Record Advertising Spend in Apartment Rental Category; New Website Redefines the Rental Experience for 100 Million Americans Who Rent Their Homes
Apartments.com, powered by CoStar, yesterday launched a groundbreaking advertising campaign featuring actor Jeff Goldblum as Brad Bellflower, the eccentric Silicon Valley Maverick and visionary futurist behind the all-new, completely redesigned Apartments.com. Developed by agency of record, RPA, the strategy for the campaign is to position Apartments.com as the ultimate ally for apartment searchers, with more listings than any other apartment-listing website.
Using a Web 5.0 look and feel to emphasize the benefits of the new Apartments.com experience, the integrated campaign thematically leverages the lofty tag line: “Change your apartment. Change the world.” to irreverently communicate the company’s commitment to meeting the needs of renters rather than catering primarily to landlords as rental websites have done in the past.
“Like any good Silicon Valley maverick, Brad’s vision for his apartment rentals website is nothing less than to change the world. But hyperbole and parody aside, finding a great place to live or moving to a new area really does change your world,” said CoStar Group founder & CEO Andrew C. Florance.
Several Apartments.com new features include custom search filters, a Polygon™ search tool that enables the user to define the area they want to search in by drawing the shape on a map, a Plan Commute tool that selects properties within a desired commute time between the rental location and a specified address, photos, video walk-throughs and detailed neighbourhood information.
An expansive, year-long national, regional, local and hyper-local media buy is designed to reach 95 percent of target audience 18 to 49 years old, delivering more than 3 billion impressions, to create awareness and excitement for Apartments.com and increase website traffic.
“Apartments.com is determined to communicate with every renter in the country. Jeff Goldblum perfectly portrays Brad, an over-exaggerated tech powerhouse, to capture attention for Apartments.com—the best apartment site on the market—while establishing the website as a trusted resource that will ensure people find the place they’ll love,” said Joe Baratelli, CCO at RPA.
TV launched yesterday during “The Walking Dead” with 30-second “Launch” (as well as online only :60 version) and continues with an onslaught of buzz-worthy placements, with seven unique spots rolling out on more than 70 network programs and 30 cable networks, as well as during high-profile premieres and season finales such as “The Bachelor,” “Dancing with the Stars,” “Empire” and “Survivor” and MLB and NBA games and NBA playoffs.
Digital and social are deeply woven into the launch and sustaining strategies for Apartments.com, including extensive investments in search and high-impact homepage activations across CNN, Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Yahoo and YouTube.
Through partnerships with leading digital publishers such as Buzzfeed, Gawker, The Huffington Post and Wired, Apartments.com will create highly shareable custom content that will be placed natively both on the sites and throughout social media.
In addition, Apartments.com will launch the Brad Bellflower character across Facebook and Twitter, allowing Bellflower to flex his maverick muscles in the digital environments he knows best. Across each of these platforms, Bellflower will showcase his myriad worldly insights using meta native formats like image quotes, tweetstorms and screenshorts—following the style of other Silicon Valley titans.
Widespread out-of-home on bulletins and posters, rail/subway stations, wrapped trains, transit shelters and street kiosks will feature Brad Bellflower spouting Apartments.com truths—“We put the .com in apartments,” “Need a new place? Surf the apartminternet.” and “The Most Polygonal Search Online.” Customized local radio, TV and outdoor advertising will be targeted to Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte (N.C.), Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Los Angeles, Hampton Roads (Va.), Houston, Nashville (Tenn.), Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington, D.C.
Apartments.com plans to reinforce the consumer campaign with the most aggressive search engine marketing (SEM) program in the apartment industry, along with a major business-to-business campaign introducing the new website features and advertising model to the trade audience, apartment owners and property managers.
