people. And what they go into, it doesn't mention the technology. It mentions, oh, you know, they make us more successful, they make us more organized. Now they're starting to speak in terms of like what we call brand talk. Um, so yeah, you know, um, I don't know any real estate agents who are brands, except that they all think that they're brands, but you know, they're not they're they're they're well-known images, you know, they're known in the community, but they're not brands yet. Um, what's that, Lisa?

SPEAKER_01:

I was thinking like that's a good question, like as a marketer, right? To ask yourself going in, like, what how do I get beyond utility? How am I? I think those are the questions you asked me when we started the right getting beyond, oh, we sell tech or we have software. Like, what is that beyond? What is it helping? And I think people if people ask themselves that question, you get to the heart of your brand. But it it is a lot of time spent asking those questions and digging deeper and peeling away that onion, and then also to figure out you know the reasons to believe. So the most important part of branding is you can't just say you're something, you actually have to be something and act as something, right? So unless you know what that is and how to get everyone on the board for that, it the colors and all of that won't matter.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think that's no. I mean, you can say you're a brand. Everybody's the right to identify any way they want. Uh and so you want to be a you want to say you're a brand, go ahead. Uh the thing is, there's no value there unless other people can say that. Right. And if other people can say, oh, well, yeah, they're definitely a brand, and here's why they're a brand, and and their their reason is beyond. Uh, you know, I've had these conversations, you know, intimate ones with individual like agents, and they go, well, we're a brand. What's what's the brand based on, well, we're like, we do a great job. It's like, but you're supposed to do a great job. That's your job to do a great job. Uh you don't build brand around doing your job. It's you have to, you know, the local coffee shop who makes good coffee is just a local coffee shop that makes good coffee. They're not a brand. Um, and and so like we could spend hours and hours like delving into the triggers that uh now I think it's possible for some agents to, but they have to get beyond themselves. And this is important for all companies. You can't be a brand if all you ever talk about is yourself. There was uh, you know, Joseph Campbell wrote a book called The Hero's Journey, and then Donald Miller took that and created Story Brand. And I think if you've read either one of them, what you, or if you read both, you realize that like the job of a of a job of a company or a job of a business is to uh create products, put products out in the world, uh, keep perfecting those products, making it better so people continue to buy them over and over again and build a good reputation. That's what a business does. What a brand does, above and beyond that, is it tells the stories of success of its clientele, it's the hero's journey. The customer is the hero. So if all your marketing, all your storytelling centers around how great you are and how wonderful you look on a here's my picture here, and here's my picture there, you're not branding. You're putting your image out to the world. Um, but if there's no room for me to see myself within your story, brand is not happening. And um it is a sacred thing because if you could make it happen and remote every where I live, there's really only one way out into the world. I'm way remote. So when I head out into the world, I eventually pass a shopping center that has a big step band parked at the edge of it with a real estate agent, a big picture of the agent with a a basketball spinning on his finger. Um that the belief is that he's branding as what a realtor that spins a basketball. Like, how does that benefit me? Where am I in that storyline? And until I can see myself in that or in something else, there's just I recognize that that's a popular thing, but there's not like this thing called brand. Um, but when there is, the value of that is tenfold.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. It's really trying to figure out where am I driving a brand, where am I driving an experience for my customer versus, where am I driving familiarity and recognition? And I think those two are kind of a lot of what people get confused on or do familiarity over a brand. Um with that, I want to pivot a little bit, Mark. And you know, as agents listen, as people are thinking about driving this brand and driving an experience and something that's more than just I sell real estate, what are the ways that they can bring together branding and technology to really drive that home, drive that messaging and make it clear out in the marketplace and really clear who they are and the value they provide?

