If you haven't read Monika McGillcuddy's recent post Real Estate's Paradigm Shift you should. It is a great account of the massive changes currently taking place in our industry and how they are perceived. The resistance in the real estate industry to blogging and Social Networking is still strong. Those who have embraced it are having success and understand that a future without viable venues to market ourselves is bleak. Never has it been more important to reach out to the consumer and make a direct connect.
Web 2.0 is marketing. We are marketing ourselves, our ideas, our business in an attempt to both educate the consumer and to survive. Marketing is by no means a new idea; it has played an active role in promoting companies, products, ideas and people for ages. Anybody who doesn't recognize this is just foolish.
I left this comment on Monika's post:
The one constant in our world is change. Everything is changing all of the time. Sometimes change starts with a barely perceptible shift in the way things are done, barely noticed by many. While only a small percentage of us have embraced the internet and know this is the wave to ride, the direction to take our business in, there are already changes happening here in our new world. I often wonder how many of our ranks recognize the changes happening right here in our 2.0 world. I also wonder how many will embrace these changes.
Sometimes I step back and watch our industry purge itself. That is what is happening you know. The resistance to change combined with the fear of the unknown is crippling many of the ranks in the real estate industry. It's not just at the agent level. We, the 2.0 world, have changed so many facets of our industry that large vendors are showing signs of eminent collapse as we demand better services that actually work for us and refuse to continue with their outdated and useless products. We have discovered our "voice" and combined our voice is quite loud.
Brian Brady and I had a conversation a while back; we discussed the gap that entering the 2.0 world has bridged. Before blogging and social networking agents across the nation rarely connected, heads of major corporations were untouchable icons and large companies were our drug dealers without which we thought we couldn't survive. None of this is true any longer. Anybody who is out of reach is out of touch and dooming themselves to inevitable failure. We live in an interactive world in which everybody is expected to participate.
What is different? We have engaged and connected directly with the consumer eradicating the need for many of the middlemen in business's previously used to fleece us of our hard earned income. Liberating Huh?!?
My grandmother was one of 13 children of Irish and German immigrants, many of her brothers worked at the Rheingold Brewery Brooklyn plant for their entire working life. They purchased homes and cars, paid them off, had families, put their children through college, loved their jobs, were committed to the company they worked for, and were happy. When the company began to falter they were blown away. Fortunately most of them were able to retire comfortably.
My grandmother is the last surviving member of her immediate family; she is in her late 90's now. I would love to share this story with her as it would bring back a flood of wonderful memories that would make her smile. Unfortunately my grandmother has no memories any longer; she now lives in her own little world and doesn't know who any of us are.
This is an interesting account of the history of the rise and fall of The Rheingold Brewing Company, and an era. It is a testament to what a really good marketing campaign can achieve. It is also a testament to what bad business decisions and a lack of future vision can do to destroy the empire forever. I hope you enjoy and learn from the read:
Nothing is forever...
Tapping Into The Rheingold Story Has A Distinctive Brooklyn Taste
originally published on February 14, 2008 - Part 1
The Miss Rheingold Contest Showed Beauty Of A Marketing Brainstorm
originally published on February 28, 2008 - Part 2
Posted by 
Laurie, 
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