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Yikes! Offend, and Zillow Suspends

Oops...Have I offended the Zillow gods? The powers that be at Z have taken offense to my advertisments on their site, citing some obscure rule in their ad policy. Apparently, their rules state (somewhere) that you can't use the word Zillow in any advertising you place on their site.

No So EX

Well, as far as I'm concerned I did not violate that rule anyway. I used the term Un-Zillowable in my headline. Last time I checked the term unzillowable had not been trademarked or copyrighted by the big Z. Apparently, there advertising rules apply to terms that are not even considered English words (although I can not speak for other languages with any authority). Let me ask you Active Rainers: Does the term unzillowable have the same meaning as the proper noun Zillow? What d'ya think?

UPDATE: I had to change my ad before Zillow would lift the suspension on my account. Here it is...

New Zillow

A slightly lower layer, but I like it. Start my ad enzines Zillow and full steam ahead...

Posted by Tim White on 05/17/2007 01:17 PM

Comments (15)

zillow

15 Comments on Yikes! Offend, and Zillow Suspends

MAY

2007

Is Zillow a Noun? LOL!

Maybe you should have just used "un-"Z"able!

I am certainly not an English guru, but it is a Noun. I think the heart of your word is Zillow, which is being used to describe something, and think it would be an adjective in this case. Jeez, I need to go back to school.

A proper name is a proper noun. Google is a proper name, and thus a noun. Can a noun be turned into a verb? Abosulutely. For example, to "goolge" something or someone is a verb, but the name of the firm itself is a proper noun. At least this is what the nuns told me way back when, unless they were lying to me...

"unzillowable" would be an adjective. It's a describing word, right? But, to tell you the truth, I like the new a better anyway! Very smart.

Re-read the post, I said Zillow as a proper noun. I said nothing about what part of speech unzillowable is. Anyway guys, this argument about nouns and adjectives is completely missing the point. I thought you Active Rainers would be more focused on the the issue at hand--that Zillow, who tout themselves as being all about "transparemcy" (you know--web 2.0 stuff) would be more confident in their services and who they are trying to be, that they wouldn't be so quick to offend. Could you imagine beiing banned from active rain simply by saying something like active rain sucks????

MAY

2007

Woops, I did it again. I modified both my ads on Zillow to jumpstart my ad campaign in an attempt to win back their favor and be in compliance with their fuzzy rules. Still wanting to be a little creative with my ads, my first ad's headline was as follows:

Bad

Much to my delight, my ad was re-activated, my suspension lifted and my abilility to get mucho leads from the big Z site restored. YEWWW Doggy!

My elation was short lived, however, when I posted my 2nd ad, thus:

Zest

Apparently, this did not make the cut and the Z brand police shut me down again-CONFOUNDIT! Well, back to the drawing board I guess. These are brave men the men (and women) of Zillow, men (and women) who are not afraid of transparency and who stare unblinkingly in the face of controversy. May they never be impuned by me again.

JUN

2007

Having coined the term "unzilowable" in the post below, you have our permission to use the word.

It is quite catchy.

http://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/zillow/unzillowable-to-coin-a-phrase/2006/08/14/

Tim, what a smart ad!

JUN

2007

Thanks Jonathan! Would you like me to write some ads for you????

Hi, it's David from Zillow,

Tim & Carole,

Thanks for keeping your sense of humor and please accept my apologies; your second ad (“Inaccurate Zestimate?”) should have made it past our ad review process.

Guidelines for EZ Ads content can be found here. One of these guidelines requires advertisers to make appropriate use of trademarks in their ads. As you can imagine, we’ve had a slew of agents claim to be “The best Realtor on Zillow” and so the trademark guideline has been abused since EZ Ads launched but we’ve clearly become over-sensitive to it. “Un-Zillowable” is a negative derivation of the Zillow trademark and while we haven’t objected to people using that term to criticize the Zillow service, we can’t allow others to promote a service with that term – I hope that you understand.

It is entirely appropriate to talk about an “Inaccurate Zestimate” and I agree with Jonathan; it is smart marketing. I will work with our moderators to improve their understanding of fair use of trademarks but I do understand where their confusion comes from .

Please go ahead and change your ad content back to read “Inaccurate Zestimate?” if you'd like. I'd like to add a few dollars to your ad budget for your troubles and will call you today to get the relevant details to do so. Thanks for your business – and for your patience.

funny!

I read about it on Sellsius° Blog, where the word unzillowable was coined... Oh I see Joe has been here to grant you permission to use their word!

JUN

2007

I gotta say that is a very smart marketing angle. Glad you are not in my market ;->

JUN

2007

Very funny! It just goes to show that everybody is "touchy" about something! Zillow with "UnZillowable" on the one hand and on the other hand the NWMLS about "Sweet Digs". It's always about perspective!

Deborah Sweet Digs is whose?

Hi Maureen, whoops sorry I was not clear. "Sweet Digs" was/is a a Redfin (both Redfin & Zillow are newer Seattle Real Estate companies) blog that talked about and gave opinions on houses listed on the NWMLS, that the NWMLS ruled was "advertising" without permission, another agent's listing. The NWMLS threatened to cut off Redfin's MLS feed if it did not cease posting these opinions and fined Redfin $50,000 for "advertising" with their opinions of another agent's listing without permission.

Everyone (agents, brokerages, other real estate companies) is very "touchy" (and rightly so) about how the image they work hard at creating and maintaining is used by others...it is all about perspective!

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