Could This NSFW Video Help Sell Mansions in Hollywood?
Hide the kids. And definitely don’t watch this video at work. You don’t ever want to confess to your boss that you’ve refreshed the same YouTube page 18 times in an hour on the company server.
If you ask The Agency’s co-founder Billy Rose what type of reaction he was hoping to elicit from the brokerage’s new, sexualized real estate video for one of his newest multimillion-dollar listings in LA’s Hollywood Hills he’ll be disappointed if you haven't already refreshed it 18 times in the last hour. The Agency is gambling that their new short films on their most unique properties—which aren’t cheap to produce—are going to change the entire way lifestyle properties are marketed and line buyers up at the first open house like a movie premiere the week after the trailer is released.
They’re also intent on shaking up a few of the stodgy, conservative towers of the global real estate industry in the process.
“We live in Hollywood,” says Rose bluntly, who in addition to co-founding The Agency with Mauricio Umansky back in 2011 is also a former talent agent and grew up in the entertainment industry. “We sell the Hollywood lifestyle. And there’s nothing risqué about a real estate (film like this) in LA.”
Some older-school real estate agents and brokerages who don’t sell Los Angeles’s progressive, socially-diverse lifestyle will likely disagree with The Agency’s definition of what’s “acceptable”. But that’s exactly Rose’s and Umansky’s objective. For The Agency “risqué” LA-style is perpetually synonymous with “risky” and you don’t go from $0 to $2 billion in sales in five years without having an eye for disruption where it's needed.
Sex sells in every industry these days. Real estate has always been the exception. Television series like Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing are finally starting to crack the stubborn old-school foundation. But if you say “real estate porn” in front of your typical agent or broker I can assure you that they’ll be blushing nervously.
Billy Rose has had the vision and storyboards to this film playing out in his head for two years. But as a former Hollywood guy who knows that timing is everything he waited. A decade before Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone would have been blacklisted for her classic cross over leg move. A decade later, it wouldn’t turn a head.
“I’ve had this whole idea of following a sexy woman walking around a house in my mind for years,” Rose explains. “She takes a dip in the infinity pool, gets herself all dressed up. She then prepares for this anniversary dinner. And then the super car pulls up. My dream was to always have it be a Lamborghini, because that (type of car) is so perfectly built in to the expectation of who would live in this type of house. And then there’s the reveal of it being another woman. It’s controversial. It’s risqué. It’s risky. It’s perfect. I just needed to find the right combination of ownership and house.”
Rose found the perfect combination of both in Jason Green, the owner of 2Form Design & Build, who a year ago just happened to decide to build one of the sexiest new residential properties in one of the iconically sexy areas in LA. Green grew up in Los Angeles and comes from a long line of entrepreneurs from fashion and cosmetics to manufacturing. Green has no formal architectural or development training but his uncle was the architect who pioneered the large-scale, luxury, full-service casino hotel, and in the process basically invented Las Vegas from a design standpoint. Jason was obviously quietly listening.
1709 Rising Glen Road in the Hollywood Hills above Sunset Plaza and minutes from Hollywood’s Sunset Strip isn’t Green’s first or most expensive residential development, but it’s by far his sexiest since he learned the lesson from his uncle that it’s better to “build up than out”.
“Real estate is always local, and we learned that early on. Other developers learn that lesson at their peril.” Green says. While other developers perpetually expand geographically, Green has relentlessly stuck to his Hollywood Hills backyard. He and his partners just keep building better. They started off cutting their teeth on shoebox renovations and building duplexes in ‘the Valley’. Fast forward six years and twenty or more projects later, Green is now putting some of the sexiest (yes, we said that word again) new houses in LA on the market in the most prestigious neighborhoods in “the Hills” and doing it all largely on his own.
When Jason closed on his newest piece of the Hollywood Hills last year which was basically nothing more than a scrubby hillside with great views, Rose knew that he had the perfect pitch target to finally realize his seductive, nouveau-erotic real estate film vision.
“The Hollywood Hills is the epicenter of the great Mid-Century modernist homes in LA from 1950s and 1960s,” Rose says, “But it was also the center of LA’s counter culture. The Beatles had houses here and tons of other celebs. But the history here is the Sunset Strip and it goes back to the legendary clubs of the day like the Whiskey, Roxy, and Starwood. The Doors used to play here before you even knew who they were and (artists) who are now world-famous would literally be walking down the streets with their guitars. The Sunset Strip was one of the birthplaces of rock and roll.”
Green’s architecture and interior design for 1709 Rising Glen is intended to embody the essence of the Sunset Strip’s current contradiction between modern luxury and historical promiscuity. The Agency’s vision for the property’ short film does exactly that. For both Green and Rose the film is also timely culturally and socially. Why can we talk about LGBT rights in so many other aspects of our lives but not in real estate and marketing?
Says Rose, “With what’s going on in the world today and in politics with LGBT rights do you think this is risqué? This isn’t pushing the limits at all. This is normal life. So why not show it off?”
Hollywood film trailer quality real estate videos aren’t new. When you’re potentially making a commission on selling a luxury LA mansion that comes with six zeros, dropping what could cost up to $30,000 in production costs for a short film that could be critical in attracting the right buyer (who’s 30% likely in LA to also have ties to the entertainment business) doesn’t seem like an unreasonable or unintelligent marketing expense.
In 1998 before Clive Owen was Clive Owen, BMW produced a series of short films featuring Owen in a variety of James Bond-like life-threatening situations. It was a brilliant stroke on BMW’s part to create an experiential marketing campaign that had nothing to do with a specific car before ‘content marketing’ became the over-laundered buzzword that it is today. The marketing geniuses at BMW realized that cars, like houses, were not just things made from steel and glass. They represent how you want to perform and express yourself to the world.
“These films are very on brand for us,” says Rose, “We’re not your parents’ or grandparents’ agency. For us it’s creating a narrative and imagery about a property that will be emotionally engaging to a person.”
If YouTube views are any judge I’m going to bet that Billy Rose, Mauricio Umansky, and The Agency have gambled well. For the record, you might want to block the cookies in your browser before you do any further research on “real estate porn videos.” Trust me.
(original article)