Technorati Tags: disintermediation, real estate, real estate marketing
Category: Marketing (page 121 of 191)
We did more in Las Vegas than tour construction sites, but you’d never know it from the snapshots. Here are some more projects in the works — nothing like all there are to be explored.
This is a view across the Bellagio to the CityCenter site. In the middle foreground is the old Jockey Club, being remodeled in the course of being assimilated, Borg-like, into the new Cosmopolitan hotel-condo-casino-resort.
The CityCenter site from behind.
The new Encore tower at Wynn Las Vegas.
The new Palazzo tower at The Venetian.
Ground-level construction on the Palazzo tower.
On the left is the first of two Trump Towers. On the right is the Encore tower. In between is a lot of future construction on the North Strip.
From the Encore tower to the Palazzo tower.
With the Palazzo tower in the background, a chunk of the Harrah’s section of the Monopoly board.
Caesar’s empire. Behind the Augustus tower, on the right, will be another high hi-rise hotel tower. The steel shed in the bottom right will be replaced by new convention facilities. At the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Boulevard, now occupied by an open-air plaza, Caesar’s will build 37,000sf of new casino space.
And not to forget dowdy old Downtown, the Landry restaurant chain, new owners of the Golden Nugget, are planning to build a new hotel tower behind the old Pioneer Club.
Technorati Tags: investment, real estate, real estate marketing
I wrote about The Fabulous Baker Boys at New Years. This is another film where the conflicts are painfully real and where everyone is a better person at the end.
In the clip linked below, Michelle Pfeiffer sings More Than You Know as a way of summarizing the argument of the film. As with Pleasantville, this is a film I can watch over and over again.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
When it comes down to it I’m more of a marketing guy than a mortgage guy. Sure I own a mortgage company but I wasn’t brought in to do the selling or the secondary marketing or the finances or office admin – I was brought in to be “the marketing guy,” to bring in the leads and market our company. It’s my background and my passion. So even though I spend a lot of time dealing with all of the items listed above it is the marketing that really gets me excited.
With that introduction you’ll understand why I’ve so hastily penned this post about out-of-the-box marketing after reading this article about 7-11 and The Simpsons teaming up to transform 11 7-11’s across the country in to Kwik-E-Marts to promote the upcoming movie.
To promote the movie not only did they completely redo the exterior of the store, but consider the other details:
- Green aprons for staff (a la Apu)
- Squishee cups instead of slurpee cups
- Buzz soda 6-packs for sale
- Pink frosting-covered donuts with sprinkles
- Radioactive Man comic books
- All new signage “Thank you for loitering.”
- Tons of Simpson-esque memorabilia products
People drove from miles around and waited in a huge line just to get inside. Once they were inside it felt like being in the cartoon. You can see more photos from the Burbank store here.
Can you imagine the creative meeting that led to this? Can you imagine the scared conformists who thought the idea was too risky to be pitched to the client? Those that thought this could never be pulled off, that no one would go for it, that people wouldn’t care? Can you imagine the courage of those who conceived of the idea had to push it through the doubters and those that said “we should just do a viral internet video?”
Can you imagine what it would take to come up with something as remarkable as this to market your business? Every time I see something like this I shake my head and give a silent round of applause to the marketers that made this happen. I immediately think how can Read more
Arizona Republic reporter Peter Corbett phoned to say that Arizona Governor Janet Napilitano has signed Senate Bill 1291, which includes language that will permit Zillow.com and other no-fee Automated Valuation Models to operate without interference in the state. Corbett also notes that the Arizona Board of Appraisal has backed away from the cease and desist orders it had issued to the Seattle-based real estate portal.
More at Zillow Blog and The Phoenix Real Estate Guy.
The greenish structures on the right are the Panorama Towers. They sit just on the west side of the I-15 freeway. Condos facing east will have a very dramatic view of CityCenter and much of the south Strip. Condos facing west will look upon flat land bearded by houses, and they will be blasted every day by the late afternoon sun.
What do you suppose is the price difference between the two sides of these towers?
Here’s what I like in movies: I want an accurate portrayal of normal human life in which basically decent people are confronted with a challenge, and, in wrestling with it, emerge as even better people.
I despise the idea of villainy — not because there are no villains in the world, but because they are almost never the problem in a normal human life. Film villains are stupid, insanely over the top. If you want to deal with villains in real life, take on angry drunks or passive-aggressive wraiths or the kind of everyday trolls who try to bring out the worst in otherwise good-hearted people.
Even then I’m not interested. In real life, most people are trying to do their best from the best of intentions, and the conflicts that arise between them are interesting because we each see the world from our own unique vantage point. We are beset, mostly, by errors of knowledge, not by malice. The true story of humanity is learning to do better, and from this idea comes the best art. Those kind of stories fascinate me.
Grand Canyon is a good example. The High Concept behind the film — people are becoming more divided by their chasm-like differences, and yet the real Grand Canyon is bigger and more significant than tiny human lives — is lame, symptomatic of the pontificating Sunday editorial page Deep Think piece. But co-writer/director Lawrence Kasden manages to overcome the banality of his theme with a series of overlapping, converging story arcs. Each character is motivated like a real person, which means that none of their motivations are evil or wrong, but they are sometimes in conflict and have to be worked out.
In the clip linked here, Mary McDonnell’s Claire endures an agonizing dream exploring the changes, welcome and unwelcome, she is going through in her marriage and family.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
Todd Carpenter of lenderama and REMBEX fame is hosting the REMBEX Blog Fiesta on July 18th in Denver:
Blog Fiesta will be held at Garcia’s Mexican Resturant, on July 18th, from 11-3. Garcia’s is in the Denver Tech Center (South Metro Denver), near I-25 and Belleveiw. We have a room reserved to seat 60, and can spill into another room to support as many 100 attendee’s.
