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Creative Approaches to Video Storytelling for Brands | Pound Ridge Realtor

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Our first panel at the ReelSEO Video Marketing Summit was called “Creative Storytelling for Brands: Content Strategies that  Resonate.”  It starred Reed Lucas, Director of Channel Management at Channel  Factory, who sponsored the panel, CJ Bruce, founder of New Antics, who moderated.  The  panel included Clayton Talmon de l’Armée, director and video producer at  Salesforce,  Peter Caban, Chairman of Mekanism, Zach Blume, partner and managing director of Portal A, and Chris Gorell Barnes, founder and CEO of Adjust  Your Set.

 

<img  src=”http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QRwZ5ob1KYI/0.jpg” alt=”Creative Approaches to Video  Storytelling for Brands”  title=”0″ />Some highlights (many responses here have been edited and  revised):

On coming up with ideas to produce:

Barnes: How do you get the best ROI…we try to look for  relevance.  Context with the content.  Find a way to get people  talking about the product without overly mentioning the product.  What kind  of problems are keeping your audience awake at night, and does your product  solve that problem?  Creating stories around that.  We try to get our  clients to think more like a publisher, rather than an advertiser.

On whether they use focus groups:

Caban: Definitely not.  When we do comedy and content ,  you just don’t want to see the humor get watered down.  To do it to find an  insight with a demographic you don’t understand, it can be valuable.  So  more for insights, rather than creative.

Clayton: We have a network of chatter that we can get  feedback on.  We’ve got 10,000 employees who can give us feedback, and  we’ll know pretty quickly whether it’s crap or not.  It starts with a small  team, and then we move it up to chatter to figure out whether it’s viable.

On “boring brands” without a real story:

Blume: The first one that comes to mind was a mobile coupon  company.  What we did was make a purposefully over-the-top campaign with  people in a supermarket.  We made a campaign where the tone of the product  didn’t dictate the marketing, but where the marketing redefined the product  itself.

Caban: Yeah, that is interesting…whenever we have a topic  that could be interpreted as “dry,” we try to turn it around and run it the  other way.

Caban mentions a series Mekanism did for GE called “Datalandia:”

 

<img  src=”http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bdidA6Uukxk/0.jpg” alt=”Creative Approaches to Video  Storytelling for Brands”  title=”0″ />Common elements in the most successful videos:

Barnes: The best success we’ve had is when we have a  strategic approach before we shoot.  A lot of people sort of shoot first,  and ask questions later.  Very few brands have a proper video  strategy.  Understand what content you’re going to make, where it’s going  to go, what’s the measurement of success, how is it going to drive the right  ROI.  You need to think about the technology and the content, not taking a  piece of content and hiding it on YouTube.

Clayton: It’s all about story, and as soon as we get to that  point where we find that emotional connection, then we know we’re getting  there.

What storytelling tips would you give this  audience?

Blume: Know your audience.  Another thing is we’ve  created content when we’re not involved with a brand, so we get the chance to  experiment, to test, and to try different things, and to learn from it.

Caban: Internally, I think of about 5 directors who work  with us that are the right natural fit that can crack the code on the tone or  the writing.  Looking at the kind of director or writer will determine if  it’s great.  Many times, checking through their reels will determine who  might be the right fit.

Clayton: Don’t be boring.  We deal with a lot of stiff  business types and we’ll pitch them an idea and they’ll be like, “Are you out of  your mind?” and we say, “Yeah, that’s the point.”

What do you do when a client is stuck on being  conservative?

Clayton: Ultimately, we make two cuts.  Our cut and  their cut.  And oftentimes, they’ll take our cut.

Blume: I think it’s all about getting on the same level at  the beginning of the project.  When a client comes to us, they know what  kind of content we create, which is edgy, fun stuff, so I think it’s about  setting expectations at the beginning.

 

view more….

 

http://www.reelseo.com/video-storytelling-brands/

 

 

 

Homebuilders build momentum as existing home sales fall | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Disappointment seemed to flood the housing industry upon Monday’s existing-home sales report for June, which revealed total existing-home sales fell from May. Many analysts saw this as a smaller piece of a bigger picture that rising interest rates are deterring potential homebuyers from entering into the market.

However, homebuilders should have slept easy last night, as the drop in existing-home sales actually supports a positive housing outlook for them.

The primary competitor to public homebuilders is existing-homes for sale, Sterne Agee analyst Jay McCanless told HousingWire.

The lack of existing home supply is forcing Realtors to bring buyers who may not have been interested in a new home into new home neighborhoods, said McCanless.

