Purplebricks has brought Team GB-inspired artwork to life by turning them into augmented reality filters, as part of its latest marketing campaign ahead of next month’s Tokyo 2020 games.
Purplebricks has beenn designated the Official Estate Agent of Team GB and will be showing its support for our Olympic athletes with a series of marketing gimmicks, including the AR filters.
The four filters are said to be inspired by artwork created by current and former athletes for the Purplebricks “#HomeSupport” campaign. These artworks currently appear on some of Purplebricks ‘For Sale’ boards.
Each artist created an image that depicts what “home support” means for them, as part of a multichannel #HomeSupport campaign across national and local targeted media, with each filter designed to generate a high level of interest on social media.
Gemma Schmid, head of brand at Purplebricks, told Campaign magazine: “As a tech-led hybrid estate agent, it was really important for us to bring our ‘Home support’ campaign to life in a digitally innovative way that tied in with all our real-world activations and incredible artwork that has been produced.”
Purplebricks began partnering Team GB in 2019 and is the official estate agent of Team GB at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The partnership will run through to the end of 2021.
Last year, it launched Team GB sponsorship creative work by SnapLondon that confirmed its positioning as “the official estate agent of Team GB”, with light-hearted adverts featuring “Alice from Purplebricks”.
Comments (9)
Purplebricks – whoever they are – are a disgrace to our profession, in our experience the weak link in any sales chain. Why on Earth do the public part with money upfront to this setup when they can get experienced and professionally qualified service no sale no fee? Bring on professional qualification of all estate agents to weed them out!
Because when the agents sell a house it costs far more I guess
jan-buyers
“Because when the agents sell a house it costs far more I guess”
That depends what your guess of “cost” is. Take a house ‘worth’ £250,000 – but that could be any figure.
If Agent ‘A’ charges a Fee (fixed or percentage-based) equating to £2500 and Agent ‘P’ charges £1000; they do exactly the same job, and produce exactly the same result (in this example a sale at £250,000) for the vendor, then Agent ‘A’ simply costs more.
£1500 more, to be precise. Not a figure to be sniffed at.
In this scenario, that vendor would be foolish to appoint that Agent as they are literally giving money away. Even if Agent ‘P’ charged £2000, the vendor would still be wiser to plump for them. And better off to the tune of one monkey. Cash is King, after all – better in my pocket than yours, as the old saying goes.
But what if, using the identical pricing scenario, Agent ‘A’ did things differently to Agent ‘P’… and as a result achieved a better price for the property; and/or a quicker sale agreed. Or they actually did the hardest part of the job better (I would argue that the word here should be correctly), and saw the sale through to exchange and completion rather than letting it flap around like a beached fish waiting to die or be saved by an incoming tide?
If Agent ‘A’ could achieve a sale at £2000 more… £2500… or even £5000, than Agent ‘P’, which Agent “costs” more then?
As an Agent I ‘cost’ a bit more than my local competitors – and a lot more than the onliners from here, there and everywhere.
And I was proud to ‘cost’ a bit more – as the results I achieved paid for themselves several times over for my vendor clients. And they were the only ones that mattered. If a potential client could not see the value I and my team brought to the table then we wished them well with their proposed sale, and concentrated our efforts on the ones that did put their trust in us.
There will always be people who see – or as you prefer to put it, “guess” – things the way you clearly do… and there are Agents aplenty there to cater for them.
It’s just a pity that “saving” a bit in many instances costs them more.
Having recently sold a property in Cornwall, I believe it comes down to the individual agent. I had a choice between an online agent and a “HIgh Street” agent. I allowed my heart to rule my head and went with the High Street agent because my grandmother had lived a few doors away.
A sale was agreed in November and I gave my tenant notice. The tumbleweeds rolled in front of me with the buyers raising query after query and the mortgage company wanting various surveys. It dragged on until April when I realised it was being marketed as SSTC. I had not agreed to that and pointedly told the agent to remarket immediately. They protested that the other people may pull out and I should stick with them. I ignored them and instructed them to market the property without SSTC.
In May I had another, higher offer, the original people still prevaricated and were championed by the agent. Strangely I thought they worked for me not the buyer! This dragged on through May with various delays and I ultimately gave the agent notice and also told both buyers that I wanted an exchange and completion by 30th June. The original buyers disappeared still promising that a mortgage offer would be received within 24 hours. That was promised so many times.
Fortunately the new buyers did want it, increased their offer to knock out the first set and completed by 30th June. The agent then sent me an email congratulating themselves on suck a quick offer to completion. I did not trust myself to reply.
One final difference between the online and the high street agents. Online had no notice period. In their words they have to do a good job or else. High street – 12 weeks!
