Century 21 Real Estate LLC
Company: Century 21 Real Estate LLC, Parsippany, NJ, USA
Entry Submitted By: Mullen
Company Description: Century 21 Real Estate LLC is the franchisor of the world's largest residential real estate sales organization, providing comprehensive training, management, administrative and marketing support for the CENTURY 21® System. The System is comprised of approximately 8,000 independently owned and operated franchised broker offices and 121,000 agents in 73 countries and territories world.
Nomination Category: Communications & Marketing Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Mobile Marketing Campaign of the Year
Nomination Title: CENTURY 21 Real Estate LLC Buys Virtual Real Estate
Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 500 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:
The way people buy and sell real estate has drastically changed over the last few years. Instead of scheduling an in-person meeting with an agent, today’s homebuyers start their search online, share listings with their social networks and download their favorites on their mobile phone before they even seek the help of a real estate professional.
Armed with the knowledge that one in four adults currently own a smart phone (Nielsen) and mobile gaming attracts 26 million unique viewers a day (Flurry), CENTURY 21 Real Estate LLC, led by Chief Marketing Officer, Bev Thorne, and Mullen enlisted the help of social activity company, appssavvy, and identified an opportunity to reach these new homebuyers in a relevant and helpful way - by purchasing virtual real estate in one of the most popular mobile games, ngmoco’s We City, which has an extremely loyal fan base of players who fall between the ages of 25 and 44. The alignment between audiences and the nature of the game – growing your city by adding real estate properties and businesses – produced a unique opportunity the client/agency team couldn’t ignore.
The team’s key objectives for the campaign included:
1) Drive awareness, brand preference and engagement at the height of the home buying season amongst the brand’s target audience of consumers, ages 25-34.
2) Support the brand’s new “Smarter. Bolder. Faster.“ comprehensive marketing campaign by driving views of its advertising and securing top media/blogger coverage in the real estate, social media, mobile and overall branding press.
The client/agency team created branded structures that fit seamlessly into the game and offered players virtual value. Mullen worked with ngmoco to develop three branded structures - a real estate office, modern home and skyscraper – which We City users could choose to incorporate into their city, allowing them to earn virtual “profits” and ultimately advance within the game. After engaging and earning a CENTURY 21 structure, users also had the opportunity to earn additional virtual coins by choosing to watch a 30-second advertisement from the brand’s new Smarter. Bolder. Faster. marketing campaign.
The results of the campaign were a phenomenal success. More than 401,000 structures were placed, averaging 4.32 CENTURY 21 buildings per user. This means users not only interacted with and placed all three free structures, but they went back into the store and spent their own in-game currency to purchase more buildings.
Additionally, of those users that placed a building, 58 percent retained the brand message – a 40 percent positive change in awareness. According to appssavvy, a n normal change in awareness is only 18 percent.
The team also had 301,599 views of the branded video and more than 5.4 million views of the branded welcome screen. Of those that watched the video, the team
saw a tremendous increase in message association – a change of 55%.
In total, Mullen secured 27 placements including Forbes.com, Mashable, Dow Jones Newswires/Wall Street Journal, ClickZ.com, Inman News, Direct Marketing News and Mobile Marketer, resulting in 73,973,075 impressions.
List hyperlinks to any online work samples, videos, images, presentations, news stories, press releases, or other documents that support your case. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://www.appssavvy.com/century21/
http://mashable.com/2011/05/03/social-gaming-marketing/
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/04/14/century-21-moves-into-virtual-real-estate/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudiosi/2011/04/12/century-21-sold-on-ngmocos-mobile-game-we-city/
http://www.inman.com/news/2011/04/12/century-21-partners-with-mobile-game-co
http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/gaming/9690.html
http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/d881a499-a933-4421-8501-ee6275136eb5.aspx
http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2011/06/30/Century-21-ngmoco.aspx
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2043726/century-21-builds-presence-mobile-game-city
http://www.dmnews.com/century-21-reaches-younger-consumers-with-mobile-campaign/article/200582/
http://www.engagedigital.com/blog/2011/04/12/century-21-runs-brand-promotion-in-ngmocos-we-city/
http://socialtimes.com/century-21-purchases-virtual-real-estate-in-ngmocos-we-city_b57422
Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 100 words):
As Chief Marketing Officer for Century 21 Real Estate LLC, Bev Thorne leads the planning and execution of the domestic marketing strategies for the largest real estate franchise organization in the world. She is responsible for leading the strategy development and program execution of all consumer, broker and agent marketing programs.
Bev holds an MBA from the Wharton School-University of Pennsylvania and has worked extensively in the areas of consumer marketing, strategic branding and event marketing management over her twenty-plus year career. She and her husband are raising three children on a tree farm in Central New Jersey.