SPEAKER_00:

So if I understand the question is how how can agents and brokers use technology to enhance brand? Yes. I have a feeling you want me to say something here that I I can't say. Uh I want you to say exactly what you want to say. I I I don't think technology is ambient. It's just ambient. Um, it's really a convenience thing. So uh sure, if if you as a service provider are using a technology to create more convenience, that's cool. But like to my point earlier, that's expected. Like, do you ever get into a cab when you just can't get the Uber and you're sitting back there going, Really? Like I have to tell you how to get to where I'm we're going, or I gotta put my credit card in at the end. Like there's now this expectation that you should just be able to get into any kind of a you know a livery service and just they know where to go, and you arrive and you can get out the door. Um, so arguably the tech is no longer like even Uber's brand, you know, magic. It's not that, it is immediacy. Um and uh so I don't know, I think like it's important to use, it's critical to use technology to run your business. How do you leverage that? I think the only way I could really think of is if you are a brokerage and you are looking to recruit agents and you can bring state-of-the-art technology as a service provision to those agents. That's a that's powerful. Um and um, but I think if you're like an agent, you know, you're you're expected to have technology, you're expected to like have a text number, you're expected to respond to email, you're all of it is expected. I I think it's like we're past that point of there. You know, that was a wow factor back then. Now it's like, yeah, everybody's got that.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. There's no technology magic bullet at this point. It's there, it supports you, it gives you time, but it's really what experience can you provide? How does it support what you provide there? Buying buying tech without having the brand doesn't do it all in one.

SPEAKER_00:

No, but like, okay, so here's a hack. It's it's not that you have tech, but it's the in ingenious ways in which you can use your tech to blow somebody away. So, as an example, if I knew that, like Lisa, if I were coming to your home to do a listing presentation, you and your husband want to sell your house. And I know that. Um so it's Tuesday, and I'm going to be there on Thursday. Uh, why wouldn't I use all the technology that I have at my disposal to do things that by the time I arrive at your house, I already have your home completely set up to be marketed. I've already had a drone photographer come out. I've had a video person shoot on the outside. I've done all my research internally, and I've already created the marketing flyer. I've built the property website. So when I sit down with you, I go, hey, let me show you what I just did. You don't have to talk about, oh, I have all this great technology. Show it.

SPEAKER_01:

That it goes back to the reasons to believe that we earlier, right? You're showing your brand, you're showing that connection, and that'll go a lot further. I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_00:

So to your point, you're showing your brand. If you showed up like that, you know, like I don't know anybody that does, I'm sure there are, but like to that last point you said, now you're showing your brand. That's when that's when if you did that, I guarantee you a seller will go, whoa, that how did you do all that? The minute you get how did you do all that, now they're in now they're you've piqued their curiosity in a new way. Uh nobody goes, oh, okay, I think your house is worth uh eight million dollars. Well, how do you figure that out? People know how agents do that. They have a CMA, everybody knows what that is. But like if you could do some things that get people to really wonder about how you did that, like now you become the a magic person. Um and the way you respond to that. So if it were me, I would say, hey, look, you know, I take every listing appointment seriously, and I know time is of essence. So in the couple of days that I had between now and then, I had my team go out. So now I'm saying, my team, now I'm bigger than just me. Uh, we did our research, we did our writing, we set everything up because if you want to go forward, I'm ready to go right now. Um, and we can get your home. Like, so now there's something going on that's bigger, uh, that's bigger than just marketing. So, Jake, it's about it's about the clever ways that you could use the tech you have to do things that like would really impress people or that things that no one else is doing.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Well, Mark, want to thank you so much for joining our podcast today. Um, you know, love the insight, love how we talk about a brand is it's not just some images and a cool logo. That's a part of it, but it's a visual identity, it's a creative expression of who you are and what you provide to a consumer and how you drive that relationship forward. Uh, and the insights you provided, I think, are of great value to our customers. I know for us, through our own rebrand process, working with you, working with the team at Thousand Watt was incredibly valuable. Uh, we're super fortunate to have partners as great as you all. And thank you for taking the time to join us today. My pleasure, Jay. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. Lisa, great to see you again.

SPEAKER_01:

Always a pleasure. Thank you for everything you did for us.

SPEAKER_03:

That's our pulse for today. Keep innovating, keep implementing, and keep moving real estate forward.

Contributor

svalerin@lwolf.com

Producer