By the way, having worked in an estate agents for some years, I must say that the phrase “Rest assured” leaves me neither rested nor assured.
AcornsRNuts
You sound like you had a rough deal of it. Not what I would call a ‘typical’ transaction – but I nevertheless acknowledge that nightmare sales do happen, and things do go wrong on occasion.
Obviously I only have your version of events to discuss here – but for the purpose of discussion we will assume that events were exactly as described.
You agreed a sale in November 2020, and served your tenant notice – which would have had to have expired in May. Your buyer was clearly committed to the extent of having appointed a conveyancer (and presumably paying for searches etc), paid for a mortgage valuation or more in-depth survey to be carried out as well as, I take it, the “various surveys” you advise the lender was requesting.
So – is it correct your buyer was already having to wait six months for their new home? That may well have suited them down to the ground… and in fairness it should have been exactly what was ‘sold’ to them by the Agent – failure to have done so would have been a fatal mistake for the majority of agreed sales.
But nearly five months along the line with no sign of an exchange in sight must have been worrying for you – and you were right to share those concerns with your Agent. I’m only surprised that you weren’t yelling at them earlier.
But that brings us on to the terms of the property being advertised ‘SSTC’ – and your dispute as to how it was being handled. It is a requirement that any property that has an offer accepted be clearly described as “Under Offer”/”SSTC” UNLESS the vendor specifically requests it not to be, and the potential buyer agrees to proceed on that basis. TPOs Code of Practice states
“When an offer has been accepted subject to contract you must take and confirm the seller’s instructions as to whether the property should be withdrawn from the market, or continue to be marketed(*). In the latter case, you must advise the buyer in writing and ensure your marketing clearly explains that an offer has been accepted subject to contract. The buyer must also be informed in writing should the seller later decide to put the property back on the market. You remain under the legal obligation to pass on offers, as defined in 9a.”
(*) to this effect, 99% of Agents I know or have worked with have a clear clause in their Agency Agreement that once an offer is accepted and legals are instructed, the property will be advertised as UO/SSTC.
You are completely correct that an Estate Agent ‘works’ for the homeseller and not the buyer – however they still have a duty of care to the buyer, and, having as you say worked within Estate Agency, you will no doubt appreciate the fine line that must be tread in the attempt to keep all parties happy in what can be an exceedingly stressful process.
Now – on to your observation as to the difference between traditional and ‘online’ models of Agency:
“Online had no notice period. In their words they have to do a good job or else. High street – 12 weeks!”
I’m afraid that is woefully incorrect on a number of levels. Here’s my top 2:
1. Using an ‘online’ Agent in the vast majority of cases commits the homeowner to paying a fee, regardless of whether or not a successful sale comes from the instruction.
So the Agent, having already been paid (either by the vendor or a third-party load company that ‘buys’ the debt to collect at a later date) has no incentive whatsoever to “do a good job”. They have already ‘done a good job’ in persuading the vendor to part with their money.
2. An ‘online’ Agent does not usually specify a Sole Agency term, for the same reason as above. They don’t need to seek an exclusive marketing period – you have alrready paid for whatever marketing you are going to get… and if another Agent then steps up to the plate and does the job of ‘selling’ the property all the better for them.
A traditional Agent, however, working on a No Sale:No Fee basis, has everything to lose if A. Nother & Co jump in and steal the sale. Of course they are going to specify an exclusive period – it’s only right and fair – unless of course you are prepared to stump up a Marketing Fee to cover the abortive costs of putting to market.
Lastly, not sure why you make the point about not resting assuredly, as no-one as far as I can see has used that phrase here. I can only assume that it fits somewhere in with your above-recounted experience.
Maybe you’d care to enlighten.
So Team GB are all selling their properties?
I cringe every time I see their TV ads, so awful, poorly written and tacky sense of humour which fails. Everyone I know not in the industry say its a turn off.
We are a professional service industry, they do not inspire professionalism.
The only part I like is when the athlete tells her to STOP TALKING. The award for the worst portal advert is Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon the market. I turn the sound off as soon as the first dreary sounds hit my ears. Worst ever advert is Verisure – I am very sure I’d never use them, so amateur I wonder if it is the same PR team who do OTM.
“Purplebricks has been designated the Official Estate Agent of Team GB”
No they haven’t. They’ve sponsored Team GB. I doubt many of our Olympians would be slow enough to use PB.
In other news…
They haven’t sold the Rovers Return either. Whatever their board says!
Purplebricks decided to make staff redundant during a pandemic rather than #homesupport it’s own staff even when for weeks they promised it’s furloughed staff they wouldn’t. Maybe the hashtag #VicShouldResign has a better chance of trending