Ok, I have had a few emails from people highlighting a few things about a promotion REA are doing on a listing someone had allegedly placed on REA’s website.
The article on CEO’s Simon Bakers website goes a little like this.
“Viral marketing is so powerful and nothing shows this more than an ad that is currently on the share accommodation section of the REA site in which Borat stars.
Some entrepreneurial person has decided to have a bit of a laugh and has put up a ficticious ad for someone to share with Borat. Now what is amazing is that this ad has been viewed over 100,000 times. Check out the ad at http://www.realestate.com.au/9031441
And for anyone thinking that something is fishy – it isnt! The author of this ad has nothing to do with realestate.com.au. It is amazing the power of the Internet.”
Now, I am not saying that this is a fictitious ad, quite the contrary (although the hit counter thing would be as easy as pie to muck around with)
Ebay have long been doing these types of things to promote themselves for free through a hungry and gullible press – you know the type of things I am referring to: pretending people are selling kidney’s, hearts, children and letting the press know about it and then quickly pulling the ads.
Now this ad, is at best mildly amusing, but not something I would laugh out loud at. Now I do not want to be a killjoy, but, there are rules and standards that everyone must apply to when listing a property, maybe if it is funny, these rules don’t apply? Maybe the 200,000 + alleged views to this property (when the average for paid agents listing is about 100 per week) are not included in official results.
A couple of points I would like to make and others have made, does this listing contravene their listing rules? Are the massive numbers included in their results? And will this be the start of this type of promotion on this site on a regular basis?
Now I was not going to write about this and to be honest I feel like a bit of an idiot doing so, but I have had many people emailing me and a couple of phone calls about this very ad.
Some people just do not find it amusing!