Appetizers, soft drinks, lunch & expert blogging will be provided!
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I don’t quite hate American Beauty. Cathy thinks that Lester Burnham is redeemed in the end, first by correcting the defects in his life and second by not succumbing to the crime of ephebophila. My take is that he’s a snarky pomo asshole from start to finish. I think the philosophical argument of the film is made by the clip of the plastic bag being buffeted at random by the winds: Nothing is everything. Ick.
But: Even ickier: American Beauty brings us the all-time most hideous portrayal of the real estate business. A piece of that is shown in the clip linked below, Carolyn Burnham defiling herself at open house. It were well to be free from pestilential, confiscatory government, which is what we celebrate today with beer and fireworks. But there is something to be said for breaking free from phony, prostrate selling stunts, too.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing
I have written in the past about CityCenter, MGM/Mirage’s seven billion dollar city within the city of Las Vegas — and I’ll write more when I get back to my Macintosh. But here are some photos we shot yesterday at the sales center and on the construction site.
A model of the finished project, with its surrounding buildings.
This is Vdara, a condominium tower that will sit near the back of the property.
The main casino-hotel-resort building, as yet unnamed, under construction. (Caption corrected per the comment below.)
This was our favorite, I think: A giant on-site concrete factory.
We shot video of the the construction, also, so we may cut it together as a film. We’re used to vast undertakings in Las Vegas, but CityCenter breaks all records.
Continuing with the idea of weblogging as talk radio, linked below are clips from my two favorite talk radio movies. I wrote about Talk Radio in a post at Thanksgiving. I featured Pump Up The volume in a post about long-tail television. Both films, incidentally, illustrate the idea of infotainment necessary for a successful weblog.
In the Pump Up The volume clip, I’m showing a scene that I thought was particularly well done. The film itself wavers between anarchic wannabe-profundity and formula teen-angst melodrama. But the pomo-meets-goth love interest is fun. In this scene Mark Hunter and Laura De Niro shyly explore the undiscovered country of intimacy. Samantha Mathis, as Laura, is delightfully ingenuous I think.
The clip from Talk Radio is much, much darker. It’s the agonizing climax of the third act, and it’s just enough to make you shriek for relief. Everything is perfect, script, acting, direction, staging, music. Eric Bogosian is off-the-charts excellent, and Oliver Stone, despite his ever-lengthening list of shortcomings, shows himself here to be the complete auteur.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
I wrote this nearly four years ago:
Anyone who has ever been to Las Vegas has seen Showbiz Weekly and What’s On magazines. One or the other was waiting for you in your hotel room, but there were racks of them at the airport and at the car rental counter, plus single issues in the rental car itself. They’re slick and polished, but they’re free like a TV-Shopper, albeit a lot better distributed.
Functionally, they work like controlled-circulation trade magazines: Elaborate advertising and puff-piece promotional articles inform you of your buying opportunities in Las Vegas at the point where you have become a ready, willing and able buyer. That’s why they’re free: The advertisers are more than willing to comp you for as many copies as you might want, confident that your spending will more than compensate them for their investment.
What’s interesting about these magazines is that you cannot subscribe to them from back home. There are a couple of general interest magazines you can subscribe to: Greenspun’s Las Vegas Life is a city magazine, like New York or Los Angeles; it’s a fun read, but not terribly useful for tourists. Vegas Magazine, also Greenspun, is a confused fashion rag that is doomed to a very costly demise. Neither of these do the kind of job Showbiz Weekly and What’s On do, advising tourists on where and how to get the most Vegas from their Vegas-money.
And that is a market niche, a magazine that promotes Las Vegas tourism all year round, when the tourists are back home.
The Strip is a monthly; more frequent would be annoying. Show news, upcoming concerts, gambling tournaments, Vegas trivia and history, etc., all surrounded by advertising, since, in important respects, the advertising is the editorial product. Very slick, very polished, with a critical edge lacking from Showbiz Weekly and What’s On.
The loosely-focused target market is the frequent Las Vegas visitor, two or more trips a year of three or more days in length. The more tightly-focused target market is the high-roller, people who spend a lot of money when they come to Las Vegas, and who come to Read more
We have a vast collection of Vegas movies. Vegas Vacation is painful in only the way that a Chevy Chase movie can be painful, but the agony is worth enduring for the sustained farce Nick Papagiorgio story arc. The clip linked below is a nice illustration of the high art of low comedy, a masterfully funny take on degenerate gamblers.
I haven’t laid my own hands on an iPhone yet, and we’re off to Lost Wages for our anniversary, so unless I infest an Apple Store in Clark County, my own gratification will have to wait still longer. I’m assuming, if you were interested, you had your fill of iPhone news over the weekend. If not, Engadget has words, links and tons of killer video.
Here’s a fascinating take from Publishing 2.0:
Apple will significantly improve the already revolutionary iPhone in subsequent generations, and lower the price, as they did with the iPod. With each new release, more and more people will look at Verizon and Sprint, who don’t carry the iPhone, and say, WTF!?
The real battle for control is between Verizon, which has hands down the best network, and Apple, which now has hands down the best handset. The tide will turn when die hard Verizon customers start switching in significant numbers to AT&T to get an iPhone. People like me, who stood firm on the network is more important principle, will crack under the pressure. There will come a tipping point, then, when the cost to Verizon of refusing Apple’s terms will be greater than losing customers to the iPhone.
What Apple really wants is to sell unlocked iPhones that can be used on any network — and I believe they will pull it off. Thus, Apple will do to the wireless carriers and other cell phone makers what they did to the music industry and makers of digital music players — they will completely take over.
More: The contrary argument.
Still more: Half-a-million sold.
Technorati Tags: real estate, real estate marketing