As the peak industry body, the Real Estate Institute of WA (REIWA) is also the largest training provider for the profession. REIWA offers Professional Development for members and entry level pathways for prospective entrants. However, in recent years, REIWA has been facing increasing competition from private training organisations and TAFE. Likeable Creative was tasked with creating a campaign to target new recruits to the real estate industry, and attract people interested in changing careers. We presented a choice of concept directions and it was decided to test two campaigns to see which performed best.
While many people are interested in a real estate career for reasons such as flexibility of hours, being part of the community, and enjoying interacting with people, the possibility of making good money is a large appeal! With high-rating shows like ‘Selling Sunset’, ‘The Parisian Agency’, ‘Million Dollar Listings’ and ‘Luxe Listings Sydney’, a career in real estate has never seemed more glamorous. We created a campaign that taps into this appeal with tongue-in-cheek ‘before REIWA training’ and ‘after’ images. The situations were deliberately far-fetched to get attention. The campaign said, “while we can’t promise the glamorous lifestyle, we can offer the best possible start”.
In the second campaign, we posed the question “Were you born to be in real estate?” to prompt the viewer into considering this career path. We used the engaging visual of children showing sales aptitude at a young age. The ad prompted the audience to take the next step and get their training from the peak organisation.
The ‘Aspirational’ campaign was the clear leader in terms of click-throughs, however the ‘Born to’ direction also received a lot of engagement and comments. The first burst of the campaign from August to November 2023 delivered over 2,500 leads to the REIWA Training registration page.