Blogoff Post #31: Ask the Broker: What’s in a name . . . ?
By: Greg Swann,
Phoenix Real Estate,
Post Archive,
RSS FeedPosted: Tuesday, September 26th, 2006, 5:50 am MST
Category: Ask the Broker, Marketing, Real Estate
This is a question from me to me, one I’ve spent quite a bit of time on over the years:
What should I call my real estate brokerage?
I really hate personality marketing in real estate, so I’m much stronger on the subject of what not to do.
But here is the strategy we deployed in naming our brokerage.
First, we wanted an iconic idea — an idea that conveys a host of other ideas without explication. Odysseus the dog was an accident in our lives, but choosing the word Bloodhound was no accident. The word and the image of the dog, both in photographs and in our logo, sell a vast array of ideas about our business without our having to sell anything.
Second, we named our business “.com” to enhance our findability. We are not a realty.bot, and we will never be one, but using our web address as our business name means that our web address appears every time our business is mentioned.
An example: Every listing of ours produced by any IDX system, no matter whose, will list our web address.
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Related posts:9 Comments so far
greg,
great story re: the origins of naming bloodhound realty. now i don’t have to wonder anymore
just visited ardell and you’re leading 2 to 1.
both of you have provided all of us with some fantastic reading thus far and look forward to more gems.
how are holding up? tired yet? i suggested that ardell take a break or a catnap to get refreshed but she’ll probably just keep on chuggin’.
just let me know when i should contact guinness. or should i ask ardell that question?
rudy.sellsius°
[...] 6:00 a.m. - Greg #31 Greg ponders the naming of a business I have to say, for me, my first choice was “Boston Real Estate” but what do ya know, someone beat me to it. The list went on as my top choices were already taken, we eventually did something akin to throwing a dart and ended up with Spotlight Realty. It wasn’t my first choice, but in hindsight, I’m happy with it. Now if I could only get my partner to stop doing the cheeseball thing with the name… i.e. “we will put the Spotlight on your home” ughhh. BTW- naming the business name.com …. Genious. [...]
Thanks on behalf of Greg for the feedback, Rudy. Actually, as you might imagine, Greg isn’t reading comments right now. He’s over in his cube with fingers a-flying. He’ll hear me laughing (usually at Jon’s coverage) every now and then and ask me what’s so funny; but other than that he’s just churning them out. This is a lot harder than he thought it would be.
At about 9:00 Greg coincidently posted #50. Jon thought he had planned it out to take a break then. It really was serendipity: I feed the dogs at 9:00 and their howling is so distracting he stopped just long enough to make himself another four-shot Latte.
Jon, you probably aren’t reading comments today, either. But I wanted to tell you that you are as fine a color man as I’ve ever seen! I’d tell you on your own weblog, but who has time to register? Keep up the great work… you’re a stud!
It’s a great story. Bloodhounds have so many positive qualities that translate to brokerage, like sniffing out the best deals and doggedly keeping on the trail. Plus, a dog is man’s best friend. What’s not to love?
[...] In the midst of the 101 blog challenge, I found the following post in regards to naming your business (he actually is referring to Naming Your Brokerage, but I think it generalizes rather well to naming your business). I find the following comments quite useful - in an insightful way. “First, we wanted an iconic idea — an idea that conveys a host of other ideas without explication.” [...]
[...] In the midst of the 101 blog challenge, I found the following post in regards to naming your business (he actually is referring to Naming Your Brokerage, but I think it generalizes rather well to naming your business). I find the following comments quite useful - in an insightful way. “First, we wanted an iconic idea — an idea that conveys a host of other ideas without explication.” [...]
Following up on this, just so we don’t get yelled at later: We’re in the process of trademarking everything. It takes forever and costs a fortune.
[...] What is the real problem here? Not the contact information. We routinely post links to the custom weblogs we do for all of our listings, and our very name, BloodhoundRealty.com, is absolutely and intentionally contact information produced with any listing of ours printed out by anyone anywhere. [...]
[...] Greg has explained this on two different BloodhoundBlog posts: We selected our name and logo, because it’s iconic. It portrays traits we admire and strive always to live up to… traits such as loyalty, diligence, tenacity. Dedicated, Devoted, Determined™. Yes, dogs are cute. But they are so much more! [...]