“Assuming that the inventory situation either stays where it is or gets tighter from here, I think that’s a positive for homebuilders,” he added.

With inventory low and demand high, the median days to sell a home dropped 47.1% year-over-year in June, falling from 70 days to 37 days.

According to the analyst, it’s basic supply and demand. Builders can create the supply and the demand for housing is still abundant, despite higher rates. If you have such a high demand level, it implies that group of buyers have access to financing and creates a very positive market, McCanless noted.

According to McCanless, the backdrop remains positive for four homebuilders that he hand selected as his top picks. Meritage Homes Corp. ($45.03 0%), D.R. Horton, Inc. ($21.20 0%),Ryland Group ($39.74 0%) and PulteGroup, Inc. ($18.45 0%)have the potential to increase their pricing power in 2013 as competitive supply comes off the market. 

In a conference call on Tuesday, Fitch Ratings Managing Director and lead homebuilding analyst Robert Curran addressed the existing-home sales report as well as the current state of the housing recovery. 

Curran said it’s necessary that employment continues growing at a reasonable pace for housing to do well. Last month, 195,000 jobs were created, pushing the unemployment rate down to 7.6%. 

Fitch’s economic forecast is hesitant, considering the drag tax increases have had on the economy since the start of the year. However, the growth momentum in the private sector is well supported by the recovery in the housing market. 

Fitch’s housing forecast for 2013 predicts inventory remaining near low levels, while affordability remains high. 

“The housing recovery shall be maintained this year,” said Curran. Fitch anticipates single-family starts to rise 18% in 2013, while existing-home sales will only increase 7.5%.

Broken down, it is anticipated that total home sales will equal one million this year. Existing-home sales are expected to dominate new home sales significantly.

 

 

Homebuilders build momentum as existing home sales fall | HousingWire.

Housing: Should you stay or should you go? | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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If you listed a home for sale in the last few months, you may have been pleasantly surprised.

 

Demand has been robust, and stories abound of houses selling for well above their asking price. In states like Florida that were especially hard hit by the housing collapse, prices in some markets are up double digits from a year earlier.

 

And when mortgage rates began their sharp rise several weeks ago, demand initially rose as buyers—apparently worried about locking in rates before they moved higher—rushed to sign deals.

 

But logic suggests that that particular party can’t last. In fact, mortgage applications slipped for the week ended July 12, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

 

Meanwhile, a recent survey by Trulia found a of consumers said they would be discouraged from buying a home if interest rates rose above 5 percent.

 

All of which raises some tough questions for many homeowners: Should you rush to sell your house now, even as the summer doldrums approach? Or with the economy and the job market apparently on the mend, is it better to wait for the moderate pickup in activity that usually surfaces in the fall?

 

Housing starts are down. How worried should we be? CNBC’s Diana Olick has a realty check.

It depends partly on what kind of home you’re selling.

 

If you have a house that would appeal to a family, it makes much more sense to act now, says Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors’ chief economist. “If someone has a large house that would be a good fit for a family with kids, they would have a harder time in the fall months,” he said. “Even though some say there’s a second revival, it’s not as strong as the spring.”

 

Even if you’re not selling a potential family home, Yun says waiting may be risky. “Even if there are slightly more people with jobs, from the seller’s strategic point of view, I think they will see more potential buyers at a lower interest rate.”

 

There is also the matter of inventories. The number of homes on the market in June was about 7 percent below the level a year earlier, according to Realtor.com. In some markets, it is almost impossible to find a home in certain price ranges.

 

But the overall supply of homes for sale has been building, and home builders are gaining confidence, both of which suggest more competition awaits potential sellers.

 

Still, even with these clouds on the horizon, experts like Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac, says sellers don’t need to panic.

 

The market is strong right now, he said, but “I don’t mean to say it’s going to be bad in a couple of months.” While buyers may be experiencing some sticker shock from the rapid rise in mortgage rates, he does not expect much more in the way of rate hikes. In any case, he added, in most markets, homes tend to still be “very affordable” at a 4.5 percent mortgage rate.

 

Housing: Should you stay or should you go?.

Inventory shortages ease | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Inventory shortages that constrained home sales this spring are beginning to ease, with the number of homes listed for sale trending upwards in June, according to realtor.com data, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The total number of listings rose by 4.3 percent from May to June, to 1.9 million homes. While that’s down by 7.3 percent from the same time a year ago, inventory was off 18.6 percent year over year in February, the newspaper said.

Real estate industry observers have speculated that home price gains might spur more homeowners to put their properties up for sale — and for builders to break ground on more new homes.

With the latest CoreLogic Home Price index showing a 12.2 percent year-over-year gain in home prices in May, the recent uptick in listings — though bolstered by a normal seasonal increase — suggests that these market reactions may be starting to play out.

“No one wants to sell at the bottom, but prices have now been rising for more than a year and by more than 30 percent in some markets — triggering some homeowners to lock in those gains, including those who have been underwater,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist at listing portal Trulia.

But while home value appreciation may be coaxing some to sell, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement last month that growth in home supply will primarily depend on an increase in construction.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/07/15/inventory-shortage-eases/#sthash.oM9YQ165.dpuf

Talk of doing away with Fannie and Freddie is just that | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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A quick bye-bye to Fannie and Freddie? Don’t bank on it.

With the sudden gush of congressional proposals designed to kill the two government-sponsored companies as fast as possible — the most recent floated at the end of last week by a key committee leader in the House — you’d think Fannie’s and Freddie’s days are numbered.

In the long run they probably are, but a close look at legislative plans such as the “PATH Act” (Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners Act) offered Friday by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) tells me that Fannie and Freddie are going to be around for years — maybe into the next decade, beyond 2020.

Depending on how you see their current and past roles supplying the bulk of funds for home mortgages along with FHA, that’s either good news or terrible news.

Here’s how I see it.

Fannie and Freddie have been in “conservatorship” — which was designed to be a short-term legal purgatory allowing the White House and Congress time to figure out what to do with both companies — for nearly five years.  Despite a bold-sounding commitment by the Obama administration in early 2011 to work with Congress to return housing finance primarily to the private sector and out of the grips of federally chartered Fannie and Freddie, 2013 has been the first year we’ve seen a serious proposal for how to do that.

– See more at: http://www.inman.com/2013/07/16/talk-of-doing-away-with-fannie-and-freddie-is-just-that/#sthash.sDJFtI8F.dpuf

China’s Real-Estate Sector Sees Solid Housing Demand | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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China’s real-estate sector showed strength in the first half of the year amid solid housing demand, despite government controls on the market and slowing economic growth.

While the buoyancy in the housing market could lead to tighter market curbs in the months ahead, analysts said that for now, growth levels were within tolerable levels.

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Reuters

Workers welding a steel frame at a construction site in Hefei, Anhui province.

Total property investment in China in the first half of the year rose 20.3% compared with a year earlier to 3.68 trillion yuan ($599.3 billion), according to data released Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics. That is marginally slower than the 20.6% growth in the first five months of the year.

The statistics bureau doesn’t give data for individual months.

Residential and commercial property sales totaled 3.34 trillion yuan in the January-June period, up 43.2% over a year earlier. Sales totaled 2.59 trillion yuan in the five months ended May, up 52.8%.

“Inventory levels in major cities are leveling off, so we’re positive on construction starts and expect growth in this portion of the market to reach 5% to 7% this year,” said Johnson Hu, an analyst at CIMB Securities.

Construction starts by area in the first half rose 3.8% from a year earlier to 959.01 million square meters. They were up 1% at 736.13 million square meters in the January-May period.

The increase comes despite a more than three-year government campaign to keep real-estate prices in check amid fears that higher housing costs could lead to social unrest. Efforts include limiting home purchases, squeezing credit to developers and tightening down-payment requirements.

Larger developers have been buying land in what are known as tier one and tier two cities—China’s most affluent and developed cities—because of expectations of continued housing demand from migrants as the government pushes ahead with its plans to speed up urbanization. Developers typically purchase land and keep it in what they call a land bank for later use.

“Despite uncertainties in the macro environment and credit conditions, most of the developers we talked to last week still have aggressive plans for land banking” in the second half of this year, said Credit Suisse analyst Jinsong Du.

 

China’s Real-Estate Sector Sees Solid Housing Demand – WSJ.com.

New Home Prices Say What’s Different This Time | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Although no two business cycles are alike, most share some common characteristics. The interest-rate-sensitive sectors of the economy — housing and manufacturing — tend to lead on the way up and the way down, for obvious reasons. Inflation ebbs during the recession and in the early stages of the recovery. Credit creation drives the upswing.

The recovery from the 2007-2009 financial crisis has been different all around, just as Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff predicted in their 2009 book, “This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.” It has been a “protracted affair,” featuring extended declines in asset markets, large contractions in output and employment, and an explosion of government debt: three characteristics common to the aftermath of financial crises.

Yet even in the context of the typical post-financial-crisis recovery described by Reinhart and Rogoff, this one has some peculiarities of its own.

Let’s start with housing, whose rise and fall and associated debt were the proximate cause of the crisis. Residential real estate pretty much sat out the first 2 1/2 years of the recovery before getting traction in 2012, with a lot of outside help. The Federal Reserve drove down rock-bottom mortgage rates even more with its purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, a program that continues to this day.

Prices Beckon

The traditional leader was a laggard this time, and improvement has been slow in coming — at least when it comes to construction and sales. Prices of new homes are a different story.

The median sales price of a new single-family home set a record of $271,600 in April, eclipsing the 2007 peak of $262,600. Some of that reflects an increase in median square footage: 2,390 square feet last year compared with 2,235 square feet in 2007, according to annual data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

“They’re clearly not building for first-time buyers,” said Michael Carliner, an economic consultant specializing in housing.

Another part owes to a greater number of sales of higher-priced homes in more desirable areas of the country. The rest is clearly a response to demand for limited supply: Inventories are near record lows while single-family starts are about two-thirds lower than their 2006 peak. Prices of existing homes, on the other hand, are still being constrained by foreclosure and short sales, in which the house sells for less than the amount owed the lender.

 

New Home Prices Say What’s Different This Time – Bloomberg.

P. Allen Smith: How to Grow Edamame | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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Edamame is a vegetable soybean in the same family as the soybeans farmers grow but there are a few differences. Vegetable soybeans are harvested while they are still green while field soybeans are left on the plant to dry. Vegetable soybeans are larger than field soybeans with a creamier texture and mild, nutty flavor.

If you think edamame is a tasty snack, you should try growing the beans in your garden. Edamame’s flavor is that much better when prepared fresh from the garden and it’s very easy to grow.

Prep

Choose a site with full sun and well-drained soil amended with organic matter such as humus or compost.

Some sources recommend treating the beans with inoculant powder (Rhizobium japonicum inoculant) to help them absorb the nitrogen they need. I find that planting soil with plenty of compost will produce a good crop without inoculating the beans. You can read more about inoculating beans here.

Planting Edamame

Sow edamame soybeans after the last frost date in your area and when the soil has warmed up to 60 degrees F.

Sow seeds 1 inch deep and 3 inches apart. Keep the soil consistently moist, but not soggy, until the beans germinate.

Growing Edamame

Caring for Edamame Plants

Caring for edamame is pretty simple. Just keep the area weeded and give the plants 1 inch of water each week.

Harvesting Edamame

Expect all the beans on a plant to mature at once. They are ready when the pods are plump and bright green. With the right weather and growing conditions you can expect about a quarter pound of beans per plant.

Edamame Seeds

Edamame Seed Sources

Gardeners in areas with a short growing season should select early maturing varieties.

P. Allen Smith Garden Home.

How millennials will affect homebuilders | Pound Ridge Real Estate

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These 95 million people ages 10 to 32 outnumber their baby-boomer parents by 10 million. The young adults among them, sobered by the recession, have relatively modest material expectations; many say they’d be happy with smaller living spaces.

The housing industry will have to convince the next generation that home loans are as necessary and prudent as the student debt so many of them already carry, writes the Los Angeles Times.

 

How millennials will affect homebuilders | HousingWire.

Networking and social media: A recipe for REO success | Pound Ridge Realtor

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Brokers working in the REO space face stiff competition, but social media — when used correctly — is leveling the playing field, making it easier for tech-savvy professionals to gain a foothold in the space.

Social media, conferences and networking all play a role in a professional’s success.

Experts at HousingWire’s Real Estate Expo (REX) discussed how growing your REO business starts with you.

The panel featured Windy Keefe, manager of business development withREO Network; Brent Taggart, senior vice president with Green River Capital; Kirby Pearson with Pearson Realty Group; Lauretta Martin with The Martin Group and TMG Properties; Marcia Toms withPEMCO; and Patti Donovan with Freddie Mac.

When it comes to standing out as a broker, Taggart said a simple letter of recommendation makes a world of difference, especially when it’s exposed online or through simple social media tools.

In addition, he said people should be active and involved in boards, including the National Association or Realtors, rather than simply limiting their involvement to paying membership dues.

Meanwhile, Donovan said, “A strong thing for us is people who are making a difference in peoples lives that live in the communities that they work in.”

But, perhaps, the greatest change in real estate networking revolves around the social media space.

“Social media is a good way to connect and help build that relationship. It should be an extension of a way to stay in contact,” said Toms.

 

Networking and social media: A recipe for REO success | HousingWire.